🎙️🪨 Episode 23 — Emily Cody | Remembering John Cody, THE Artist of the Valley 🌲
Chopping It Up with Keith Saarloos · Released November 29, 2025 · Santa Ynez Valley, California
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About this conversation
This week on Chopping It Up, Keith sits down with mason and maker Emily Cody to remember her father, legendary sculptor and back-country builder John Cody — the man Keith calls “the Da Vinci of the Santa Ynez Valley.”
Emily walks us through John’s wild arc: a dyslexic kid nicknamed Jungle Jack building cabins in the woods, a young sculptor carving serpentine in Solvang galleries, and the moment he hiked up Manzana Creek, found a meadow that felt like heaven, and decided to hand-build an off-grid stone home 37 miles from the flagpole in Los Olivos. We hear about the ocean-buoy hot tub cauldron, the hand-dug 50-foot well that still pumps today, and the way he used nothing but native rock, scrap, grit, and patience to turn wilderness into a living work of art.
Emily shares the personal side, too — what it was like to be raised by a man who could turn a pile of stone into a crab, a train barbecue, or a life-size triceratops, and who quietly mentored half the Valley. From the rebuilt Hollister wall in Los Olivos, to headstones at Ballard Cemetery, to public pieces in Santa Maria and beyond, John’s fingerprints are everywhere…and now Emily is carrying that torch with Manzana Masonry, keeping his standard of real stone, real work, and no shortcuts.
If you’ve ever driven past a Cody wall, soaked in his mountain magic, or just wondered what it looks like when someone refuses to live by anyone else’s rules, this episode is a love letter to a father, a family, and a Valley — and a reminder that our job now is to keep their stories, and their work, alive.
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Saarloos + Sons archive host Keith Saarloos. Context photograph; not a portrait of the guest or a photograph of this recording.
