8 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY OCTOBER 16-22, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com 831 In the recent era of California wildfires, 2020 registers widely. Caught in the crosshairs of one of these fires was Jennifer Phillips’ and Rob Officer’s ranch in Carmel Valley, which they purchased a few years prior with their family. Only two of their 40 beehives survived, the beginnings of a small farm burnt down, along with 250 live and blue oak trees. In the years since, the couple has worked to revive their property and make something of the burned oaks— both protected species in California and notoriously challenging woods to work with. “After the fire, we started selling firewood,” Officer says. “That kind of exposed me to what was inside these trees. I was so captivated by the grain and the structure and the color, and then it was like, I can’t wait to start cutting these into slabs and then making something out of them.” The Valley Sawyer, their custom furniture business, officially opened six months ago. Officer explains that live oak is extremely hard wood that loves to twist in unique ways that give it a “psychedelic” grain pattern, while blue oak is similarly dense, with a complex grain structure difficult to manipulate. Their tendency to warp makes them less common choices for furniture, but for Officer and Phillips, it presents a unique opportunity to craft pieces with its own character and story. In the center of their workspace in the Carmel Valley hills, Officer points to a large piece of blue oak as an example of what can be done with more unruly slabs. The board, over three inches thick, has just finished drying for over three years, unique in its natural curve which Officer saw as resembling a river. Eventually, they’ll cut through the center, filling the channel with epoxy to give the illusion of water running through the contours of the wood. “When I cut slabs, I can see the piece that I want to make out of it,” he says. “It takes a lot of patience to wait three or four years to make the piece that I saw years ago.” For every inch of thickness, one year is needed to dry out the wood—a general rule of thumb, Officer says. The wood is stacked and separated with wooden spacers to allow for airflow, with weight applied on top to keep the slabs from twisting and turning. Then they’re packed into a solar kiln that, in the summer time, can heat up to 130 degrees. Once the moisture in the wood has been reduced to 8-10 percent, the woodworking can begin. Prior to the 2020 fires, Officer and Phillips had some—though limited— woodworking experience. They were both craftspeople in their own right: Officer had worked as a goldsmith for more than 20 years and dabbled in carpentry, while Phillips grew up around woodworking with her father, a journeyman carpenter, though her passions were in dance and teaching yoga. While waiting for the oaks to dry, they got to work converting part of their property into a vineyard using organic, regenerative and dry farming methods. They’ve brought back beehives—now with nine in total— and started building owl boxes as an eco-friendly form of rodent control after losing about 800 vines to gophers. “As far as working with wood goes, I think it comes pretty naturally,” Phillips says. “But we’re just learning as we go.” Their owl box business, The Valley Owl, took off after a Facebook post went viral, and has since expanded to include individual handmade boxes with custom colors and solar-powered cameras for watching the owls nest. They currently have a few dozen orders, from farms and vineyards to local residents simply curious to see owls on their property. And their table business has followed a similar suit. They’ve begun building tables for weddings as well as the live-edge bar area in Tira Nanza, a new tasting room in Carmel. “We’ve been trying to figure out how we can be artists and survive here,” Officer says. “Once we found this avenue with the wood and building furniture, it finally feels like something where we can start to offer something that feels meaningful to us, a representation of the place, but also a way to generate a livable income.” The Valley Sawyer. (831) 659-5659, thevalleysawyer. com. New Life Following the Carmel Fire, Jennifer Phillips and Rob Officer transform burned snags left behind into works of art. By Katie Rodriguez “I was so captivated by the grain and the structure.” TALES FROM THE AREA CODE DANIEL DREIFUSS Jennifer Phillips and Rob Officer must be patient before they can get to work—the wood takes years to dry. “It’s a time-consuming process,” Officer says. “We have piles of slabs in different places on the property that are at different stages of the process.” Join us for an informative update from the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center. From the bottom of the ocean to the stars and a new generator too! Find out what's new with FNMOC. Presented by the City of Monterey, the Monterey Bay Defense Alliance, and the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce. GETTICKETS! PRESENTED BY FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM FERRANTE’S AT MONTEREY MARRIOTT TICKETS: $45/MEMBERS • $65/NON-MEMBERS • INCLUDES BREAKFAST QUARTERLY BUSINESS INSIGHTS BREAKFAST Join us for an informative presentation titled “California Leads the Nation in Women-Owned Businesses: Insights, Impact, and Opportunities for Monterey County” Held duringNational Women in Business Week, this program is presented by Katherine Aguilar Perez, Co-Creator of the Altadena Rapid ADU Deployment Project and Associate Adjunct Professor at USC.
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