"He didn't listen to me."
That one failed spectacularly. And by 1990, the economic downtown had hit Scottsdale. Steele's landlord raised her rent, and she was out. She quickly found a backer and turned an old church on Indian School Road into Mission Bazaar, another fabulous space with plants, housewares, hand-painted furniture, and gourmet food for sale. After six months, her backer showed her the door, saying they could do it themselves; they lasted another three weeks.
Jamie Peachey
A collection
Claire Lawton
Wares for sale today at Aravaipa Farms
Details
See video of Carol Steele in action.
To learn more about Aravaipa Farms — including room rates — visit www.aravaipafarms.com. For info about the sale of Steele’s property, e-mail her at carol@aravaipafarms.com.
Chrysa Robertson will host a benefit dinner for Steele on Sunday, September 23. As of press time, no other details were available. Check Chow Bella (www.phxfood.com) for info after September 1, or e-mail ranchopinot@hotmail.com.
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Her last project in the Valley was developing a restaurant at The Farm at South Mountain. "He didn't want a sign," she says of her boss. "I thought, 'That's going to be an interesting proposition.'" But Steele hired her favorite apple-pie baker, designed salads, had 30-pound organic turkeys brought in from Dewey.
And people came to sit under the big trees in a rural setting a few miles from downtown. Steele poured iced tea and listened to doctors and lawyers talk about how much they enjoyed it, and when things fell apart at this gig, she got an idea.
Steele called a real estate agent and said, "I'd like to buy a hunk of country . . . as far away from civilization as possible."
She heard about a fruit farm for sale, including two casitas — one with no roof and another with no floor. The only decent structure on the property was a barn.
She credits Lazaro Cervantes — a local man she met when she first arrived at the farm — with getting her up and running and keeping her going all these years. Every bit of flagstone and every fireplace and rock wall are his doing. And he keeps the tractors running. But the vision is pure Carol Steele. She's totally self-taught, she says, thanks to a giant collection of cookbooks. "When I read a cookbook, I can taste it as I read it."
Carol was 59 when she bought Aravaipa Farms; her father had passed away and her mother was 88. She told her about her idea.
"She says, 'Without a doubt you are certifiably insane,'" Carol recalls. Her mother asked if she ever had run a farm? No. had she ever remodeled anything? No. "'How are you going to get anybody to come there?'"
"I'll figure it out," she told her.
"Mom said, 'I knew your father never should have encouraged you along the way.'"
Carol's mother lived long enough to see Aravaipa Farms become a success.
The picnic basket is empty, iced teas are drained. Steele has been talking for hours. And she's done — literally.
"The end of the story," she says, "is that it is time for me to retire. I'm going to sell it."
In fact, Steele's been talking for months (at least) about selling Aravaipa Farms. And now it's officially on the market. There are a number of options — you could buy the mountain behind the farm or the house Carol's son once lived in or the orchards or the casitas or pretty much the entire property. Steele says she'll keep a spot for herself. But the bed and breakfast, the canning, the dinners — she'll likely be done soon. Times are tight. She can't afford to keep going. And she's getting tired.
No time to dwell on that now; the guests are starting to gather on the porch, looking for wine.
"Do you have a computer?" an older man from Iowa asks Steele.
"I don't touch it," she replies. (She means it; her stepdaughter Sheryl, who lives in Maricopa, fields all e-mails sent to Steele and the farm and reads them aloud to Carol on the phone.)
"Can I touch it?" the man asks. He needs to print a boarding pass. Steele shrugs and motions toward the living room. He disappears, grumbling something about no cell phone service.
Steele wouldn't have it any other way. She does watch television and has a phone, but otherwise keeps it simple. The prominently placed Obama bumper sticker on her pickup truck sends a big hint, she says, but doesn't necessarily prevent dissent around the dinner table.
Tonight, there's a couple celebrating a wedding anniversary, so Steele's prepared their favorite, carrot cake. The meal is simple, as is the wine, but everything flows, including the conversation, and everyone raves over the sauce on the fish.
Carol Steele has been gone from the Valley for years, but in a lot of ways, her influence still is felt. And now that she needs help, her old friends are there.
Steele left Phoenix in the early '90s, just as the local food movement really started to take off. Chrysa Robertson started Rancho Pinot, and a year later, her employee, Chris Bianco, took over his lease, starting his first pizza restaurant. Bianco moved to Phoenix in 1986 and remembers C. Steele & Co., particularly the baskets hanging from the ceiling.
"Someone like Carol was important and continues to be important," he says, adding that both Steele and Robertson have "buttery hearts. In a beautiful way, I'm afraid of her, a little bit," he says of Carol, whom he's gotten to know during vacations at Aravaipa Farms.
