'In Ghost Time,' Susan Preston's magnum opus

A season of madness, following a lifetime of work - the compelling creation of In Ghost Time, The Art and Stories of Susan Preston.

Somewhere buried deep in my photo files is a picture of Susan Preston riding a pig through the vineyards. Off to the side, Lou, Geoffrey, a bottle of rosé and a plate of charcuterie. Off to the other the gypsy wagon they use to house their chickens at night. Said chickens, no doubt confused by the pig and the lady riding it, are running for their life.

Susan is and always has been madcap minded; hers is a forthright engagement with life that captivates, charms and can unnerve those who do not know her curiosity of all things human comes from a deep well of compassion. Thousands upon thousands have come to love and respect the iconic Preston Vineyards - the public face of Lou and Susan Preston who together have built one of the most remarkable farming and wine stories in California. Far less is know about Susan and her journey as a painter and a free verse poet.

That is until now. With the publication of In Ghost Time we have a worthy monograph to truly celebrate Susan Preston’s painting life, encompass her brilliant writings, dip into her paradoxical sketches and journals, cast a bemused eye at her illustrated ‘historical’ rogues gallery of ‘Criminals I have loved.’

On Sept 14, from 3-5 Barndiva will proudly host A Book Launch Party for In Ghost Time: The Art and Stories of Susan Preston.. Susan will sign books, we will be pouring Preston wine and serving Hors d’oeuvres from the summer garden, and a reading by the author will commence beneath the mullberries at 4pm

The community is invited to attend this complimentary event courtesy of Preston Farm and Vineyards

I first laid eyes on Susan Preston the day we opened Barndiva, over two decades ago. The crown jewel of opening day was a multi-discipline art exhibit I had put together to help define what my family meant by our name, barndiva. We were about to take our place in the amazing Sonoma food and wine shed and could think of no better way to showcase the farmers, chefs and makers we admired and hoped to get to know and serve - those singular individuals that consistently hit the high notes in their craft or art. The show invited a select group of extraordinary Sonoma county ‘makers’ – across the disciplines of bread, chocolate, wine, cured meats, balsamic apple cider vinegar, olive oil, honey, cheese, fruit preserves…. to exhibit . Each was paired with an artist tasked with ‘intrepreting’ their edible art. Lou was invited to exhibit a loaf of his wood fired bread. His wife Susan, reputed to be the artist in the family, was chosen to intrepret his craft, their daughter Maggie to document it.

I’d never met Susan Preston before opening day but her reputation preceeded her - most of the other artists seemed in awe of her, but none seemed to know her. She’d never answered my emails, did not attend any group meeting with the other artists, in fact an hour before the opening party was about to begin, was a no-show.

With ten minutes to go, crowds lined up at the front gates, excited to see what all the fuss had been about during our two year build, a classically beautiful sandy blond women of moderate height and an off kilter swagger strode in through the main door,  garments floating around her. Carrying a full bag of flour on her shoulder, in a few stides she proceeded to bend, slash and pour the entire sack onto the new stone floor, just below the plinth where Lou’s ‘art,’ his perfect heritage grained loaf, sat beneath a spotlight. Flour dust glinted in the air around her for a moment, but it had not even settled before she turned, strode back to the front door, and returned with a faded blue chair, spindle backed, seat worn from decades of use. This she gently - but purposely -placed down into the flour. The feet landed silently, but four columns of flour rose in a poof .

Standing a few feet away, arms crossed, three things occurred to me in the moment:

1. Susan Preston had brought to my opening a performance piece, beside which everything else being exhibited - lovely as it all was - instantly felt stagnant;

2. Her ‘blue chair in flour’ didn’t just perfectly capture Lou’s art, it fully caught the zietghist of the exhibit and spoke eloquently of the direction we hoped to take Barndiva, our new venture, our journey from that day forward.

3. I needed to know this woman. (there was a fourth, namely how the hell would we clean up all the flour people immediately started tracking through the room, with just a few hours before our first dinner service, but, you know, art?)

One of the benefits of life at any age is having resolute friendships. I have been blessed with hers for over two decades now, as we continue trying to navigate some of life’s most daunting questions : How do we weigh if we’ve lived a full life ?  Is just being a good citizen enough? What is the best course toward aging gracefully, gaining not losing one’s joy at just being alive? Few of us are immune to being influenced by outside forces - family, choice of a partner, children, friends, neighbors…. Then there’s the actions of the city-state which melds into whats happening and affecting us in the world. And all the while nature prods and circles, a warning, and a constant muse.

Susan Preston is fearless with the direction she lets her mind go. She can be shy, but press her and she’s a brutally honest conversationalist who speaks her mind, often presciently so. She can be flirty, but worries more than she should about what people think. She is, and this alongside her creativity is what I love most about her, insatiably curious.

Despite all her skill sets, honed over a lifetime, which included juggling all of the forces mentioned in the paragraph above, she took quite a beating around the middle of the pandemic when she encountered a perfect physical and psychological storm that jumbled her signposts and signals. Two knee surgeries, a hip replacement, the wrong medications to combat pain, the tremendous pressure of covid on her family, and the lives of her farm and vineyard community, all coalesced and came to bear down upon her at once. We don’t like to think or talk about the covid year much anymore, for good reason. Suffice to say it was an impossible time to get good medical care on the fly, safely, much less the testing and seeing professionals in person that could put the complicated pieces of most illnessess - susan’s included here -together.

It was during this trying time the notion of this book was born. Two years passed, with months spent obsessing over which canvasas to include, which writings, how to present her rogues gallery of beloved ‘criminals.’ Slowly, she regained her health. She started painting again.

That art in effect saved Susan Preston from a brief but terrifying period in her life is only something we can talk about now. Lou, her daughters Maggie and Francesca, Marcia and I never stopped marveling at her courage and fierceness; her dedication to put forth a truly unique exploration of what its like to live one’s life fully, even when you slip your moorings. Further, how her explorations of paint, brown paper, dirt, rabbit skin glue, olive oil, charcoal, black tea, river water, and word after haunting word enabled her to come back from whatever brink she was tottering on. Back to realizing there was more she wanted to paint. To get down on paper. To give - which she had done in the form of this remarkable book - to the world. There are several love stories that wait to be discovered In Ghost Time, not least Susan’s for the old Gold Coast mining towns where she grew up and ran wild, and the Dry Creek Valley and the town of Healdsburg where she and Lou have lived and parented and farmed, all the while giving so much to the community.

But what is also captured between the pages of In Ghost TIme- the reason you must have a copy laying around - is something we all need in abundance right now: a belief rendered in line, color, and words- that speaks to the ineffable goodness, through joy, despite pain, that lives in the human spirit when you are brave enough to allow it to come out.

Buy the book. You won’t be sorry.

We hope to see you at the party!

above: For Pina Bausch/ Full Stop, Caron paper, brown paper bag, acrylic, ink, oil pastel, black tea, adhesive glue |Upward Tears Paper backing, brown paper bag ink, acrylic, Conté crayon gouache, adhesive glue, letter stamps, rubber mats | Conversations Worth Having Brown paper bag, acrylic, carbon paper, olive oil, pastel, adhesive glue

Mid-Summer delights

Mid-August and while we are well aware the living ain’t always easy for much of the world, truth be told our cocktails, salads, cold soups and fruity desserts are exploding with summer’s juices and gorgeous life affirming color in our little corner of the world. Dining in the gardens is always wonderful to see - especially for families with children and couples with dogs.

Early in the evening more than half our guests still opt for Studio dining - cool tunes, air con, flooded with farm florals - but as the sun drops the best place in Barndivaland for a drink and a shared snack is on one of of the couches in the garden next to the edible flower beds we grow for the bar program, for scent, and guest delight.

We are a casual fine dining restaurant with the emphasis on fine dining. This means we truly prefer guests reserve for dinner so we come to every service on point. We welcome walk-ins for dinner - you just risk a wait without a reservation. The bar fills up nightly - and have also designated two Jordy Morgan sculptural hi-tops for drinkers. Even when the dining room is rocking we can manage shared plates - Our house made white bean hummus with garden crudites and a fresh green herby citrus oil, mounds of onion baji crunchy with salt and served with a coriander and mint chutney, and our notorious goat cheese croquettes- a barndiva favorite since the day we opened can always be ordered alongside a cocktail or a glass of wine.

The whole point of our move back to the Studio was to be able to accommodate this style of dining, inside and out; being able to offer dinner parties to larger groups; playing our B&W silent films on the barn wall, sharing our playlists, lighting the candles. Celebrating every season in our inimitable style and- for you as well as for us - just having a bit of fun enjoying a night out in Healdsburg.

By the time you read this the farm figs served the past few weeks on the heirloom tomato salad will be gone -they are fragile, and their season short. But tomatoes this year? Not to be believed. And Erik’s and David’s whipped mozzarella salad with fresh basil and crunchy croutons is the perfect carrier for all that summer tomato goodness. Barndiva farm fruits up next: comice and asian pears.

Brief too will be the fresh corn season and we celebrate it with a wonderful Erik Anderson chilled golden corn soup. The bowl arrives with a dollop of glorious Jimmy Nardello pepper jam made with a hint of sherry vinegar. The soup is poured table-side, and you just give it a stir -the better to re-discover the piquant ‘jam’ with every velvety spoonful. This is a dish that truly resonates with the season. It is topped with a tangle of crisped corn silk and a few petals of sweet garden thyme.

As for sweet endings: we’ve known Simon Mendoza since he was a boy. His father, Abel is one of Barndiva’s most valued chefs who has been with us for many years. Abel (and for a time his talented wife) have navigated every stage of our journey, while the kid, it turns out, was watching and if not taking notes, taking note of the parts that intrigued him. Turns out he has the talent and the chops for pastry. Simon is now turning out some of the best sorbets and ice creams in town - which I know is saying a lot. He’s baking as well: we were dreaming of a galette this summer and Voila, Simon has delivered. It’s a peach galette for now, soon to shift into pears and apples as they ripen here at the farm. His sorbets this week: raspberry, mandarin, mango. Ice Cream flavors will come and go with the season, except for vanilla which is sublime. Leave room for desert and celebrate young talent! Eat the view!

Joanna Macy: in deep time, and deep thanks

Honoring Joanna Macy. Finding Meaning Beyond the Social Media Noise

A few months back we engaged a lovely social media consultant hoping to make peace with our mixed feelings - call it what it is, angst- around our ‘presence’ in the online world. On the one hand we love the madly talented creators, makers, gardeners, farmers, musicians we have ‘discovered’ all over the world through social media. There are hopeful and truly exciting things happening in unexpected places. And we certainly appreciate social forums that enable us to tout our food and drink programs, crow about our beautiful weddings, host collaborative events that foster connection. But we’re conflicted (and it seems, we’re all being told, addicted?) that an insatiable search for stories, beauty, delight, has devolved into empathy killer thrills. The tsunami of truly dreadful things happening in the world that SM bombardes us with non-stop is increasingly challenging the way we feel about social media.

With few exceptions almost everything coming into our feeds uninvited seemingly to offer a’connected life’ of ‘upgraded pleasures’ is little more than a sales pitch. The notion we can scroll for pleasure or discovery when every click to ‘engage’ has this imperative at its core makes it near impossible to ‘engage’ online in a meaningful way.

That line between ‘want to share’ and ‘need to share’ has always been a hard one for us - hence the need for a SM guru. Alongside using instagram and the blog to reach an audience who might want to come drink or dine or celebrate a precious moment in their lives with us - we are a business after all - we’d also like to use social media to communicate in a genuine way to tell the challenging, yet hopeful things that drive our days in Healdsburg and farm life on the ridge in Philo.

When I read that that a beloved mentor, Joanna Macy, had gone into hospice at home and would soon be leaving the world, I posted the images you see above. They are part of a series I’ve been playing around with thinking about “The Sacred Ordinary,” a Macy canon with many threads that ran through Joanna’s life fueled by her “wild love of the world.” Her “feel how your breathing makes more space around you” is one of the best mantras you’ll ever use to crack open the door to seeing the world whole - breathing into it - ‘living the questions’ as Rilke originally framed it, bathed in each moment. “Those of us who are alive now and feel called to love our world, to be grateful for it,” Joanna wrote, “to teach ourselves how to see beauty, how to treasure it, how to celebrate, how if it must disappear, if there’s dying, how to be grateful,” has by now flowered in so many cultlivated gardens, and as wild grass in so many fields.

Not surprisingly, there was little ‘engagement’ with the reel and I was more than fine with that - a numbers game cannot be our expectation if we wish to control our own narrative, revel in its uniqueness, celebrate nuance, peek into what makes our endeavors - that would include barndiva - meaningful. We posted those few images simply to acknowledge her life and imminent passing - she died July 19th - not to drive traffic. To speak to her last journey on earth with the hope of stirring curiosity in her life’s work. To offer, as we do here in our small way, connections that are helping us navigate the world we wish to build together. This would have delighted her.

