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!

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 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.