When Steck acquired the property it was used as a cow-calf operation, and the ranch manager lived in a three-bedroom house. There was also another structure, a massive ranch-style home—larger than the 14,000-square-foot house Steck replaced it with—which he guesses Brouillet had initially intended to use as a hotel or guest ranch. “He never really completed the project, though,” Steck explains. “Jean-Claude was a think-big, visionary type of guy.”

Steck, who says he is an environmentalist, was reticent at first to take down that large house. “The biggest decision was, ‘Do you remodel it, or do you scrap it?’” It turned out that it would be much cheaper  to rip the house down and start from scratch, so Steck invited Habitat for Humanity to come and take as much of the house as they could to reuse elsewhere. “We were really conscious of not putting the whole place in the junkyard,” he says.

Meanwhile, he took down all of the property’s fences and removed the cattle. “I wanted the land to repair,” he says. “I wanted to turn the ranch into an environmental jewel.” There are eight miles of horse trails, and there’s also a helipad and tennis court.

Today the flora are restored, with buckwheat turning a vivid red in autumn and poppies and other wildflowers blooming in spring; the ranch abuts the Los Padres National Forest and the Sedgwick Reserve, meaning there’s no possibility for development to encroach. “I wanted to do the right thing by the land,” Steck says. “I think I’ve accomplished that.”

The House
Restoring the land was the first goal. Creating a family compound for his five children was the second.

The completed main house, with its distinctive chimneys and surrounding stonework, is set on the southwest corner of the property.

It has six en suite bedrooms spread across two floors, and in the basement there’s a 10,000-bottle wine cellar and a home theater.

Admittedly the 27-room home is very large. “We didn’t want the rooms to feel cavernous,” Steck says, “so each room has warmth to it,” meaning the house might be a mansion, but the rooms are scaled to feel like a home. There are six working fireplaces, a huge kitchen, a formal dining room, and multiple living areas. The master suite includes two bathrooms, “for you and your spouse. That’s what keeps relationships alive: separate bathrooms.”

The interior is full of small touches—the ceiling beams are reclaimed railroad trestle—and the house is filled with Persian rugs and custom chandeliers.  It was decorated by Amy Weaver, of Weaver Design Group in Marin County. “She was the only person to be on budget,” Steck says. There’s also a guest house across from the horse barn, which comes with three more guest suites, a kitchen, and a living area.

Outside there’s a huge pool, a tiled interior courtyard, and a garden designed exclusively with native flora.