Joanna Macy was many things: a Buddist scholar, a gimlet eyed environmental activist, a lifelong teacher who created interactive workshops through the foundation she helped build around “The Work that Reconnects.” She helped millions embrace the grief and fear we are exeriencing in the face of environmental and climate catastrophe with a belief that this struggle is endemic to life, and, crucially, that it can and should be born and worn with honor. Of all her many accomplishments, her inspired translations of the poetry and writings of Ranier Maria Rilke - both Book of Hours and Letter to a Young Poet with her lifelong friend Anita Barrows has changed so many lives, including my own, for the better.

Like Mary Oliver, Joanna Macy had the gift of infusing the pathos of language with the vibrancy of hope, born from a deep respect for the natural world. Give a listen to any one of the several conversations she had with the incomprable Krista Tippett in On Being, or Joanna and Anita reciting Rilke poems on Emergence Magazine Podcast. Prepare to be amazed, inspired, soothed.

Eulogies will keep coming for her but I doubt any will touch me as profoundly as Rebecca Solnits “In Honor of Joanna Macy, 1929-2025, which she published in her fierce and essential Ghost hosted newsletter “Meditations in an Emergency.” Solnit was wandering the great forests of British Columbia when she heard the news about Joanna’s death; she opens this prescient, beautiful essay with a description of Nurse Logs, the fallen decaying logs ‘the trees from which trees are grown.” As it happened, Solnit’s piece arrived in my inbox after days of wandering through the broken forests that surround the farm - a practice I have for over 40 years as a way of trying to come to terms with their wounded grandeur, parse what role they are supposed to play in my life. Our commitment to manage our heritage orchards has always been a clear directive to honor the legacy of care which preceded us; our floral program is inspired by sheer passion alongside a desire to curate an experience at barndiva with beauty at it’s core. But the trees in the forest on our upper ridge have always presented a conundrum. Like most of the forests in Anderson Valley- in Northern California - they have been relentlessly harvested for profit for over a century, yet here they still are, haunted yet tenacious. Solnit’s soilquoty on nurse logs provided a fresh way of seeing them.

In the piece Solnit quotes Macy : “It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells. Anxieties and doubts can be healthy and creative, not only for the person, but for the society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality.”

Our social media consultant didn’t berate us for our Macy post, though it no doubt confirmed the weakness in our very laid back social media presence that is certainly not helping us ‘grow’ the business, which is what she was engaged to help us do. Her advice, when it eventually came, was not a surprise: “ Incredible content! 20 years hosting extrarodinary weddings in the center of Healdsburg, a restaurant ride that has included numerous wine and food awards, a Michelin star, real community engagement …all the pieces are here!” before concluding, “sporatic posting, not enough ‘call to actions,’ not enough visual ‘consistency.” She gave us some tools, but at the heart of her advice was the Social Media mantra you can’t escape: post all the time if you seek any traction, any commerce, any significant engagement.”

Maybe. We did come up with the three ‘frames’ you see above in which to clarify future content so folks can see at first glance which hat we’re wearing at any given moment - the better to make a decision to come to dine, or book a wedding, join a community forum, or check out what we are growing and harvesting in Philo.

Perhaps, to make the most of them, social media platforms can be viewed as compost staging areas, where- if we choose wisely- organic matter will break down into the nutrients from which we can grow original approaches to what ails us, what tempts us, what in the end allows us to land on an evolving definition of what it really means to truly engage.

A Barndiva Wedding where East Coast elegance meets Wine Country ease

When the venue whispers the dress code

The art of showing up to a beautiful wedding and enhancing the celebration with your presence can be one of life’s joys, though more often than not it’s also a challenge. And while we don’t actually know if a subtle dress code was ever suggested for Kate and Pearson’s glorious wedding in the Barndiva Gardens on June 7th, what was abundantly clear from the moment guests began to gather was a shared and ebullient understanding of them as a couple.

Women arrived in luxurious, flowing dresses, many with halter tops and peek-a-boo slits, bare shoulders catching the light as it filtered through the arched green canopies; gentlemen proffered a relaxed elegance of sockless loafers and open collars, a few carefully chosen ties, softly structured linen suits in shades of soft blues, grays, cream. Classically demure yet artfully seductive, the brides wedding dress perfectly informed the day’s aesthetic with its flowing semi-sheer, beautifully sewn panel’s of silk moiré that revealed a slimmer outline in shadows of the satin sheath below.

For us Kate and Pearson’s wedding was the perfect expression of what happens when couples with great taste allow their surroundings to inspire their wedding day. Zack Schomp’s wonderful photographs don’t just capture a tableau of stunning attire but a glorious summer day alive with beautiful jewel tones, extraordinary light, visible joy.

Kate & Pearson sealing the moment with a kiss in the Barndiva Gardens, their parents in the front row.

Every corner of Barndiva offers a romantic backdrop, every detail is curated to honor both the heritage of wine country and the beauty of Sonoma County. What we’ve discovered in our two decades hosting Healdsburg’s most memorable weddings is that when the wedding couple chooses colors and a textural palette that invites the guests to participate, those that ‘bring it’ for love of the couple they’ve come to honor don’t just attend a wedding here - they become an integral part of the beauty and art of celebration.

The depth of detail Kate planned for her wedding reflected the inherent beauty of place and space - perfectly captured in the florals she choose for her bridal bouquet and the manner in which Clementina Florals dressed the antique gates, our ‘alter’ by the wild grass verge. The table arrangements in the Studio Barndiva Gardens spilled over with native and natural flowers and grasses, including scabiosa, love in a mist, delphinium, bachelors buttons, wild mustard, fennel, and ammi (aka Queen’s Anns lace). With just a touch of yellow, all florals extended the cream and pale blues of the color pallet, drawing with elegance and ease from the surrounding landscape.

Barndiva Event Director Susan Bischoff worked closely with the excellent wedding planners from Kismet Events. Susan@barndiva.com

A quiet moment in The Hotel Healdsburg, where the wedding party stayed and prepared for the day ahead. One of the joys of a wedding at Barndiva is the promenade through the Plaza to the ceremony Gardens. We are so grateful the larger community of Healdsburg embraces family celebrations.

Healdsburg: Farm to Table, Garden to Glass

Field Notes: Spring farm to table dining Sonoma County

Spring is a time of fleeting beauty, nowhere more so than in our Healdsburg farm to table dining world when we only have a small window to make the most of what we dig out of the ground at barndiva farm in Philo and transform in unique wine country culinary experiences for guests dining in Studio Barndiva, our downtown restaurant in Healdsburg. The arrival of garlic scapes, wild ramps, and a bounty of edible spring flowers from our gardens showed up all of May in cocktails, new dishes and stunning floral arrangements. As we head into summer, the local farm to table bounty will keep coming with locally sourced ingredients from Sonoma.

Studio Barndiva is one of the few Healdsburg restaurants with garden dining where we can start you off on the couches with a drink before moving you to a dining table outside or shift you inside to the art filled gallery space. We strive to be as flexible as the weather. Our gardens are dog and family friendly. If a cool studio vibe is what you hanker after, please reserve, as walk-in spaces are limited.

Jumbo Asparagus with morels and ramp vinaigrette; Iris, roses, mock orange and cherry branches from the farm’s floral gardens; spring salad

With the profusion of spring and early summer florals coming down from the farm, our bartenders Danny and Buck are having a (literal) field day crafting floral, NA and spirited cocktails that resonate with the seasons’ bright notes. Just around the corner, wine director Emily Carlson will present The Local Pour, just a little bit more from some of her favorite Sonoma County producers. Stay tuned.

Stop. And smell the roses…

Wine Country Photo Album - Barndiva Pink Party Healdsburg

Strange as it may seem something magical happens at the Pink Party every year. It’s not just the wine, though it delights in shades of Rosé, bouquet and flavor, a harbinger of the summer to come. It’s not just the gardens on a sunny day in spring, festooned with peonies, roses, lilacs, snowballs, azaleas, not the vibrant flavors of the food, not even the curiously wonderful thing that everyone around you is wearing some shade of pink - that there are so many shades of pink! . The desire to just stop worrying about all there is to worry about and just have fun - smile and laugh for a few hours with other like minded humans - just never gets old, and when you give over to it, never fails to lift the heart. Thank you to everyone who joined us in the Barndiva Gardens on May 4th. It was a beautiful lift into the season. We loved having you all here!

Barndiva’s Geoffrey Hales and Wine Director Emily Carlson

Emily Carlson, Barndiva's Wine Director, embodies a passion that extends well beyond curating an exquisite selection of wines from the Sonoma and Mendocino winesheds for our annual collaborative wine events. Her commitment to building community comes from cultivating meaningful relationships with local producers, enhancing our wine list through fostering a sustainable, inclusive environment that celebrates the artistry of winemaking. Her commitment to community is also reflected in her tireless support for regenerative farming practices and the promotion of women winemakers.

Our heartfelt gratitude to the wineries and winemakers who generously donated bottles of the Rosé for a multiple case raffle in support of Corazón Healdsburg.

Thank you for your commitment to Healdsburg and Sonoma County, and for sharing your beautiful Rosé with us..

If you’ve been to a Barndiva event or dined with us in the Studio, you know Florals are a big part of our story. We grow them at our farm in Philo and we support local regenerative flower farmers throughout the year in our food, cocktail and event programs.

The talent behind both our farm program and the extraordinary arrangements at The Pink Party, Féte Blanc and The Sparkle Party is one Misha Vega, aka @philo.flora.flowers. A consummate plantswoman (sold out at her plant sale this spring in Boonville) Misha also sources and designs gorgeous wedding and private party floral installations, many of them here at Barndiva. She can be reached at Misha.vega@gmail.com.

Just a little reminder….

And last but never least, Chef David Morales and his dedicated kitchen and service teams delighted guests with an array of exquisite bites at the Pink Party. We take immense pride in the culinary creations they bring to our weddings, private events, and the Studio Barndiva restaurant seasonal menus. See you in the Studio!

Celebrating the Best Moments of 2024

We started the year with a pretty heavy lift: moving our dining from Barndiva, where we had held court for the past 20 years (the last three with a Michelin Star), into the Studio space - aka Studio Barndiva - next door. Our hope was that a move away from a pricy prix fixe would enable us to return to what we love most about our particular brand of hospitality: a comfortable approach to inspired seasonality alongside community focused and expanded private eventing. The risks are formidable across the restaurant world right now, increasingly so if you are (small) family owned and operated, but we’ve had 20 years to learn that NOT exploring new ways to deliver what we are passionate about goes against our DNA. With a more accessible à la carte menu, with Chef David Morales at the helm, we were able to welcome back so many neighborhood friends in 2024 while offering our coveted barndiva space for indoor cocktails parties, cocktail classes, community forums.

We are greatly thankful to our local constituency for their support. We greatly appreciate as well all the recommendations we received from local businesses, our favorite hoteliers, and best of all, always, word of mouth.

Our hope for the coming year is to continue to up our game in our beautiful rooms and gardens, further enabling the talent we are blessed to have both BOH and FOH.

Wherever your journey takes you in 2025, we hope you find what you are looking for, with surprises along the way that delight and engage you. We hope you keep in touch.

For us - Jil, Geoffrey, Lukka- we hope to continue our journey in Healdsburg seeking satisfaction that has the bandwidth to explore, create, excel, with continual curiosity, building toward a definition of joy in all the things that matter most to us as we celebrate the art and craft of food and wine, the spirit and life style of wine country.

Here is our (very) short list of stand-out 2024 Moments - and a peek at the wonderful Humans that made them possible.

love.

Yes, it takes a village to design, plan, minutely schedule, then pull off a great, memorable wedding. Everyone involved has to bring it, starting with the couple who entrusts us to hear their vision and be forthright and creative about how to achieve it. Then, every single participant - whether working in our kitchens and on our event teams, or outsourced, sometimes at Barndiva for the first time has to embrace how precious time becomes: every moment of shifting light, circumstances, emotions, can affect the outcome. It all goes by in a flash - and while its pretty hard to take a bad picture here - we never forget we are just the frame, not the subject. We know families will pour over, and want to relive, every moment for years to come. So here’s to the talent we’ve seen behind the cameras this year, to the planners, the stylists, the floral designers, the musicians, the hard working rental agencies (a silent army you never see coming or going.)

Here’s to the couples who choose to share one of the most important days of their lives with us.

This is the first year Susan Bischoff has led our special event team with Jason, and she excelled. To the entire event team … Bravo.

Cocktail Class.

Scott Beattie’s legendary talents are matched by genuine love for sharing all he knows about the alchemy of plants, flowers, and both spirited and non-spirited elixirs. They were all on display this year as he was able to expand private cocktail classes into Barndiva through the year (previously they had been weather contingent). He also offered, for the first time, pick-up classes. We’ve now met fabulous groups of families, businesses, wedding adjacent, and hotel appreciations for staff with our Cocktail (equally N/A) Classes in 2024. Encore.

women who inspire.

Ok one of the fabulous creatures above is not officially a woman yet, and one lives Down Under where she’s inspiring generations of young minds through her prodigious output of artistically significant and culturally relevant children’s books - but what we’re celebrating here is human passion of a female variety that is not location dependent. They brought what we needed most this year: intelligence, curiosity, and bravery for embracing with agency the world as it is, and as it could be.

