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!

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.

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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The Best of 2023, Celebrated!

No skirting it, 2023 was a challenging year. It seemed like every time we looked up from from the gardens in Philo or out the windows to a seemingly flourishing Healdsburg, the news of the day brought us up short with yet another human or planetary catastrophe. A reminder, as if we needed one, of how truly fragile life is everywhere. How fortunate we are to live and work how and where we do.

This last post of the year celebrates some of the best moments of 2023 for us, giving props to the people and places who made our year appreciably better, the world we share glow a bit brighter.

Our New Years Resolution: To focus even more on joyful moments like the ones captured here. To build collaborative bridges where and how they are needed.

Thank you for dining with us, throwing a party, planning a wedding, gathering a group of friends for a dinner party, showing up at one of our annual wine events - we so appreciate you! We look forward to showing you how much in 2024!

Diptych: Spring & Winter. Photo: Chad Surmick

Photographing Barndiva in all its many beautiful facets is something I love doing, and rarely entrust with another photographer, which made collaborating with the intuitive and extremely talented Chad Surmick this year an unmitigated joy. Together we captured Barndiva’s life in food, cocktails, wine parties, and studio b dinner parties. The most enjoyable work was a series we conceived for our website landing page - four color-resplendent still-life images of the raw ingredients that informed Eric’s brilliant menus. Our hope was that they brought the food conversation about seasonality home for everyone who visited our website. They were also very much an homage to the farm, to Misha and Renee, who joined us this year in Philo, and to the many many other farmers and fisherman, foragers and gardeners who work with us in the creation of our food and cocktail menus: we are grateful to them all.

Chad and I also had the honor to photograph the men and women whose labors transformed those raw ingredients for a B&W portrait series celebrating our 2023 Michelin star.

Barndiva’s Beverage Director Scott Beattie, Bar Manager Charles Rodenkirch and their team rocked the cocktail program this year with creations that lifted our spirits and then some. These were inventive, intriguing, satisfying and absolutely gorgeous cocktails. The bar team also maintained a weekly floral and herbal ‘garden’ for the bar (shout out to Buck), most of it from our farm, that took guests breath away (and invariably cellphones out). Through Scott’s long and legendary career he has had an indefatigable interest in everything growing around him - always with an eye toward how it might end up in a cocktail.

Our cocktail classes were also a highlight of the year, and we embraced gorgeous NA cocktails like never before. A stellar year in drink, with exciting plans for next year.

To learn more about the classes, read the wonderful article written about them in Edible Marine Magazine. Scott can be reached directly scott.beattie@barndiva.com,

We re-launched Studio B events this year with a community series called “Conversations Worth Having” hosted with three of the most formidable women - Dawnelise Rosen, Amber Keneally and Susan Preston. CWH has been a lifeline for us, and we were deeply gratified for others as well, judging by the success of Conversation #1, Gorgeous Garbage. The idea for the series flows from a long held desire to share what we’re reading, listening to, and thinking as we try to live more lightly on the ground in our lives and various businesses. We hope to introduce some of the fascinating people we are meeting on this journey, explore issues that affect us here in Healdsburg, across Sonoma County, and beyond. (No surprise, they are interconnected.)

By opening these conversations to a community we love, gift -wrapped in art, incredible speakers and - this being Barndiva - kick-ass cocktails and wines, we hope to make manifest the changes we long to see in the world. Our only ground rules for the series is that they be fun, and that there is no place for judgment as we explore some pretty complex subjects. Do we believe change starts with small and well considered actions? Yes, we really do.

Next up: Trash Talk, just scheduled for February 16th. We’ve got some incredible speakers coming to town for a panel led by the eco fabulous Zem Joquin, founder of The Near Future Summit, which Dawnelise and I were thrilled to attend this year. To hear about CWH first, Follow us @barndiva.com, or sign up to receive barndiva.com/blog. We will not share your information with anyone.

Above: Conversations Worth Having, A paint and distressed paper canvas by Susan Preston; Photo: Chad Surmick

At the end of the day, everything we do comes down to fostering a genuine feeling of joy in people, and nothing we do comes even close to producing more of it than our weddings and wedding rehearsal dinners. The connections you feel from seeing generations of family and friends gather is electric. Weddings always generate the best moments of our year - they keep us alive in more than ways than one. For that we give thanks to all our wedding couples and their families, who chose Barndiva this year.

