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 tout the abundance of local seasonal floral farmers. The reasons to do so are compelling: Commercial flowers are chemical dependent; shipping them is harmful to the environment, to humans, while it’s no contest which are more beautiful in every way.

@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!

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

Conversations Worth Having #2: Trash Talk!

Hello again.

For those who joined us on November 2 in Studio Barndiva for our first ‘Conversation Worth Having,’ and to all who are reading about CWH for the first time, welcome!  Our goal for this homegrown series is to explore ways to live lighter on the ground, taking our cue from Johanna Macy that “whatever the limitations of our lives, we are free to choose which version of reality – or story about our world – we value and want to serve.”

Our first conversation centered around something we deal with every day - our messy, smelly, garbage. Our hope was that with a simple shift in perspective and purpose, we might come to see garbage transformed into the very fragrance of life: healthy soil in which to grow the food we eat. We loved the group the evening attracted and were energized seeing old friends and making new ones. We are humbled and cautiously optimistic that our first conversation continues to grow, engaging stakeholders across Sonoma County - including supportive elected representatives - who are seeking proactive answers to some of the questions and challenges raised at Gorgeous Garbage.

Ah, but talking about trash is not talking about garbage. Trash can’t be transformed into something life affirming. There is no happy ending here….or so it would seem. So…where to begin?

If we define trash as all the things we throw away, objects we once desired or deemed necessary in our lives that eventually cannot be recycled or re-purposed – there’s no refuting the fact that to some degree we all contribute to global landfills, oceans filled with junk. It’s a deeply depressing thought. Increasingly so when you consider that all those ‘things’ we accumulate over a lifetime may take hundreds of years to ‘disappear,’ and depending on what they were made of leave toxic trails in earth, sea, and sky.

From the outset, we have wanted our Conversations with this community to be empowering, not depressing. But beyond supporting organizations focused on cleaning up the toxic mess we leave in our wake, literally strewn across the globe, we found ourselves asking what changes we could make in our lives right now - alongside simply consuming less - which would provide the creature comforts we desire alongside taking health of the planet into account… making it a priority?

A field trip to tour the facilities of Recology in SF and a thought provoking session with the director of their Artists in Residency Program, the remarkable Deborah Munk, was an eye opener for the four of us. We all learned how we can do better separating our trash to make it easier to recycle things that can be repurposed. But invariably we had to confront the fact that recycling is but a drop in the polluted oceans of a world we keep filling up with single use plastic. We came away from that afternoon convinced we needed to find a better way to present a conversation about trash - one that considered how to change the way we live right now. That conversation needs to start with how we behave as consumers.

We are all inundated, every minute of every day, with invasive information technology re-writing the small print of our DNA on what to aspire to, how we should live. How do we circumvent this complicity of desire instigated by an entire system rigged to make us want to buy, buy, buy? Is it possible to use the power we have as consuming individuals and communities to shape what gets made in the world, before it is created? How do we change the way we ship and carry things from one place to another, through our doors and into our lives?

Perspectiva’s Johanthan Rowson explains this conundrum thusly:

 “Consumerism is unsustainable, unrewarding, and ultimately absurd. Yet it endures because it meets a range of emotional and social needs, and because it is conveniently operational — ‘it works’ or at least it seems to. It is certainly hard to imagine replacing it. And yet we have to sail our imagination in precisely that direction.“

If we could sail our imaginations in that direction, cease transgressing a range of red line ecological boundaries, where would we land?