I would like to thank my partners in Conversations Worth Having - Dawnelise Rosen, Amber McInnis, Susan Preston and Zem Joaquin of Near Future Network - who found time in their incredibly busy lives to help create a series around the future of sustainability that is achievable.

Our Wine Director Emily Carlson brought to bear her special passion for education and support of Women in Wine in 2024 - with Bâtonnage we hosted a Women in Wine symposium, with Alice Sutro of Sutrowine she helped launch ‘Snatch that wine list’ (aka tips for talking to somms) to empower women ordering wine in restaurants. And yes, the prevalence of women wine makers at The Pink Party and Fête Blanc - and on our wine lists in the restaurant - was not an accident. Emily is a woman with a mission we support.

Across all our public events we derived great joy and energy from seeing women in such numbers enjoying the company of other women’s accomplishments.

@sommelierforthepeople ; @sutrowines ; @susienotserp ; @franelessac ; @.am.ber.ini ; @deappletree ; @philo.flora.flowers; @batonnageforum; @alexsarovich

Conversations. Very Worth Having.

Our mission to explore and share ways we can all live more lightly on the ground brought to Healdsburg strategic innovators that were a joy to get to know this year. To celebrate their ideas and accomplishments (thus far) working to positively offset the profound affect climate change is having on all our lives.

We promise a return of CWH in early 2025. Stay tuned!

@gaeastar_ ; @swaythefuture ; @nearfuturesummit ; @cruzfoam; @biomimicryinstitute

@variant3d ; @apparelimpactinstitute ; @nearfuturenetwork ; @marcizaroff ; @Maya.eshom ; @orrickcareers; @farmpreneurs_ ; @earthseed_farm ; @ecofashion.corp ; @am.ber.ini; @littlesainthealdsburg ; @scottbeattiecocktails; @gaeastar_; @hotelhealdsburg ; @flyinggoatcoffee ; @swaythefuture

Fêtes, mon amour.

Maybe it was (finally? hopefully?) the end of Covid affecting our group social lives, maybe it’s ‘just’ these troubling times, but we witnessed a palpable desire to gather again as community in 2024. There was also a shift in the way we came back to acknowledging and celebrating the unique joys living and working in this magnificent wine shed. We loved that folks gathered for our three big wine Fêtes mad happy to be here (see previous blog for the third, winter’s ‘Sparkle Party’). Hug, Laugh, Sip, Munch, Talk, Repete. Even some dancing with abandon.

To all the wineries who participated - we love you guys. For many our wine parties are a yearly tradition, but they are also an introduction to some of our hardest working and most talented winemakers. For all the fun we have at them, we take planning very seriously. Led by Emily Carlson with support from Cathryn, Charles, Scott and our entire event team The Pink Party, Fête Blanc, and the Sparkle Party were sell-out events that celebrated achievement across the Sonoma and Mendocino counties in singular, almost all regeneratively farmed vineyards.

slo flowers. incandescent joy.

We were an apple, fig, chestnut, and pear orchard farm with a prodigious floral program long before we were Barndiva. It’s not something we’re likely to forget because it’s the reason we got into restaurants and events in the first place. From the early years when I drove our dry farmed apples down to Los Angeles, where I had been part of forming the first Food Co-Op board in Santa Monica, through the years we lived abroad and sold our fruits and nuts to restaurants like Chez Panisse and Wolfgang Puck in San Francisco, we have grappled with how hard it is to survive as a small organic farming enterprise.

This year our floral program was run by Misha Vega, a marvel of a woman and a brilliant partner for the challenges we continually face dry farming on a remote ridge. Misha has been instrumental in creating many of our breathtaking floral displays as well as many of our weekly arrangements. Coming in the Studio door and having your breath taken away by the colors, forms, scents of our mountaintop farm is our way of saying hello, thank you for coming.

This year we continued to champion the wealth of local flower farmers in Sonoma and Mendocino. The reasons to do so are compelling: Commercial flowers are chemical dependent; shipping them is harmful to the environment, to humans. In our small way we hope to foster change in the way our community thinks about flowers and the people who grow them.

@dragonflyfloral ; @frontporchfarmers ; @longertable ; @singlethreadfarm ; @filigreenfarm; @gild.the.lily_ ; @philo.flora.flowers (Mischa’s new website for her floral wedding consulting)

and last but never least….

IF you follow us on @barndivahealdsburg, read the blog, or receive one of our infrequent Mail Chimp mail outs about an upcoming events you may have noticed that while Chad and I photographed the hell out of this confounding yet beautiful year, we backed off publishing images of the many beautiful plates of food coming out of our kitchen. Rest assured how we source and conspire to enrich our lives through what we eat when we dine out is still very much the heart of everything we do. But nothing can substitute the sensory experience of being here. We look forward to seeing you in person in 2025. Let us know when you come to dine that you read the blog or follow our adventures on @barndivahealdsburg. We look forward to your visit.

As Always Eat the View!

Beautiful Things. Made with Respect. Start there.

I have no idea who this beautiful family is - whether they are indeed local denizens of our town or happened to read about Healdsburg being one of the best small towns in America to spend the holidays (Newsweek, Travel & Leisure, Vogue magazines just the past few weeks) but here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. On Sunday December 8 they wandered into an event filled with such warmth, grace, and glorious weather that for a few hours even the hyperbolic over-selling of Christmas dissolved into something truly meaningful.

It was one of those days where any differences we might bump into as people living complicated lives on a conflicted planet just…evaporated. And while it wasn’t beside the point that both Barndiva and The Studio were filled with beautiful, hand crafted wares made from the glorious landscape surrounding us, the warmth of the welcome everyone felt, the connections between seeing old friends or meeting new people profoundly spoke to the heart of connection we all seek this time of year.

Dawnelise, Amber, Susan and I - the Conversations Worth Having BFF’s who drove the series this year, (with a heavy lift from the phenom Zem Joaquin and Near Future Summit), wish to thank everyone who came out for our Makers Market on Sunday. The Makers Market was the culmination of our CWH series, our walk-the-walk moment around vital issues we’ve tried to present with the overriding question: how is it possible to live more lightly on the ground and still have beautiful things around you, delicious things to eat and drink.

20 years ago I came up with the phrase ‘Eat the View,” and I’ve been trying to explain it ever since. We eat with our eyes first but the koan was not just about filling our mouths with the incredible food we grow, wines and spirits we make here in Sonoma County. We are all hungry for more than food when it comes to living meaningful lives. The profound beauty of the natural world feeds our souls in ways that help carry us forward into meaningful lives. But we need to stay present to the challenges inherent in protecting and honoring ‘The View.’

Sunday was our way to honor what a cradle to cradle Christmas - C2C Chanukah - might look like if we stayed local and kept our goal simple: having a no crap Christmas with not a piece of plastic to be found. We pulled it off - if only for a day - thanks to an incredibly talented artist and farmer community we have living and working in Sonoma County.

Here’s wishing you a meaningful holiday season filled with beautiful things, made with intent, by artisans, artists and farmers who draw their talent from a love and respect of the world around us.

From Conversations Worth Having and the Barndiva family, with gratitude and affection

---

The Conversations Worth Having ‘Makers Market’ Participants

(and how to reach them!)

Conversations Worth Having Susan Preston with a stunning array of goods grown at her and Lou Preston’s Farm on West Dry Creek, which included their extraordinary VOO, and their Polenta and sourdough breads made from corn and wheat grown on the farm. And oh, those walnuts. Lou and Susan planted their fruit and nut trees when they started their vineyard over 40 years ago. Lou was the first vintner to pull out grapes to plant hedgerows and…food. Preston Farm and Winery is Demeter certified. Susan has a book of her paintings and writings, “In Ghost Time,” being published in spring.

Prestonfarmandwinery.com

Candice Koseba and her family need no introduction to this community as they have a huge and loyal following in love with the wide range of products they make from their lovingly tended bees across the county. Committed to encouraging people to become better bee stewards through hive inspired products, and education, Sonoma Bee Company is founded on a desire to protect the honeybee, and to preserve nature for future generations. (the salve is phenomenal)

Sonomacountybeeccompany.com

Anne Loarie’s gorgeous resin pieces are secret and sensuous, as all exquisite jewlery should be, but rarely is. Not all that easy to find and Anne seems to like it that way - production is small and specific and she will make custom pieces. Here in Healdsburg she sells exclusively at the wonderful Lucky Heron, luckyheron.com.

For custom pieces you can reach Anne: anneloarie@gmail.com.

The powerhouse Black Pig couple John and Duskie Estes - think Zazu, Top Chef, re-building the Healdsburg Food Pantry - brought an incredible range of all things heritage pig to the market, I mean all things, hats shirts bags, including their bacon (sold at Olivers) and ‘crack’ caramel corn (quotes mine). Sought after for catering gigs, Duskie has long been one of our strongest heartbeats for a sustainable Sonoma County. . We are waiting for the book.

BlackPigMeatCo.com.

Maya Eshom was the lady burning fabrics at Conversations Worth Having #3: Fast Fashion - a sensually profound way to make manifest what happens when dumped fashion is incinerated. Besides being a performance artist and educator, Maya is a designer who sews a range of custom dresses and jackets, all From naturally and locally sourced materials.

Maya can be reached: meeshom314@gmail.com

Alan Cohen is a well known architect and my fellow Healdsburg Planning Commissioner for many years. He has taken up Assemblage in his semi-retirement using only materials he finds at salvage sites (which he knows something about), and walking along the beach near his and artist Manok Cohens home in Sea Ranch. He and Manok hold ‘by appointment only’ visits and sales at their studio in Healdsburg. The pieces are charming, perfect gifts that often sell out at Open Studio.

alan@abcaia.com.

Longer Table brought incredible dried floral wreathes to the market - which they will be selling up to Christmas online. Their online shop includes a wide range of dried peppers and incredible sauces. They also supply restaurants with produce all year through FEED Cooperative (a food hub network of over 50 North Bay farms supporting ecologically sustainable practices, FeedSonoma.com.

You can reach them directly to order online: LongerTableFarm.com

The Farm Studio Family, “loving the earth through farming and art,’ are new to Healdsburg and a most welcome addition to the community. They even (sustainably ) wrapped! Their beautiful serviettes and other woven tableware can be found by reaching out to them directly:

Farmstudiosonoma.com

The Goldberg Family came down from their farm in Ukiah, but are well know to the Healdsburg community as they have long sold at our farmers market. They sell a full range of micro-greens and their wheatgrass elixir was a revelation.

Mendo Grass Microgreens can be reached: Mendograss.com

Above left: Mateo Granados (seen here with his daughter Meddi) needs no introduction to anyone who lives in Healdsburg - he was the executive chef at Charlie Palmer’s Hotel Healdsburg before opening his own Yucatán inspired restaurant Mateo’s where Lo and Behold now welcomes community. Mateo Granados Catering throws some of the most delicious off-site parties around - often at Preston Farm and Vineyards. Matteo Granado raises ducks, chickens, pigs, goats, turkeys on his and his wife Circe’s farm in Healdsburg. (Circe’s father, Hotel Healdsburg founder Merrit Sher, was a huge supporter of the arts, which no surprise is a passion of hers as well).

Mateo can be reached: mateoshealdsburg.com

Above right: We are all thrilled to welcome Yoga on Center back in town! Founders Katina and Jenn were on hand to offer non-toxic rubber mats and great membership deals - a welcome pay it forward gift to give yourself or anyone you love (and will need especially after the Holidays!)

Yogacenter.com

Ah Apple Girl, let me count the ways your presence made us happy on Sunday: Rosalie Pochan (along with Serafina Rosen) was our youngest maker, drawing cartoons of shoppers, as well as selling her macrame coasters, screen printed bags, duck scrubbers, purse charms, and recycled tee shirts she had screen dyed. No surprise the talent- both parents are well loved local artists - wood sculptor Sébastian Pochan and painter and child advocate Jessica Martin - but Rosalie’s connection to art, sustainable materials, and community came with an abundance of charm and confidence that was a joy to behold.

Tara Jasper is another “maker” that needs no introduction: her Sipsong Gins are a mainstay in every bar across the Bay Area. To her range of Healdsburg distilled gins we can now add an incredible Sipsong GinTea, a hit at the Market. Tara is also beloved for her “fight like a girl” proactive women’s heath initiation around cancer detection. A pilot, a passionate advocate of regenerative farming, an indefatigable spirit. We love her.

SipSongSpirits.com

The presence of this gorgeous Maker was also a special treat- and not simply because she is Dawnelise and Ari Rosen’s daughter. Serafina baked pumpkin bread and made quince jam but the product most sought after at the market was the late- great- much missed restaurant Campo Fino’s Sugo Sauce, which everyone has been dreaming about tasting again. It came frozen.. but won’t stay that way for long to those lucky enough to snag a pouch. Stay tuned for more Campo Provisions intel.