Looking forward to 2024, we are so pleased to welcome Susan Bischoff to lead our wedding team - she is already busy with tours and fielding inquiries from across the country. As we say adieu to 2023, a truly grateful thank you, with big love, to our wonderful Natalie Nelson, who after ten years at the helm of Barndiva Weddings has started an exciting new life with her growing family in Utah.

barndiva.com/events

Flowers have always been central to our lives, no surprise they are integral with our farm program, our weddings, and front and center in every dining experience we create. We are hopeful that the increasing world wide support we’re seeing for regenerative farming for food production will also inspire a similar approach when it comes to growing flowers. Because of our many weddings and private events we are able to recommend flower farms and floral designers who source this way - but it’s up to all of us to ask our favorite markets and flowers shops to support slow flower farming! The only critique we hear is “they don’t last as long,” and the most honest response is ‘ask yourself why.’

These are some of our favorites farmers and floral designers we follow near (to source) and far (for inspiration!) : @dragonflyfloral; @apple_farm_flowers; @longertablefarm; @singlethreadfarmstore; @frontporchfarm; @filigreenfarm; also: @daniel.james.co ( Daniel Carlson still directs the orchard & floral programs at our farm in Philo, now alongside the prodigiously talented Misha Vega); @nicamille; @cultivatingplace; @digdelve;@pithandvigor; @jimiblake_huntingbrookgardens; @clairetakacs

What does it take to be part of a ‘real’ restaurant food community? Michelin is clearly the most vaunted, then there’s James Beard and Slow Food, all of which seek to honor talent, innovation, hard work and tradition. But we are all businesses, from Michelin to the local diner. When we lose restaurants that nurtured talent and supported an ethical approach to food sourcing and labor, their absence is sorely felt. We will especially miss dining at Matt Orlando’s Amass in Copenhagen and The Ethicurean in Barley Wood. Both were truly inspirational in the dining experiences they presented.

We did dine in some remarkable restaurants this year, and want to give a special shout out to two that reminded us why we got into this business in the first place. Sessions Art Club in the Clerkenwell section of London (thank you Linda & Nick) is magical, from the moment you find the semi-secret door and they buzz you in, take a wonky elevator and arrive to a curiously elegant great room where history has it Charles Dickens once dined as a law clerk. The cocktails are unfussy, brilliantly balanced, perfectly served (very cold), the food a delight. The staff both nights we dined were absolutely brilliant - a gleam in the eye of jollity primed with the smooth joy of being part of something very special. We can’t wait to return.

The second memorable experience was at a ‘new’ french bistro on the quieter end of Main Street in Venice, Ca, an area I know well as I raised my first two children up the street in Ocean Park. Full Disclosure: one of those children is a co-owner of Cou Cou, Formerly Chez Tex. Jesse and Hayley Feldman started out with no experience in restaurants, though both are world class diners and share a passion for how design affects our ability to open ourselves to a shared experience. There is no gas on property, all food is cooked by wood fire, and the addition of a cocktail license has brought classy cocktails to their bright, locally sourced seasonal menus. Cou Cou perfectly captures the nostalgia and comfort of a French bistro - the kind where you want to order everything on the menu. Those menus will grow exponentially in the next few months when Hayley and Jesse open a second CouCou in WeHo.

Pay them a visit in the New Year, and order a “Bitches of the Seizeme, a Barndiva classic, on us. We know they make it correctly because, for all those Isabel Hales fans out there, she helped set up the Cou Cou bar when they first opened.

Stay healthy, sane, engaged with all the good things going on in the world.

Hope to see you in 2024!

CWH #1. For the love of soil

OK, Full disclosure:  garbage is not gorgeous. Even as we choose the name “gorgeous garbage” to launch our Conversation Worth Having series, we assumed it would be an uphill climb to find an audience. But here was our dilemma: how to entice the community to come talk about food waste… all that messy swill of stinky stuff we toss into the bin every day of our lives, unloved. How to make it lovable, and, yes, covetable?

