Cavedale Road is bumpy – steep, narrow, its asphalt broken like a jiggled jigsaw. Perhaps this is as it should be, given that it is the road to the top of the world.
“Welcome to the Top of the World,” says Doug Gardner, the owner of the property high in the Mayacamas just yards away from the Napa County line. There’s a five-bedroom cabin next door called Top of the World, though Gardner’s family sold that part of the property in 1981. But no one wants to live there full time – the road is too bumpy.
Gardner, a sturdy 38-year-old, works by himself inside the fenced cultivation site, which has an acre’s worth of planted cannabis in both fabric “Geopot” barrels and in-ground beds. About a third of this crop is just days away from harvest, and the air is redolent with a fresh tart smell. Gardner’s name is apt – but, as it turns out, this is his first crop. Even so, it’s a bumper one, thanks in part to the abundant water supply that the ranch is blessed with.
Hooker Creek bubbles out of a mountain slope just on the other side of his driveway and trickles year-round to a pond on the property. That pond provides the entire water supply for the acre of plants. Gardner has installed a pump at the pond to bring the water back uphill to the cultivation site, and a system of pipes and drip irrigation hoses distribute the water.
Read more at sonomanews.com