Amber brought the wonderful Cequin coffee family into our lives, they are in fact her cousins, but boy are we glad she did. With beans sourced fair trade from all over the world by their father, Celia and Quinn roast here in town and yes, we know, there is a great deal of competition around great coffee Healdsburg but Cequin is special and they offer subscriptions! Pay it forward this Christmas and send or have an exciting coffee delivered, with notes, all through the year. We are now big fans.

Cequincoffee.com

As it happens Amber McInnis is CWH’s only member that can spell so she immediately became our de facto secretary and fact manager keeping the other three of us on course all year…but that is far from why we love her so. The classes she teaches at The Studio Tuesday 9:30 and Thursday 5:30 are the best work-out around. She also plays a defining role managing reservations and parties at Cyrus Restaurant (a job she did for Barndiva many years ago). An extraordinary mother, the best friend, we challenged her to put her sewing talents to work for the market and lo and behold on Sunday she launched Pillow Lips, a funny, mordant, beautifully sewn range of ‘Home Decor Statement Pillows’ made from fabrics she saves and finds at Good Will which she fills with 100% organic material. The spelling thing came in handy: her Wordle Pillow sold out!

For Pillow Lips Custom Pillows: Ambermcinnis@gmail.com

Geoffrey Hales has been meticulously framing sets of antique ‘cigarette’ cards he started collecting as a lad in England for Studio Barndiva since the day we opened as a gallery. Created as a way to build brand loyalty long before they were known to cause cancer, each card came in every pack of Players and Will’s and were collected by the family until the advent of WW2 when cost to produce them became prohibitive. For the remainder of December, for the first time, Geoff will be offering 30% off on all framed sets.

The “before we knew” collection is also available for viewing during Studio Barndiva service days and hours: Thursday - Monday from 5pm. Feel free to come in and have a look at what’s on the walls, a peek in the drawers (carefully please.) The reason behind the double glass framing is so all the information on the back of every card can be easily read. The range of subjects is unbelievable - build a chicken coop, identify a tree, a car a boat, a bird, a king - reach out directly to inquire about a subject.

Geoff.Hales@gmail.com

Single wire Artist Seth Minor is another Barndiva Alum, having sold his work in the Studio for the past 15 years. He lives and works in Sebastopol and besides affordable single faces creates complex pieces - visit Comstock Winery or Barndiva - as well as special occasion commissions.

He can be reached: sethminor@gmail.com.

So that’s it, a wrap. Besides the wealth of talent that participated, it was great fun that all four of us became Makers for the day.

Dawnelise offered ‘Fund a Farmer,’ a Pay it Forward gifting program in support of the Non-Profit she now heads: Farmpreneurs.org; derosen@icloud.com

Barndiva’s contribution to Makers Market was also Pay It Forward: Gift Certificates and Scott Beattie Cocktail Classes: Barndiva.com

The Market was our way of giving back; walking-the-walk we had been talking the talk about with Conversations Worth Having. We loved showcasing beautiful products, made with respect for materials and provenance.

But this wasn’t just a plastic free, no crap Christmas market for us. It was at heart about a community that supports values we know make our small corner of the world such a blessed place to work, live, and raise our families. All the talk we heard about the failing American Dream this fractious election season can so easily drown us in hyperbolic self serving aggrandizement and spite, but in great part we tragically miss the message we are seeking wherever we call home. We need a more profound connection to the natural world surrounding us wherever we live - and to the people we are living our lives alongside. We all need to survive, but If scalability and profit are your only motivation you are missing a crucial part of the equation. Feeling good about what you make is a first step, having an insatiable desire to share is crucial.

The connections we all made - from makers to their product - to a public both local and traveling, tells a crucial part of the Healdsburg story which drew us all together on Sunday. These are the stories that make Healdsburg such an incredible place to create, and to live. And yes I’d even go so far as saying they are at the secret heart of why Healdsburg is indeed one of the coziest places to spend the Holiday Season.

This Holiday Season when we come upon things that charm us, that we imagine stuffing in a stocking, presenting on the Holiday Table, beautifully wrapped beneath the tree or on the mantle by the menorah, it is invaluable to know who made these gifts we are thinking of buying. The where and the how — both crucial - will follow, if we start there.

Conversations Worth Having Dawnelise Rosen wearing a Maya Eshom custom jacket purchased at the market, sipping a Dream Street Sparkle, Barndiva’s contribution to STAY HEALDSBURG ‘Season to Sparkle’ campaign. It was created by our renown mixologist Scott Beattie with a wonderful new locally made aperitif, Rue de Rêve, that is on our Holiday Bar menu. Next up: a cocktail made with Rue de Rêve and Tara Jaspers Sipsong gin. (for a special dry January menu we are also looking into using the Mendo Grass family’s wheatgrass elixir which we tasted for the first time at the market, and loved. stay tuned)

FARMpreneurs.org

Ruedereveaperitifs.com

STAYheadsburg.com

The joys to be found in a No Crap Christmas

Conversations Worth Having was thrilled when the founders of Healdsburg’s beloved Artisan Collective, Kim Dow and Karin Tredrea offered us the opportunity to team tag their December Makers Market traditionally held on Moore Lane. Throughout our CWH speakers series, and especially as a result of our mind-blowing collaboration with Zem Joaquin and Near Future Summit, we have learned a great deal around what it’s going to take to live more lightly on the ground through design. But it’s quite another thing to put that knowledge into practice, especially with a heavy lift like Christmas. Which is why the offer to participate in a market that supports local makers who already walking the walk means so much to us.

Quite simply, the focus of our Makers Market will be to support circular economies with cradle to cradle products made locally in ways that respect sourcing and equity. On Dec. 8 we will fill the Barn AND the Studio with beautiful, hand-crafted objects large and small… there will be edible delights, clothing, art, textiles, jewelry, ceramics - ingenious and useful things to fill your stockings or slip beneath the tree. There will be delicious things to top up your Holiday Larder, and for those loved ones you always struggle with finding a gift for we’ll have perfect Pay It Forward special opportunities that will keep on giving throughout the year.

We’re counting on you, and a great swathe of the Healdsburg and Sonoma community to show up and shop local. Catch a quick bite at our pop up Lunchonette, sip a cocktail, mocktail, share a glass of wine - spend some time with us on Dec. 8th. There will be plenty of time to head over to Moore Lane, or start there… we’re all in this together!

An incredible range of local talent will be with us on Sunday Dec. 8, many of whom have helped build our sustainable community in Healdsburg, along with a few rising talents who are just starting out.

MAKERS INCLUDE: Susan and Lou Preston of Preston Farms; Duskie Estes of Black Pig; Dawnelise Rosen with Pay It Forward FARMpreneurs along with her Daughter Serafina Rosen who will be selling the Campo Fino Sugo Sauce; Anne Loarie with her exquisite resin Jewlery; Maya Eshom with fashion designed and made in Healdsburg; Amber McInnis with the inaugural outing of Pillow Lips, ‘gorgeous scrap’ throw pillows; the Mendo Grass family; the Cequin Coffee family; Seth Minor, whose single wire faces have been sold at Barndiva for over 15 years; the Yoga On Center founders (another great pay it forward); Scott Beattie with special Cocktail Class gifts; Sipsong founder Tara Jasper, with her very special Sipsong Gin Tea; Candice Koseba, founder of the Sonoma Bee Company with a full range of must have candles and soaps for the Holidays; Longer Table Farm with a gloriously colored range of their farm grown pepper products and a few pepper wreaths (get here early before they disappear); The Farm Studio folks with 100% naturally dyed hemp and linen napkins using locally foraged plants and kitchen scraps (talk about cradle to cradle); Local Architect Alan Cohen with his delightful driftwood sculptures, and Barndiva’s Geoffrey Hales who will be heavily discounting coveted pieces from his Antique ‘before we knew’ Card Collection, which always have pride of place hanging in Studio Barndiva.

Apple Girl Designs Rosalie Pochan will be doing live portraits at the market! Snag a sitting then go shop and we will come find you when she’s ready for your portrait.

Jordy and Zuzu Morgan will be grilling up succulent plates of food in the garden, which they will serve with their own kimchi, while they last…

We will have a limited number of tables in the Studio to enjoy the food and libation with Scott Beattie behind the bar, and Barndiva Wine Director Emily Carlson pouring some surprises from the cellar BTG.

When we say Sunday’s Makers Market is going to be a family affair, we aren’t kidding.

As the penultimate experience of our Conversations Worth Having year, with a huge shout out to Near Future Summit Zem Joaquin, who has been a muse and teacher around what Cradle to Cradle can mean for our future , these are gifts you will be proud to give, and meaningful to receive. That’s was Christmas and Channukah should be all about!

Come and support a Cradle to Cradle Christmas and C2C Channukah.

Come support a truly sustainably Healdsburg community of talent. Come and say hi!

q

A quick word about Studio Barndiva Holiday Decorations this year:

Christmas and Channukah are celebrations of joy, or should be. We don’t know why it’s taken us so long to figure out that we have both the power and the responsibility to evolve our traditions so they change with us as we continue to define what gives life meaning in all its seasons and iterations. There is clearly no joy to be found in the mountains of crap destined to end up in the oceans or landfill from gifting, not to mention all those wonderful sparkling plastic derived decorations that have come to be emblematic of the season. So this year we’re going a different direction, embracing a cradle to cradle approach to Holiday decorations as well as our gifting. We don’t want to waste this #chancetochange.

No ground rules, but a friendly challange: haul out all the old heirloom decorations to your hearts content, up-cycle those glittery past Xmas plastic impulse buys, just but don’t rush out to buy anything new to decorate the tree or the house if you can help it. You might be surprised with what you come up with…

When we threw this challenge to our farm manager Misha Vega we had just finished planting garlic and were standing by the garden gate idly kicking fallen chestnuts around on the ground. We Love chestnuts, but hate the husks - every fall its a nightmare trying to avoid getting a sharp prick from the shells you have to break open in order to get to the nuts. “These are a cool shape,” Misha noted. And they were, come to think of it. The next thing we knew our AGM’s sweetheart Caitlin was spray painting them in hues of gold and silver, hanging them alongside Persimmon leaves that now shimmer and glow from the Antler Chanderlier in the Studio. Caitlin also made three enormous orgamami Stars- some people are so talented when you think to ask! Once we got going it was hard to stop. Misha and I wove dried flowers into fallen branch wreathes - there are now five twinkling in the Studio. A fig branch ‘chandelier’ is now host to a paper maché whale family, precious family ornaments we’ve collected over the years. This week we will harvest a perfect 12’ conifer that’s growing too close to the wood pile for the staff party - and except for recycled electric fairy lights find a way to decorate it with truly biodegradable materials. Best part is we will do it together.

What we’re learning as we go is that you can honor a concept like The Ellen McArthur Foundations #chancetochange at the same time you expand what best reflects how you want to feel around and, crucially, after the holidays. If you aren’t in the crafting mood, patronize a shop that supports fair trade decorations which more often than not are made from up-cycling materials. Get the kids you know involved - they are natural crafters and can always use a little spending money this time of year. There are so many beautiful way of changing up how we approach gifting and decorating for the Holiday Season. Ours is still a work in progress, but the biggest surprise is how much pleasure we’re getting coming up with random ideas that honor the natural landscape around us instead of contributing to its demise. Stay tuned, or better yet come in and raise a glass with us over the Holidays and see for yourself how this all turns out!

A Season to Sparkle

Barndiva and Stay Healdsburg’s Sparkling Soirée, November 17

It was a big community driven week-end for us, and boy did we need the hit of friendly faces and the sense of the joy that can be found in creative accomplishment. On Saturday evening we helped stage the True West Film Center’s annual fund raiser honoring actor Steve Zahn which raised over $200,000. True West will bring much needed eclectic film-going back to Healdsburg, as well as launch educational programs for students, when it opens 2025.

On Sunday we put on our fancy duds and hosted Barndiva’s first ever Sparkling Soirée with Stay Healdsburg to officially launch Healdsburg’s ‘Season to Sparkle.’ We didn’t know what to expect until 200 Healdsburg habitués arrived on a drizzly cold evening ready to party, then boy did we ever - Sparkling Soirée was so much fun we are considering making it annual. When Stay Healdsburg’s Jessica Bohon first approached us a few months back about co-hosting the kick off-party for the City’s run up to the Holidays, she was looking for the secret sauce that makes our parties, especially spring’s Pink Party and summer’s Fête Blanc so popular. She was asking the right question. But what indeed goes into making a party great?

In truth we are almost too blessed with where we live when it comes to making wine the only reason you venture out to a public event. Sure, If you are visiting Healdsburg the opportunity to meet a winemaker or taste something out of the ordinary from a purveyor off the beaten track is catnip. But we’ve lived in Sonoma and Mendocino County for 40 years. Even if you are relatively new to wine country chances are someone in your immediate family or good friend makes great wine.

A plethora of factors go into hosting comprehensive collaborative experiences, especially when it comes to wine. Different terroirs, different hands, including those of the weather gods.

