The Kitchen Sink

When John Wick and his wife, Peggy Rathmann, bought their 540-acre ranch in 1998, it was in bad shape. Located in California’s Marin County, a windswept region northwest of San Francisco Bay, the land had been worn down by overgrazing; the grass was gone and the soil was degraded. Neither Wick nor Rathmann knew how to fix it because the couple didn’t have any ranching experience—Wick worked in construction management, and Rathmann wrote children’s classics like 10 Minutes till Bedtime and Good Night, Gorilla.

So Wick