Our hope was to encourage nothing less than a profound shift in perspective. To begin to see organic waste as a sensous entity, one we literally cannot live without. To break through to a realization that it can be transformed into

• Soil for food

• A way to reduce carbon emissions so we can stay on this planet a little longer

• A way to create a truly circular green economy - I mean how many opportunities do we have as individuals to contribute to that?

As it turned out we needn’t have worried. With this cast of speakers and the incredible audience who showed up we could not have asked for anything more to introduce CWH. Heartfelt thanks to Brock, Tucker, Eric, and Ariel for their wisdom and their humility – and for making their remarkable work lives accessible in delicious and meaningful ways we can all enjoy… We’re talking OAEC, Jackson Estate Culinary Gardens, Radio Coteau & County Line Vineyards, Healdsburg Local Government!

Above: The incredible group of farmers, educators, community leaders, diners, and the just plain curious who gathered for Conversations Worth Having #1, “Gorgeous Garbage,” held on Nov. 2 in Studio B.

The Indomitable Brock Dolman, Occidental Arts & Ecology 

Ariel Kelley, Mayor, City of Healdsburg

Tucker Taylor, Director, Jackson Estate Culinary Gardens

Eric Sussman, Radio Coteau/ County Line Vineyards, setting up the Find Your Inner Dog scent box game.

James Gore, Sonoma County Supervisor

Deb Fudge, Councilwoman, Windsor

Josh Whiton, Founder @makesoil.org

Daniel Sonnenberg, OAEC, with our “Look, Smell, Play” interactive soil exhibit

 To supervisor James Gore, Josh Whiton, founder @makesoil.org, Mimi Enright and Xinxi Tan from Zero Waste, the lovely Daniel Sonnenberg from OAEC … Thank you all for being so supportive of this conversation. We look forward to a viaduct of information around compost planning for Healdsburg (and Sonoma County) that is actionable. We will pass it all on!

Barndiva canapé starred Tucker’s produce- including his infamous crosnes, Japanese radish, ice lettuce

From the cellers we poured our own label 2015 Barndiva Syrah, graciously made by Eric Sussman

Scott Beattie’s Compost Cocktail, Tops n’ Tails: beet and carrot scrap shrub, lemon rind soda, cool pickled beet and carrot garnish, with carrot top green sprigs. Offered N/A or with Square One organic vodka

Most of all we wish to thank everyone who showed up to have this conversation with us. We were bowled away by your engagement and your on-point questions.

One of our mission statements is to make these great nights of discovery and information. Curiosity is our muse, urgency our engine.

When we decided to foist this series on our unsuspecting neighbors here in Healdsburg, we never dreamed we would re-discover community. We thought we were going in search of something we’d lost, when it was here all the time.

@barndivahealdsburg will announce future conversations as soon as dates are finalized. And no, we haven’t stopped talking about garbage! This is such a perfectly delicious problem for our community to solve that even as we move on to the next conversation we promise to stay connected to the many opportunities the evening presented.

 Eat the view!

Jil, Dawnelise, Susan, Amber

Gratitude Dining after the event with our speakers, in the Studio B garden
(yes Virginia, holiday parties can still be booked at the Orchard table, weather permitting, but they are cozier inside).

Credits for CWH #1: Gorgeous Garbage

Food is Medicine : aka the palpable presence of alternatives… our irreverent homage to Joseph Cornell by way of Dr Seuss.

Concept: Jil Hales; Artwork: Susan Preston; Soil: OAEC; Veg Starts: Barndiva Farm, Tucker Taylor; dehydrated Veg Scraps: Dawnelise Rosen, Chef Syd.
Vegetable Starts: Barndiva Farm, Tucker Taylor Jackson Culinary Gardens. 
Corks chosen by barndiva wine director Emily Carlson from bio dynamic vineyards. 
Execution: Geoff Hales, Chef Syd, and Daniel Sonnenberg (thank you Marcos for the silver shelf!)

Information Tower : our what we are reading, watching, who we are following ongoing resource compilation, compiled and designed by Amber Keneally. (see link above)

Look, Smell, Play! : Our interactive garbage to compost to soil installation, executed by Daniel Sonnenberg.

All Photography: Chad Surmick

For all those who played the ‘find your inner dog’ scent game, contact us if you guessed ‘compost’ was #3!

@barndivahealdsburg