Rule #1 if wine is at the heart of your event: only invite winemakers and cellar masters who know what they are talking about, and truly love what they make and sell. Our ‘Sommelier For The People’ Emily Carlson is pukka on this, with personal relationships to winemakers she admires, and a curious mind (nose and palate) for new discoveries. Emily is relentless in her focus on the where and how the grapes are farmed, who is farming them. For Sparkling Soirée she was keen to showcase a smaller group than our bigger outdoor collaborative wine events. She wanted to guide guests through unique tastings that would leave them more discerning to what makes a great bubbly as we head into the season where, if our luck holds, we will be drinking quite a few of them.

We were thrilled to welcome our great friend Alexis Iaconis (above left) of @brickandmortarwines and sparkling icon Joy Sterling (above right) of @ironhorsevyds who were joined by an exciting group on Sunday evening which included @almafriawines; @amistavineyards; @bansheewinesguys; @breathlesswines; @cartographwines; @comstockwines; @crusewine; @gloriaferrerwinery; @kokomowinery; @lambertbridge; @orsifamilyvineyards; @drinkseppi; @trailmarkerwineco; and for a taste of Anderson Valley @handleycellars; @roedererestate; @scharffenbergercellers.

Rule #2 Take your inspiration for the look and feel of the party from the season - whatever the ‘reason’ or focus of the event, you can’t go wrong because It’s in our DNA to feel the seasons changing and want to follow where the weather is heading, even if we do so unconsciously. November is about seeking warmth, and scratching the itch of anticipation. The year is almost over and whether it was good or dreadful you can find myriad of reasons to raise a glass to it’s ending. This year, coming out of contentious election season, virtually everyone who stepped into Barndiva on Sunday was in the mood to find joyful relief in seeing old friends, open to the possibility of making new ones. The energy was just so much fun on Sunday night. Remember fun?

Rule #3: give your guests a reason to engage. For us this is where party games or ‘experiences’ come in that take you a step deeper into what you’ve come to celebrate. We love our scent boxes for wine events - they are mysterious and sensual and essential when it comes to expanding your knowledge of bouquet, but for Sparkle we added a Riddling Rack Game - no riddling, no method champenoise, no great bubbly people! (exception would be the wonderful pet nat we tasted). Lily Zarat, a lead server in Studio B who is studying wine walked anyone game through the technique, (its all in the wrist), then started the stop watch. How fast can it take to turn 12 sparkling wine bottles 45 degrees to the right? (a professional Riddler can turn 30,000 bottles in a day). The winning time was 2.9 seconds.

Rule #4: Whatever the season you are mining for inspiration, great parties give people a reason to dress up, down, sideways. The point being, If enough people show up wearing something they feel good in, the space around them starts to resonate with shared energy. Our Pink Party is conspicuously pink, Fête Blanc trends a subdued elegance. Sparkle turned out to be the most enjoyable dress up party of the year. It didn’t matter whether you dragged a cape from the back of the closet ( quite a few of those) went out to find the perfect item to set the upcoming season ablaze (many more), or made your ensemble as our Conversations Worth Having partner Amber McInnis did (above right). Everywhere you looked Sunday glimmered with finery in the candlelight. ( Hotel Healdsburg’s Circe Sher, above left, got the memo)

#5 Great parties need great Florals displays, subtle fresh scents. While this is a no brainer easy for us in springtime, summer, and early fall when we can party in the gardens surrounding ourselves with what we grow in Philo or sourcing from our many friends in AV and around Sonoma County, its chilly out now, and pretty bare in all our gardens. For Sparkle we filled the barn with white orchids and mums, pale ecru roses, black pussy willows, and a range of silvery green branches -huckleberry, arberry, abelia,-our farm manager and special events florist Misha Vega foraged from the farm.

Rule #6: Great parties need perfect lighting, especially if you are inside where sunlight and shadow cannot do their magic. Years ago I did an install for Barndiva after a stupendous Perrier Jouët champagne event that left us with two dozen of the Maison’s famous Japanese anemone bottles designed by art nouveau pioneer Emile Galle in 1902 for their Belle Époque Curvée I could not bear to recycle. My trusty PA K2 scrolled the names of infamous champagne drinkers (men and women) I would have liked to raise a glass with once upon a time, or still do. For Sparkle Party 2024 I pulled them out of the world so high and we danced a parade of them, with thin black candles interspersed with potted white orchids, along the bar. Guessing who the names referred to was part of the fun. (who wouldn’t want to raise a glass with Kiki de Montparnasse.. Orsen Wells? Lukka Feldman?)

#7: Music is mood. We were of two minds for Sparkling, with two buildings in play, each with tastings. Two rooms to decorate as well. Barndiva’s great friend Pamela Joyce, herself an incredible singer, recommended Jeanette Isenberg @jeanette@acoustic-resonance.com to indulge our fancy for a Bridgerton inspired violin and cello welcome to Sparkle in Barndiva, which we wanted to feel more elegant. But over in the studio we pulled out a funky NYE playlist Isabel Hales put together back in 2014, which played alongside her silent NYE compilation reel of famous film parties pre 1940’s. A looser vibe as we knew the crowd would eventually drift over there to settle, which is exactly what happened toward the end of the evening. We also loaded the Studio up with even more candles than we have for our regular dinner service, hung our cradle to cradle decorations which will stay up through the holidays, and let it rip.

(Above, center, Jessica Bohon, the driving force behind Stay Healdsburg, our co-hosts for The Sparkling Soirée, with Healdsburg Mayor David Hagele).

A quick word about food. It circumvents our rulebook because it is always present at Barndiva, first and foremost. But for large parties that focus on wine, food should not be the star, its a support player. We are known for elegantly plated Hors d’oeuvres that are delicate, delicious, with flavors that don’t linger on the palate.

Food should never compete with what you are tasting in the glass; it’s also good if what you serve has proteins that absorb alcohol. We are extremely proud of the dishes coming out of Chef David Morales kitchen this year. For Soirée we passed our infamous goat cheese croquettes with lavender honey, the Studio’s popular Crispy Chicken with green chermoula tahini dressing, Ora King Salmon with egg yolk jam, and Black truffle Grilled Cheese squares with American or gruyère on sliced brioche. Last, but never least especially at the Holidays we sent out boards with our Potato Latkes with sour cream and Chef Erik Anderson’s wonderful Piper Caviar.

And so it flowed. Winemakers poured, the Barndiva kitchen sent out platters of delicious bites, we sipped and sashayed, sparkled, hugged and laughed. All in all, it was a much needed, simply wonderful evening. When all is said and done perhaps the most important ‘rule’ for throwing a great party is to invite everyone to participate. Life is a temporary adventure that involves all our senses. There is always reason- and a profound need- to celebrate that!

Our thanks to all the friends, neighbors, and visitors to our fair town who showed up for The Sparkling Soirée, with a special shout out to our winemaking friends who participated.

The buck, and pretty much everything else for a party like Sparkling Soirée, stops here. On the far left, Susan Bischoff, Barndiva’s event director; next to her Emily Carlson, our fiercely talented wine director. On the far right Scott Beattie, our Beverage Director in character as Dom Perignon, the French Benedictine monk often credited with ‘inventing’ Champagne. He did not- the first sparkling wine thought to have been intentionally made was in England. He did, however, apparently say “come quickly, I am tasting the stars” the first time he tasted sparkling wine. We agree.

We hope to see you over the holidays - throw a cocktail party with friends in the Barn, book dinner in the Studio, or just slide in for a drink and enjoy our cradle to cradle Christmas decorations. And don’t forget: Sunday Dec 8 the entire property will be open for a Makers Market! Your wonderful no crap Christmas or C2C Chanukah starts here this year!

All Photos: Chad Surmick, All Copy, Barndiva 2024

The Best Wine Country Parties

CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS WITH BARNDIVA

Healdsburg may well be a small town with a glittering international reputation these days, but in the run up to the holidays we’re reminded that the celebrations that truly sparkle still come from the heart of what it means to ‘live’ in wine country

They start when the grapes and apple harvests are all in, early morning fogs begin to roll over the valleys, garden lights cast longer shadows. It’s the time of year our love of landscape comes alive and we’re able to celebrate the year that’s just about over and toast the one ahead over tables resplendent with the fruits of our labor.

For us, the restaurant’s move into the Studio this year fulfilled our desire to host more public and private events. Now, as we begin to book holiday gatherings of all sizes, we are able to stretch out into all our rooms and gardens, filling them with candlelight, seductive florals, and homegrown treasure.

We hope you will have many invitations this Holiday Season - from family, friends and people you work alongside all year. We’d love it if you would consider joining us - In the Barn or the Studio - for one (or more!) of those memorable evenings.

Studio Barndiva reservations, here

Dinner Parties of guests 8+ contact orders@barndiva.com

Dinner Parties + Cocktail Parties 20+ contact susan@barndiva.com

We were thrilled when STAY HEALDSBURG asked us to co-host their kick-off week-end of  ‘A Season to Sparkle.’ Their only request was that it capture the ‘sparkling’ joie de vivre of Barndiva’s Pink Party and Fête Blanc, our signature spring and summer events. Both these annual-sold out collaborative events showcase remarkable wines, and this is what our Holiday Sparkling Soirée on November 17th will most certainly do, with a stellar list of producers hand-picked by Barndiva Wine Director Emily Carlson. This being Healdsburg’s official launch of the Holidays, we’re putting on the dog with live music, elegant hors d’oeuvres, and interactive taste and aromatic experiences that capture the ineffable spirit of sparkling wine. This being a Barndiva Event, there will be holiday florals and decorations galore. Join us for an unforgettable evening of delicious surprise and sensual delights. Tickets available here.

We fell in love with Kathryn Philip’s incredible passion for cinema years ago when she and her merry band of cinephiles from Cloverdale and Healdsburg were still The Alexander Valley Film Festival. Incredibly, they rode out those early years, which included a lock-down the film industry has yet to recover from, and this year broke ground on an audacious film center right here in the heart of Healdsburg. True West Film Center will include three screening rooms with a plethora of offerings to the public that will include children and Senior programming. It will showcase international and short films, both sorely served since the closing of Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa. There will even be film editing suites above the screening rooms open to young filmmakers, many on True West scholarships. And yes, there will be food and drink available for film goers before and after the shows. While no one could have predicted AVFF would grow into a cinema juggernaut, True West Film Center shows what passion and dedication, with great community support, can do to move the dial when it comes to vital but underfunded cultural goals.

We’ve had a lot of fun helping them fundraise over the years - see the film noir flyer above - and we are thrilled they have chosen to host their ground-breaking year fund-raiser as True West in Studio Barndiva, on Saturday November 16. Come raise a glass to the future of film culture in Healdsburg! We will eat, drink, enjoy short films together, and as a very special treat honor the wondrous career of this year’s True West honoree, actor Steve Zahn. Tickets available here.

The Makers Market has been a beloved community event for many years and we are thrilled that its founders Kim Dow and Karin Tredrea have invited Conversation Worth Having to participate this year by expanding the market to include Barndiva and the Studio. This will be an all day capstone to our year-long CWH community series that focused on how to achieve a sustainable future by making different choices in what we eat, wear and use. We’re calling it a ‘Cradle to Cradle Xmas’ or C2C Chanukah (which happens to start on Christmas Day this year) and it will showcase local innovative ‘makers’ in multiple fields that only use sustainable materials and ingredients in the production of their wares. You can pay it forward with an array of gift certificates, fill your Holiday Larder or gift one, find incredible art, textiles, ceramics, and clothing. Everything will be discounted on the day- and everything on offer will have been produced with care, talent, and sustainable materials here in the Sonoma County.

The original Artisan Collective will once again be at Moore Lane so be sure to allow enough time to visit both locations! Workshops on how to throw a cradle to cradle holiday will be offered throughout the day, food and drink abundant to fortify you for a mind blowing holiday shopping experience. Here in the studio Scottie will be batching speciality cocktails, Emily pouring her favorite wines and Jordy Morgan- resident sculptor - will be grilling up a storm in one of his own creations in the garden. Stay tuned for WHO the makers will be at both venues- some surprises here - mark your calendar for December 8 now and plan to make a day of it!

AFTER HARVEST COMES A SEASON TO SPARKLE ✨ Join us to raise a glass!

Barndiva + Near Future

Barndiva Gardens, Sunday August 11, 2024

Ah the youth of it all: four gorgeous Ask Me What I’m Wearing models, above, rocking it in great thrifting outfits. We also saw original crocheted creations, lots of classic tees and pretty summer frocks, Stella McCartney, and head to toe prima alpaca from a cradle to cradle company a stone’s throw from where we all gathered on Sunday. When we asked everyone to ‘dress in your happy’ for our third Conversations Worth Having, The Future of Fashion, we had no idea what to expect. How delightful that style and comfort merged into an elegant insouciance -  If a chorus of 'I feel pretty" had spontaneously started up in the gardens, no one would have been surprised.

Clothing is performative on so many levels, but for anyone who remembers early childhood dress-up it can be a simple reflection of joy, and that's what most of us felt on Sunday. Clothes are our second skin, after all. The interest in this event would seem to indicate that many of us are curious how to continue to feel at home in that skin, without doing harm to the planet through our clothing choices.

