By Roger Naylor
Ian Beger, Farm Director at Castle Hot Springs, bends down in the culinary garden and gently tugs a lacy thatch of greenery. Out pops a small mokum carrot still streaked with loamy dark soil. He wipes it clean and offers it to a guest. The first bite is a revelation. A soft crunch delivers a sweet vivid flavor, a shock of pure carrot-ness. It’s the kind of experience that would make Bugs Bunny swoon.
A few hours later, sitting at a table on the patio of Harvest, about 30 yards from that carrot patch, diners can enjoy the familiar sweetness of the sultry little mokum in a salad. Or a soup. Or a half-dozen other dishes the chef might concoct that evening. It’s possible to pick out the spicy seedpod of the rattail radish also sampled in the garden. Or the licorice notes of the bronze fennel. All the ingredients suddenly spring to life. Not only are guests savoring a remarkable dish, they’re distinguishing flavor profiles of its many components. At Castle Hot Springs, farm-to-table takes on a whole new meaning since the table is already at the farm.
“We are passionate about what we do. That comes across, I believe,” says Beger. “People have lost sight of where their food comes from. We are able to show the guests what we grow and how we grow it, so they can enjoy it on their plate later even that much more.”
Of all the activities offered at Castle Hot Springs, Farm Tours consistently rank among the most popular. With health and wellness being top of the mind these days, people are eager once again to reconnect to the land around them. The Farm Tours reveal each step of the process from planting to harvest for the more than 150 crops that are always growing here in the middle of the desert.
On the tour, Beger speaks in-depth about the look and taste of different items and how exactly they may be utilized in the kitchen. That’s due to his close relationship with the chefs at Castle Hot Springs—they work together choosing varietals and creating recipes. It becomes a learning process discovering which plants thrive while fine-tuning a list of ultra-fresh ingredients.
Beger moves from row to row, plucking samples and providing details of everything growing in the garden. Blue spice basil is a sweet, creamy clove-like basil used in the welcome tea served at check-in. It is also popular in ice cream, cocktails, and a variety of dishes with an almost bubblegum like flavor. A prolific grower in the resort garden, blue spice basil has become a featured staple.
Glacier lettuce is an edible succulent that Beger has grown in other locations. It adds zest and texture to several dishes, yet it tastes different in the resort’s garden—salty, limey, and velvety on the tongue—as a result of being irrigated with the mineral-rich natural spring water. It can’t be frozen, which limits transportation, so the small-leafed lettuce remains very much a local delicacy.
Yet tomatoes are the stars of the Castle Hot Springs garden, a personal passion of Beger’s. “I’ve been growing tomatoes now for 11 years and selecting the best tasting ones that we can find. The spring water adds great flavor and our management does, too. We always keep it a little experimental while creating a variety of staples. We strive to give people the best tomato they have ever had in their life.”
The resort dedicates an entire greenhouse to tomatoes, a jungle of vines laden with fruit in as many different colors as a flower garden. All the tomatoes are grown via the high-wire technique, in which plants grow vertically supported by tall wire trellises. The system produces an enormous amount of tomatoes in a small space but also requires a lot of labor-intensive maintenance. Pollination, for example, is done by gentle tapping the flowers by hand.
There are two components to the dining experience at Castle Hot Springs: flavor and sustainability. While the resort has quickly gained a reputation for serving an array of delicious meals, from casual breakfasts and lunches to exquisite five-course dinners, they only do so while following a truly sustainable path. It’s a core tenant of their mission statement, which states: “The goal of the farm is to provide the resort and guests with the highest quality fruits and vegetables while acting as good stewards of the soil and surrounding environment.”
Led by Beger, Castle Hot Springs takes sustainability to the next level by practicing regenerative agriculture. Using farming systems designed to work in harmony with nature, regenerative agriculture enhances ecosystem biodiversity, improves the water cycle, and produces nutrient-rich foods. It all revolves around rebuilding the soil so that it is rich with organic matter. Because healthy soil has the ability to pull carbon from the air and store it in the soil, this could not just slow global warming, but actually reverse it.
“It is, I believe, the only way to move forward in a truly sustainable fashion,” says Beger. “If we can regenerate soil, regenerate plant health, regenerate ecosystem health, then we can regenerate human health and this planet’s health.”