Conversations Worth Having is the brain child of four friends who have deep ties to this community: Jil Hales, Dawnelise Rosen, Susan Preston and Amber McInnis. It is a labor of love for the four of us, and it is with love we would like to thank Near Future Summit’s brilliant Zem Joaquin for choosing and moderating our panel of game changing speakers. We’d also like to thank three artists who generously shared their talents and time: Maya Eshom, who brought her fascinating Textiles on Fire to the garden; Naomi Mcleod, who carved the large rubber stamp for our ‘Animal, Vegetable, Oil’ game, (without which our clothesline would have looked like a slightly psychotic garage sale), and Manok Cohen, who ‘dressed’ our mannequin in antique handkerchiefs (remember those?). And thank you to prima alpaca designer Sandra Jordan for bringing multiple samples from her showroom on Eastside Road to give away. Jennifer & Jeanne Marie - cheers for donating an entire case of your Rue de Réve Rose Apéritif for our cocktail.

And most of all, Thank You, gorgeously turned out community! So many beautiful mothers and daughters! Not all our ‘green room’ images made it into this blog but please contact us if you posed for Chad - we will send you photographs!

Barndiva weddings are the norm in the gardens this time of year; we have built our business around and love hosting celebrations of all kinds. But gatherings like Conversation Worth Having strengthen our mojo in a most crucial way because they build community. Future of Fashion has been quite a journey, so it was especially gratifying to see that all the time and research we spent wrapping our heads around how best to engage with that community played out so beautifully on Sunday. There is a nominal ticket price for CWH, but no one is ever turned away.

Above: Zem Joaquin with Marci Zaroff of EcoFashion Corp; Lewis Perkins of The Apparel Impact Institute; Garrett Gerson of Varient3D, and Liam Berryman of Nelumbo. 

Lewis Perkins, above right, is the president and CEO of the Apparel Impact Institute whose mission is to verify, fund and scale new fashion programs that can help decrease carbon emissions.

Marci Zaroff, above left, has been a leader in supporting regenerative farming practices in the production of clothing with a lazer focus on understanding the impacts of chemically grown cotton. Though less than 3% of the world’s agriculture is cotton, over 20% of the world’s harmful carcinogenic chemicals are used by the cotton industry producting them. Her numerous organic, toxic-free fabric and clothing companies produce beautiful, durable, zero waste fashion. Above, she is previewing a Tee Shirt she developed in creative partnership with Billie Ellish for Target. Next up for Marci is seeking funding to turn pineapple waste from Costa Rico into fabric.

Garrett Gerson, center, is founder of LOOP, a flat bed knitting softwear-driven production system that is hyper-local, zero-waste, and customizable, making it a financially viable option for new designer start-ups. Among his many projects with LOOP are 100% post waste trainers which I can attest - as I was wearing a pair - are beyond comfortable. Next up for Garrett is exploring how to use LOOP fabrics on furniture, with the hope of bringing zero waste furniture production currently off-shored back to the US.

Liam Berryman, above right, is Founder of Nelumbo, a locally based start up that relies on a platform technology that applies morphology, shape, and structure to surfaces. Nelumbo’s use of materials science - Metamaterials - uses only ‘clean ingredients’ to design ‘coatings’ for a variety of different materials - metals, textiles, fabrics. This micro nano texture surface acts as water or oil repellency, has anti microbial properties, and contains NO PFAS or ‘forever chemicals, which shed into the environment and onto anyone wearing clothing that has been sprayed with them.

The range of ideas and projects our panel shared were by turns mystifying, exciting, technologically complex. In thanking Marci, Lewis, Garrett and Liam on linkedin and IG for making the journey to Healdsburg, Zem wrote: “While there is still clearly never-ending work to be done in materials, textiles, and the manufacturing industries, the four bad asses from last night’s illuminating discussion give us hope.”

Continue the conversation by following them: @nearfuturesummit; @ecofashion.corp; @varient3D; @nelumbo.us; @apparelimpactinstitute. We also highly recommend @ellenmacarthurfoundation.

CWH is about engaging with information in ways that make them memorable and hopefully habit changing. We presented two interactive installations for Future of Fashion that focused on touch and smell for their impact. The Animal, Vegetable, Oil game was about testing one’s fabric knowledge through touch. We know from having emptied out the furtherest reaches of our closets for this ‘game’ that all our wardrobes hit the oil bleeper more often than we had thought possible. Which means if we can’t pass those items on someday they are destined to end up in landfill or incinerated, contributing to all our Co2 nightmares. This game was to address how obtuse labels can be, as well as misleading. Even if accurate, the fabric content label will say nothing about the labor used to make an item of clothing or the use of resources - think water - needed in its fabrication. And don’t get us started on synthetic color, or PFAS’s sprayed on to finish any item that needs to combat weather or water.

Our other interactive experience by local artist Maya Eshom was called “textiles on fire.” What a gift this woman is to this community! Maya is fabric obsessed - but the object of her interest is not making or wearing clothing but setting it on fire, one small piece of it at a time. In learning how different materials smell when they are incinerated, we were curious if it might affect the way we think about what we put on our bodies so close to our skin. We know….we don’t shop with our noses any more than we make clothing decisions based solely on touch but both installations brought physical sensation and memory into play. What do you base your clothing purchase decisions upon?

Above, left: On the bar with Buck a mannequin ‘Dressed’ by local artist Manok Cohen in handkerchiefs from the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s found shortly after the death of a beloved aunt years ago, neatly folded into a small satin covered box ready to be lifted out one by one and carried with her into the world. Handkerchiefs have a long cultural history of use by men and women. Knights tied their lady’s handkerchief on their helmets before jousting or going into battle, ladies used them to assess romantic intent, for hundreds of years they served humankind mopping up sweat, staunching blood, absorbing tears. Whether elegantly embroidered or simply made they were a useful, reusable part of everyday life. Within one decade they were gone.

The mannequin and the feather and fedora hat display on the bar made the same nostalgic point: styles change, as they should, but our currant race to the bottom in producing clothing and fashion accessories cheaply, with no thought to how their production may affect the health of the planet, doesn’t reflect craft, durability, or personal style the way it once did.

Above, right : the Susan Preston painting ‘Woman as Verb,’ graced the wild grasses behind the panel.

Dawnelise Rosen, Jil Hales, Amber Mcinnis, and Susan Preston thanking the panel, contributing artists, and last but never least, the community who came our for CWH3.

All Images in this Eat the View, Chad Surmick

Best White Wine Party Ever!

Barndiva’s Event Director Susan Bischoff at Sunday’s Féte Blanc

We promised the most exciting white wines of the season and we delivered. We promised an elegant Féte and thanks to our guests in their sparkling whites and the sumptuous shades of high summer florals we delivered there as well. The music, the food, all a delight, but with respect, last Sunday’s Féte du vin blanc delivered something much more important: a perfect if brief respite from the heat and drama this summer has already delivered, and it was clear everyone there knew it. The world and its many problems would wait a few hours: rediscovering what we love about our wine shed and why we love to drink together as a community delivered what we needed most and it was the energy and good will of everyone who attended who brought it home.

Thank you to everyone who participated pouring or sipping away the afternoon, for your savor faire, your care in balancing fun with serious contemplation of what was in the glass, and your support of Corazón Healdsburg. We had a blast.

This coming Sunday we turn our attention to another special event, our 3rd Conversation Worth Having, The Future of Fashion. Tackling difficult subjects with compassion is what Barndiva life is all about for us, making them beautiful, delicious, and sustainable. We promised to ‘mix it up’ in this, our 20th year in Healdsburg, and we intend to deliver.

Barndiva Wine director Emily Carlson with the tasting crew of Sutro Wines

Wine Director Emily Carlson’s brilliant line up for Barndiva’s Féte du vin Blanc 2024: RAEN Pax Sutro Idlewild Copain Daniel Hirsch LaRue Monroy Littorai Brick&Mortar Bon Vivant Breathless Moshin Carpenter Comstock Dot Wines Maggy Hawke Handley Gros Ventre Radio Coteau Marine Layer Merry Edwards Desire Lines Quivira Overshine Reed Holland Roederer Estate Sharffenberger T. Berkeley Three Sticks Trail Marker Wines …. Raffle Benefitting Corazón Healdsburg!

We all need more moments to show affection to one another but time and place, boy do they affect our ability to live in the moment. The time and attention to detail to pull off our annaul collaborative wine events in-house, as our dedicated staff continues to turn out an extraordinary dinner services Thurs-Mon along with hosting a variety of spectacular private events is no mean task. We wish to thank Chef David Morales and his team for the delicious food at Féte blanc, DJ Collin Peacock for the cool sounds, and last but not least, Misha Vega, Barndiva farm director and the owner of her own nursery and flower design company @philo.floral.flowers. Along with Emily, Cathryn, Charles, Scott, JASON and his staff, this was a dream team.

All photographs in this blog: Chad Surmick.

Conversations Worth Having 3: The Future of Fashion

Conversation Worth Having 3, The Future of Fashion, is almost upon us, and as it comes together we are realizing the significant and challenging ways it will be different from the first two community forums we’ve hosted here in Healdsburg.

Our first CWH – literally a deep dive into Compost, was icky but fascinating fun, as well as providing impetus to address Sonoma County’s urgent need for a compost facility (s). Our second was about trash in all its forms (oh so many forms) each seeming to necessitate a curated journey out of our lives if we didn’t want what we throw away to end up in the carbon nightmare of landfills. Incredibly, both conversations were upbeat, generating a “we are all in this together” energy that created quite a buzz in town, and so many smaller conversations and engagements. We believe the success of the series thus far has been finding we are not alone in wanting individual and community solutions to how we might continue to enjoy our creature comforts while living more lightly on the ground.

Both while conversations dealt with difficult issues, neither got personal. The Future of Fashion just might. Clothing is not just a necessity, but something which colors how we feel every day of our lives as we move through the world, and like it or not, how we are perceived –admired, desired, accepted or judged - over a lifetime. Our acquired tastes may change over time, and they are definitely driven by the bombardment of triggering fashion content coming at us non-stop.  But whereas we MUST dispose of food and material waste, there is something decidedly personal about how we choose, use and dispose of what we wear. Fashion is tied inextricably to our desire to inform how we want to be perceived as we go out into the world.

From the moment the first humans pulled the skin of an animal across their shoulders to stave off the cold, and for thousands of millenimum afterward, we looked to nature for the raw materials to protect us from the elements. The discovery of rudimentary tools to puncture skins and weave fastenings to keep what we wore in place, along with the discovery of fire, is most probably the main reason the early human race survived at all. But even from those humble beginnings clothing was also used to signify our standing- our importance, worth, usefulness -  in the tribe. Hunter, gather, fire starter…. the need to carry a story on our bodies that reflected status, fertility, power, has always been with us.

The notion of Fashion – clothing as more than utility - was thought to have been kick started during the reign of Louis XIV when the bored, impetuous King impelled his court to dress in finery as competitive one-upmanship. It eventually gave birth to the French textile industry that went on to ignite the concept of dressing to please across the European continent. Clothing as a social marker for the wealthy has never ceased, but for most of history’s primarily agrarian working populations for centuries we only needed two outfits: one for work and one that could be worn on Sundays, weddings, funerals, or seasonal celebrations. They had to last so they were made of materials that were durable, yet affordable. Craft was important, the crafter admired. Think pegs not hangers, certainly not closets filled with years and years of impulsive purchases.

The rise of humanity as penultimate fashion consumers came out of the industrial revolution which democratized fashion through the advent of machine production and the availabliity of a growing worker class- cheap labor.  When production eventually began to outstrip consumption, a little thing called consumer engineering was created and through relentless ad and news campaigns the need for clothing was replaced by a desire for it. Thanks to the affordability of new synthetic products made from the abundance of oil the burgeoning fashion industry we didn’t need nature anymore. Fashion conglomerates were able to keep prices low and competative, production high and constant, feeding the thrill consumers grew to love of reinventing themselves each season. Planned oblescence, where clothing was designed to break down to drive even more purchases (and something now built in to almost everything we purchase) accelerated the burgeoning industry even further.

Today its virtually impossible to ignore the siren call to purchase new clothes and shoes, bags and accessories – because for the stakeholders of the fashion Industry, their profits depend upon on us doing so. But while there’s no denying there is joy to be found in wearing something of beauty or utility that elevates how you feel, the fashion addiction has made the industry the planet’s 3rd most polluting industry, with 100 billion items of clothing produced ever year, only a fraction of it sustainably sourced or fabricated. Only 1% of all clothes are recycled when we are done with them. Just reducing the amount of our consumption would be great, but it won’t move the dial, and truthfully, it’s not gonna happen. 

But what if if there was a way to satisfy our lust for fashion and how it makes us feel that wasn’t harmful to the environment? What if a responsible use of nature and technology was focused on creation of circular fashion economies designed from the start to significantly lighten humankind’s carbon footprint?

Join us on Sunday, August 11, when Conversations Worth Having welcomes Near Future’s Zem Joaquin to lead a Conversation about The Future of Fashion. On the dias with Zem will be Marci Zaroff, the woman who coined the term ‘eco fashion’ a decade ago and has built multiple successful businesses creating green, cradle to cradle fashion lines. Lewis Perkins from the Apparel Impact Institute, whose mission is to verify, fund and scale new fashion programs that can decrease carbon emissions, with be with us as well. And to address how technology may hold some answers to a clean green fashion future, both Garrett Gerson and Liam Berryman, of Variant3d and Nelumbo, will be speaking. Both are at the cutting edge in using technology to produce new innovative programs - Gerson’s Variant 3D’s Loop system promises 90% waste reduction, especially encouraging full-on creativity for start ups; Nelumbo, a locally based company relies on a platform technology that applies morphology, shape, or structure to surfaces. Nelumbo’s use of materials science - Metamaterials- professes to only use ‘clean ingredients.’ It will be fascinating to learn what that means.

There’s a lot to parse here, and we’re excited to get started. Ticket holders to our conversation about fashion are encouraged to dress in something they love - this is going to be fun and interesting - and to bring challenging questions for our speakers. With our interactive ‘art’ installations we’ll also lean a bit more about what all the perplexing labels on clothes really mean, and re-discover how touch factors into our material choices. And we are especially thrilled to welcome local artist Maya Eshom to present Textiles on Fire, which engages another one of our senses, and might just have a profound effect on what you purchase next.

Hope to see you on the 11th.

For CWH,

Jil Hales (barndiva) Dawnelise Rosen (FARMpeneurs), Susan Preston (Preston Farm and Vineyard), Amber Mcinnis.

joy on the menu

It’s easy to complain how living online has reduced the number of meaningful interactions we have nowadays. Language has become weaponized at the same time the experience of Covid has made us reticent to express ourselves with ease in casual social settings. Shellshocked by technological ‘progress’ that has been busily re-wiring our brains along with our social systems, “across multiple platforms,'“ it’s hard to escape the sense that we are unwittingly dumbing down real life, losing the visceral connections we so need from one another. Even the concept, the experience of “real’ has become suspect. And don’t get me started about facts. We’re parched, especially from the lack of honest connection that once served as a conduit to genuine community.

Sunday was a group quenching. Almost like a fragrance, joy floated through both gardens as past and present co-workers, industry friends, artists, friends and family gathered to celebrate Barndiva’s 20 years in Healdsburg. Geoffrey, Lukka and I were truly delighted with the memories that everyone shared at the ways the Barndiva experience holds a fond place in their lives.

There was a wonderful randomness to the crowd that made delightful sense. Let’s face it, Barndiva has never known for being just one thing: we started life as a Euro-jazzy bistro, then a gallery, then morphed into a Michelin fine dining restaurant. This year we are back into the studio with the films and soundtracks we love where you can come and dine a la carte, in larger groups, or just slip in for a cocktail or the perfect glass of wine. While the heart of our business has always been our beloved wedding programs, and that hasn’t changed, barndiva has also always been a place for vital community forums, annual collaborative wine tasting events, fund raisers. All the many programs we have invested in over the years to stay engaged, afloat, and relevant have been a reflection of the same desire: to celebrate life as we share conversations worth having around food and drink, social issues. We tilt towards the philosophy that even in spaces where great food and drink and beautiful things surrounding you are deliverable, they are not what you remember years later. It’s the experience. We have created and filled our spaces to reflect what we ourselves would love to discover if we wandered in as a traveler, or frequented as a regular.

Restaurants are the most transactional of high stakes entities, from sourcing - be it from ranch, farm or sea - through the many hands in the kitchen, to that last interaction when someone places a glass or a plate on the space in front of you and invites you to ‘enjoy’. We hide that it’s bloody hard. We delude ourselves but know it will never gets easier. So many pieces need to be in play often at the same time. A sense of urgency is always present. So to see the incredible mix of past and present staff on July 14 was a special pleasure. The same for being able to hug and catch up with artists we have supported, favorite winemakers, spirit makers, farmers, earliest customers, wedding couples… and a good dose of family friends, all commingling, gorgeous drinks in hand, on a perfect summer day in gardens which have grown more beautiful around us over the past two decades.

It was the perfect anniversary gift we could have given ourselves at 20. The flowers were glorious, cocktails divine, (with Scott very much in his element), Legacy libations ‘Steamy Windows’ and ‘On the Beach with Fidel’ brilliantly re-interperted by Charles. All the wines we asked Emily to pour reflected the talents of winemakers who passed through the barn at some point before the start of their careers. David and the team grilled succulent pork carnitas with bowls of vibrant spicy condiments that he and Erik had conspired over, and there were delicious fluatas that alas, I missed, in all the hubbub. Everyone leaving could snag a bag of Lynn’s homemade oatmeal and raisin cookies and vegan fudge brownies.

Thank you to all who attended, and big love to those out of town or who live far away and could not be with us, but sent messages of congratulations suffused with delicious, funny, beautiful, ’I don’t give a shit how this sounds I just gotta say it‘ truly remarkable memories. We love ya.

Above, Chef David Morales and his beautiful family. Below, some of our incredible staff both past and present

Below: Our who’s who of Barndiva’s Healdsburg, then and now. We have been blessed with the friendship of many talented local artists, fine winemakers, artisan spirit makers, & farmers over the years, and seeing some of them on Sunday meant the world to us. A wellspring of emotion at the memories we all shared, of a Healdsburg much transformed. Nothing stays the same, nor should it. But the value of real, personal connections built over many years from the respect and profound enjoyment of the work we have all chosen flowed through the gardens in way we rarely see anymore. The nominal ticket price we asked was all donated to FARMpreneurs, a new non-profit focused on guiding and empowering climate-smart small farmers with education and resources to enable their success. Eat the View writ large.

Stay tuned as we move through the year with more celebrations that speak to our remarkable two decades in Healdsburg!

Jil, Lukka and Geoffrey

As it turns out, Photographer Chad Surmick who shot all these images on July 11, 2024 was at our opening on July 11, 2004, though it would be another decade before we really came to know one another, and quite a few more before I was finally able to hand over photographing all things Barndiva and hand it over to him. He moonlights from an all encompassing job at the Press Democrat and Sonoma Magazine, where he has brilliantly captured the full monte of life in Sonoma County for going on 34 years. Beloved by our staff, his ability to capture a moment without affecting the people living through it, with empathy and artistry, is remarkable. We are so grateful for his talent and his grace. Image above: Chad and dear family friend Mindy and her beautiful family, shot by Lukka Feldman.

Celebrating 20 years on July 14!!

On July 14 we will celebrate a Milestone it’s fair to say we never envisioned achieving - 20 years since the day we opened Barndiva. Over the past two decades we’ve been a local bluesy Bistro Bar, a fine dining Michelin Star Restaurant, hosted thousands of wedding related parties and significant community events, celebrated artists, and worked to strengthen the bonds between farmers and chefs (even helping create a web-site for them). We’ve worked through multiple fires and inventively and safely stayed open through the pandemic. We’ve had the joys of seeing many of our staff grow their families and cherished past employees go on to create wonderful businesses of their own.

It’s been an exhilarating, challenging, frustrating, marvelously engaging life… And on July 14, from 4-6, we're throwing a party to celebrate.

If you are able to come raise a glass with us we will fill it with new versions of the Barndiva cocktail classics, "On the Beach with Fidel" and "Steamy Windows," along with remarkable wines made by vintners who once upon a time polished a glass or two here at the start of their careers. The Chefs will be grilling and the soundtrack will be curated from a 20 year playlist of our favorites. And of course, floral arrangements galore from our farm and some of our slo flower friends.

We know this newsletter goes out to many who live far away, so if you cannot join us on the 14th, please know you have our gratitude. In some way, large or small, you have made this journey with us. Loyal customers, wedding families, farmers, vintners, artists, The City of Healdsburg, and most especially past and present employees - we simply wouldn’t be here without you.

It’s an elusive but significant connection we long to make over food and drink and when it works, that moment when everything comes together, it hits all the high notes of a diva moment . We have never stopped striving for that moment - but even when we miss, we’ve felt the love. Thank you.
 
Follow the link 🥳 to join us. The $10 ticket will go in support of a game changing new nonprofit that builds farm communities -- something that's always been close to our "Eat the View" hearts.
(100% will be donated to FARMpreneurs}  

We hope you can come! 

Of the thousands of images I’ve taken from the day we opened on July 14, 2004 of every aspect of this world we’ve created, at the end of the day what has meant the most to us as a family are the people we have worked alongside, through the good times and bad. This is a stressful industry, with hundreds of moving parts. It takes tremendous effort - physically and emotionally- to stay the course and be true to a vision, especially one as idiosyncratic as Barndiva’s. What has always pulled us over the swells when they got too high has been the dedications of relentless kitchen and front of house teams. When you see the joy of a food or drink moment that has truly landed, especially if that day is significant in a families life, you know why what you do matters.

This no means a complete rogues gallery, just some of the memorable moments we have shared on our way toward writing the barndiva story over the years.

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Coming July 5th ...
Cocktailing in the Gardens begins!

We are excited to be expanding our wine and cocktail menus
so they can be enjoyed in the gardens even if you aren't joining us for dinner

View the expanded cocktail and wine menu, here!

Studio Barndiva is open for dining Thursday - Monday from 5pm.
Walk-ins are welcome, reservations are encouraged.  

We book parties! 8+? Contact us here.

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travel towards a common paradise

We travel in spring not least because age has lent greater understanding of Lao Tzu’s message “to be worn out is to be renewed.” Returning to Stockholm and Copenhagen afforded us great art and food, while time spent with our family in London, Sussex, and Gloucestershire was filled to the brim with ambling walks and resonating talks through fields, meadows, and forests filled with wildflowers and animal life, alive with all manner of sentinent being.

This brief but highly recommendable list is to give thanks, and point vigorously towards the gardeners, writers, artists, chefs, farmers, hoteliers that gave us so much pleasure the past three weeks. We travel to renew friendships and make new ones, but really, we travel for beauty, in all its forms. It’s a huge gift to be alive. Travel is a magical handshake with the world just outside your door wherever you are, every minute of every day. The name of our two favorite art exhibits, The Time is Always Now, and Trust Memory over History, really says it all.

Wherever your plans to travel this season, Carpe Diem.

Tokyorsbar (Prunus x yedoensis) in bloom alongside Lake Brunnsviken, Stockholm. The Bergius Botanic gardens consists of large systematic sections, a wetland, an orchard, trees and shrubs from all over the world. It also holds Victoria House and the Edvard Anderson Conservatory.

Firelei Baëz’s Trust Time over Memory exhibit at the Louisiana Museum. Maps and fragments of book pages emerge from beneath sumptuous lavers of paint “reminiscent of persistent ghosts of the past, haunting the present moment.”

Stages in the life of a Liu Chao Yu Ye, Nelumbo Nucifera, white lotus variety, Edvard Anderson Conservatory, Bergianska Trädgarden (Bergius Botanic Garden), Stockholm.

Firelei Báez, ‘How to Slip Out Of Your Body Quietly’; Trust Memory Over History, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

The standout art for us in London: The Time is Always Now, Artists Reframe the Black Figure, at the National Portrait Gallery, curated by Ekow Eshun, brilliantly showcasing the work of artists from the African diaspora.

In Copenhagen, three stunning exhibits are running alongside the permanent collection at the Louisiana Art Museum, a 30 minute drive from the city along the waterfront. This was art acutely attuned to this moment in history. We were able to spend the day at The Louisiana Museum, wandering from room to room, across the sculpture lawns, lunching beneath enormous Calder mobiles. I’ve long been a fan of @louisanamuseum. Exhibits included an extensive and stunning Chaïm Soutine exhibit of his magnificent portraits, and rooms filled with the mixed media art of Roni Horn spoke to the power of self reverential influences that now invade our waking and sleeping lives. Most thrilling was the premier European exhibition of Firelei Báez, an Dominican-American artist who overlays explosive color and figurative form on colonial maps which speak truth to power: “Confronting historical concepts we have for too long taken for granted.“

Amy Sherald portraits, and far right, Nathanial Mary Quinn, all at The Time is Always Now, National Portrait Gallery, London

Roni Horn, In Dialogue with the Film, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

Roni Horn, The Detour of Identity, Poured Glass, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

Chaim Soutine, The Groom, or The Bellboy, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

Detail, Untitled (Drexciya) 2020, Firelei Báez

Writer Olivia Laing’s new book ‘The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise’ chronicles her response to the pandemic through the restoration of a walled garden in Suffolk which she wisely considers alongside an investigation of real and imagined paradises- a sub-text I find particularly relevant right now. Her talk with Internationally recognized garden designers ( and Daniel Carlson friends, lucky chap) Dan Pearson and Jonny Bruce was the initial reason for our visit to The Charleston Festival, a summer-long celebration of talks and workshops on all things gardening- historic, visionary and possible.

Opened this year by Queen Camilla, long a patron of The Charleston Trust (Bloomsbury in Sussex), it is held on the grounds of the home and gardens of that indefigable Bloomsbury couple Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. A guided tour of their house reveals every corner of the lives they supposedly once lived there, and shared intimately with their Bloomsbury Brethren - Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, and as I learned on the tour, John Maynard Keynes, apparently looking out a second floor window to the pond when he conceived ‘Keynesian’ economic theory. That depressing tidit aside, you can’t help but love these guys, obsessed as they were with philosophical questions, literature in transition between the wars, and the coming impact of modern art. The rooms feel haunted, as well as curiously small for a couple with so many friends with such varied appetites. Virtually every surface is inlaid or overpainted, rooms are chock full with books and canvases. From 1907-1930 they talked, drank, painted, coupled, decoupled, and lived a life of the mind no longer imaginable.

The talk we’d come for, “An Ordinary Paradise,’ was guided by Jonny Bruce, followed by a short but pointed Q & A. I have not yet read The Garden Against Time, but Laing more than held her own with these two rising stars of the international gardening and landscape world. Both of their remarkable careers to date have been at the heart of an ongoing re-consideration of Gertrude Jekyll’s Magiot line between the formal and wild. It’s exciting to watch a fuller understanding of the possibilities that Fergus Garrett has been espousing for decades at Great Dixter, where both Jonny and Daniel Carlson, the guiding light of our journey here at barndiva farm, have spent formative years.

For information on Festival of the Garden which will take place 18-21 of July, go to Charleston.org.uk. Dan (@daniel.carlson.co) and Suzanna Grant are teaching a workshop Friday July 19th “Gardening for Beginners.”

Follow in real time the life of an ‘ordinary’ paradise, Dan Pearson’s farm in Devon, @digdelve; for his many impressive ongoing installations, which include recreating Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackvillle-Wests never completed Delos at Sissinghurst, @coyotewillow.

To keep up with Jonny Bruce, a remarkable writer and brilliant plant consultant we hope to see in Northern California again soon, (among his many exciting projects, he continues his guardianship of Derek Jarman’s garden at Prospect Cottage) @j.bruce.garden.

Preceeding our time at Charleston, Dan and I enjoyed a ramble through the private walled garden at Knepp Estate - the 3,500 acre re-wilding / love child / groundbreaking life project of Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree, which they embarked upon in the mid-1990’s. Its various parts are known as Knepp Wilding Estate, Knepp Castle, Knepp Safari (which makes sense given the size of the project, which controversially re- introduced rare breeds back into the land - you would need to go on safari to see it all).

Here’s the thing about re-wilding: even If your interest in gardening begins and ends with a consideration of no longer mowing your lawn, how we relate to all that’s alive and buzzing in nature - i.e. do we kill it in order to seemingly control it - is an essential conversation to be having right now. The Knepp garden restaurant under the direction of Chef Ned Burrell does wonderful things with the regenerative farm’s animals and produce. Wild range meats we bought at Knepp’s shop adjacent to the restaurant, which we cooked through and devoured at our VBRO house in Firle, was exquisite.

Given Englands historic and ongoing obsession with all things gardening, re-wilding is unsurprisingly a galvazing subject right now. Trying to envision any worldly paradise is no ordinary task, but considerations of Dante aside if we mere mortals are to seek it in this lifetime I am on team Olivia in believing it will be found - can only be found- in the ordinary.

@kneppwilding, @kneppwildingkitchen, @kneppregenfarms, @ned_burrell96, and of course @daniel.james.co for his passion, inspiration, and guidance.

All Images in Eat the View copywrite Jil Hales. Above, off the lanes near Lukka and Dan’s cottage near Tetbury, Gloucestershire; below, fields and gardens near our VRBO house in Firle, near Lewes, East Sussex. Thank you for sharing Anna - your gardens are lovely.

One of our favorite hotels in the world is Ett Hem, which means ‘at home in Swedish.’ All we can say to that is ‘as if.’ Ett Hem defines a quality of hospitality that extends to every piece of an experience you can have here through its art, design, stunning lighting, and ever present in the most delightful and delicious ways, food and drink. Ilse Crawford was the original inspiration for the design ethic back when the hotel was one building, but it is owner, Jeanette Mix, is the force of nature who ensures every vase is full, every candle lit, in room after room and gardens that overflow with moments of delight. The hotel is now two co-joined buildings with original windows and exteriors that date back to 1910. Situated in an elegant residential neighborhood, the truly impressive cross trained staff are unfailingly engaging, informative, and honestly dedicated to the mission. The tasting menu at Ett Hem proved to be our best meal in Stockholm, served in the heart of the open kitchen. @etthemstockholm

In Copenhagen the best dining was found at the Flo Campbell and Michelin Recommended Restaurant Frank, @restaurantfrankcp; @michelinguide; the most memorable at Marv & Ben celebrating life, love, and the joys of travel with new friends Robert and Sam.

We are still huge fans of Sessions Art Club in London, @sessionsartclub.

Hand carved ash vase by the artist, framer, and cabinet maker Emanuele Maria Marchi, a gift to Barndiva from the artist. He can be reached for commissions @ema.marchi

Arne Jacobsen’s Petrol Station, designed in 1938 for Texaco, as a new standard model. Now a class A historic monument, it was never put into production. Skovshoved at the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark

Into the Pink!

Barndiva’s Pink Party 2024: Emily Carlson’s perfectly curated line-up

IT was three house of gliding, weaving, and yes dancing, through gales of laughter and animated conversation mostly (but not all) extolling the beautiful intricacies and differences of bouquet and flavor of the extraordinary rosé being poured in our garden. Sunday April 21 was a group endorphin rush, no kidding. So, Pink Party 2024.

Our gratitude to the wineries who really brought it this year - a wonderful group brought together by our indefatigable wine director Emily Carlson. And our thanks to all our guests who arrived ready to party and continued to lift our spirits for the entire three hours we spent together on Sunday.

Chef Erik Anderson and David Morales sent out Bites as a taste of our new Studio Barndiva a la carte menu, These included our infamous goat cheese croquettes with lavendar honey, Crispy chicken ‘chermoula’, The Gallery Burger Slider, Deviled Eggs, and for the finish Rosé Pâte de fruits.

A huge shout out to our lovely and dear dear friend Dawnelise Rosen, who guided the Corazón Raffle with grace and humor again this spring, and to all who contributed - the winemakers who donated bottles and our guests who raised a good deal of money for this incredible non-profit that has become so essential to the greater Healdsburg Community.

Lukka and Dawnelise, who also helped the crowd ‘award’ best in fashion for both individuals and couple. Winner took home a bottle of bubbly and will receive two tickets to Fête Blanc (tickets on sale May 1)

I was thrilled to work with nursery and plantswoman Misha Vega on the floral installs that filled both gardens - slo flowers grown in Philo at Barndiva Farm and Filigreen Farm, and in Healdsburg at SingleThread Farm, The Longer Table Farm, and up the road at Dragonfly Floral. Happily, Misha will be back for Fête Blanc!

Blog + Newsletter

Plastic? Think Again.

The community gathers for Conversations Worth Having #2 : Trash Talk, February 16th, in Studio Barndiva

Full Disclosure: we initially had great concerns making Trash the subject of our second Conversation Worth Having. But something happened after our first conversation, Gorgeous Garbage, that made the conversation about trash imperative. Of the many things we took away from our first community evening the realization that haunted us, as never before, was that even if we managed to divert more organic waste into making compost and soil, even if everyone we knew got better at recycling, even if these things began to miraculously happen all over the world, humanity would still go on filling the oceans with plastic, building higher and higher landfills of toxic waste. All the things we no longer have use for - our trash - endlessly circling and befouling the globe.

CWH is all about gathering community to have Serious Fun. We want to talk about important issues in a way which enables us to come away from these conversations making better choices, strengthening a commitment to live lighter on the ground. We don’t want to give up our creature comforts. We care about design. We want to live in a world with the ability to surround ourselves with useful, beautiful things. How do we make this compatible with individual actions, taken consistently, that signal true change in the way the social order works?

As life would have it, over 50 years ago I forged a beautiful, lasting friendship that among its many gifts brought a wondrous goddaughter into my life. And as luck would have it - for me and everyone who attended our February 16th Trash Talk - she has made it her life’s work to build just such a near future, or at least the possibility one might exist. we’re talking about businesses that take honoring a healthy ecology and a respect of the earth into every step of their supply chains. We’re talking about the products and the conduits that bring them into our short and precious lives.

Her name is Zem Joaquin. A founding member of Cradle to Cradle, for many years her company Eco Fabulous espoused the philosophy that we did not have to live lives of deprivation to be good global citizens. If we knew where to look, showed extreme care about how and where things were made, we could be as fabulous as we dared. She dared.

For the past five years she has grown an astonishing community of brilliant, innovative leaders- self identified disrupters to status quo supply chains- made of up scientists, inventors, doctors, designers, artists, and producers of all the things we use in our lives. It’s called The Near Future Summit and through it she has become a champion for businesses that “accelerate solutions to improve societal, individual and planetary health.” Dawnelise, Susan, Amber and I did our due diligence and research into how best to position Trash Talk - we toured Recology SF, met with the wonderful Deborah Munk, director of the artist in residence program. We listened to fascinating sustainable producers at a Women Founders Talk at the Ferry Building. We read and researched. Finally, after an edifying three day experience at 2023’s Near Future Summit, Zem guided our choice of speakers who graciously traveled to Healdsburg to talk to a sold out crowd in Studio Barndiva on Friday, February 16 for Conversations Worth Having, #2, Trash Talk.

It was delicious but serious fun, as you know if you attended. If you didn’t, we missed you. Here is a visual taste of this throughly stimulating evening.

Our Speakers: LEFT: Toby Corey, COO of Cruz Foam, a sustainable foam packaging company that sources fully bio degradable materials made from shrimp shells, mushrooms, and recycled paper as an alternative to styrofoam. Cruz Foam was a PentAwards Bronze winner and one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2023; CENTER: Gorgina Alcock, of GaeaStar, a ceramic zero waste alternative to single use plastic cups and vessels made of a clay, water, and salt sourced close to where it is 3’D printed (our CWH branded cups were produced in San Francisco from Sacramento clay); RIGHT: Beth Rattner, a director of the The Bio-Mimicry Institute, who walked us through the essential bridges we must start building between biology and design by advancing the adoption of nature inspired strategies. Highly recommended reading: Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature, by Janine Benyus, who founded the Biomimicry Institute, and The Second Body, by Daisy Hildyard.

ABOVE: Julia Marsh who with her Husband Matt founded Sway, also joined our speaker forum. Sway is a start up whose goal is to harness the power of seaweed to create home compostable replacements for plastic. For their efforts they were the Winners of the Tom Ford Innovation Prize for 2023.

Sway embodies a central premise of circular economies around design that was a take away from the evening: design out waste, keep materials in use, regenerate natural systems. And this: as a consumer, make better choices.

We were proud to have several local businesses who share our concerns about sustainability contribute to this Conversation Worth Having. Formost among them was Little Saint Healdsburg Healdsburg, whose chef, Stu Stalker, provided exquisite bowls of Little Saint Farm Vegetables with spreads of Carrot Tahini w/ dried chili, Cultured Cashew w/ Tomato Chutney, and Green Lentil Hummus. Little Saint’s director of beverage and sustainability, Matt Seigel collaborated with Barndiva’s Scott Beattie on both the spirit and NA cocktails: A Caipirinha made with Novo Fogo Carbon Negative Organic Cachaça, and Rangpur Me Another, our NA cocktail made with Rangpur lime as a cordial, anise hyssop tea, coconut yogurt, and Ritual N/A rum.

For those enjoying wine in their GaeaStar cups, we were honored to serve Delta Wines for Change made by our friends at Brick and Mortar, Alexis and Matt Ioconis. In bringing the climate conversation to the dinner table, Delta addresses greener packaging, reduces their carbon footprint in every aspect of wine making and supply chain choices, and donates 10% of all sales to the Surfrider Foundation, Cool Effect, and groups fostering environmental education- like Conversations Worth Having.

We also wish to thank Hotel Healdsburg’s Circe Sher for hosting some of our speakers and providing a discount for those traveling for the event. Coming soon: GaeaStar cups in the Hotel Healdsburg Spa.

And for anyone who missed the event or just wanted to keep the conversation going the next day, Flying Goat Coffee on center street hosted a pop-up on Saturday Feb. 17th using GaeaStar cups, which they gave away with every coffee sold.

A dinner for our speakers and a limited number of ticketed guests was held after the event in barndiva, which Daniel Carlson and I filled with foraged arrangements from our forest in Philo. We were so pleased he was able to join us for this CWH.

The Conversations Worth Having team is Dawnelise Rosen, director of Farmpeneurs, Susan Preston, of Preston Family Farm; Jil Hales, all things Barndiva, and Amber Keneally who researched and created our medicine cabinet art installation.

It is our goal to keep Conversation Worth Having events small enough so the actual conversation we have after listening to our speakers is forthright and meaningful. To find out about future events, sign up for the Barndiva Blog, Eat the View, or follow us @barndivahealdsburg.