The 'official' Pink Party Album

A familiar complaint we’ve all heard around town of late is about the dearth of genuine community in Healdsburg. It’s a grumbling refrain that holds particular meaning from anyone that remembers Healdsburg when the words quaint and small town charm could be said about it with a straight face. The usual culprits are a mind boggling collection of new businesses, hotels and restaurants that have opened over the past few years to capitalize on the town’s ‘success’ as a destination location, but the quickening pace of our lives, and the emotional distancing of technology certainly contribute to the disconnect at the heart of the discontent.

The way we see it, community isn’t stagnant, is should and must accommodate change. It’s a layered human construct that is constantly telegraphing across the web of seemingly random connections we make with the people whose paths we cross as we go about our lives, working, shopping, dining out, walking the dogs or, yes, coming out on a beautiful afternoon to taste wine.  Of course It can be locational, found in the church hall, a sporting event, working alongside neighbors at the local food pantry, but we are creating it all the time, with every interaction.  It starts with a desire to connect, is sustained by courtesy, respect, and common interests, and, if you are lucky enough to find them, shared goals.

If the only goal is to make money, if you don’t truly care about your product, respect or spend the time getting to know the people you live and work alongside, you cannot sustain genuine community. Especially in small towns like ours, relationships reverberate in subtle ways when you pay attention; good will resonates whether you’ve known someone for years, or just met them by chance. Community can happen in an afternoon – as it did on Pink Party Sunday. The thing that makes it real is the genuine presence you bring to it, no matter what role you play.

The winemakers who gathered in our gardens to pour their Rosé’s at this years Pink Party, who charmed and educated the guests who came to meet them and admire their craft, are a community with like minded goals, just as the slow flower farmers who grew the blooms we sourced to help create dazzling displays, and the food purveyors like Chef Mike Degan, The Healdsburg Bagel Company, Chef Anderson. Our wonderful staff here at Barndiva, the amazing Corazón crew lead by Ashley Mauritson, Alexis Ioconis who steered the wine ship for us for this years Pink on top of everything else she does, Amber Kneally who sewed our Pink Party Pirate flag at the last minute simply because we asked her to - these are the members of our community we depend upon who bring quality and meaning to our lives as we work through them. Dawnelise and Ari Rosen, last seen leading a joyous if bittersweet progression at the closing of campo fino with patrons who very much considered themselves a community - came to help raise funds and awareness for Corazón, the community organization they founded that focuses upon strengthening families at the very heart of hospitality in Healdsburg. Community is everywhere you choose to see it, and engage with it.

I want to give a special shout out to the many beautiful women in their pink dresses who danced together at the end of the day, as the rest of us looked on beneath the wisteria enjoying the same breeze and listening to the music. It felt so good just to be together and celebrate spring, and the abundance of Healdsburg.

The fabulous Pink Party Line Up for 2023:

@bloodrootwines, @almafriawines, @prestonfarmandwinery, @raftwines, @mauritsonwines, @idlewildwines, @jolielaidewines, @drinkseppi, @cruxwinery, @amistavineyards, @bricoleurvineyards, @brickandmortarwines, @stephane.vivier.wines, @reevewines, @daniel_sonoma, @handleycellars, @flowerswinery, @roedererestate, @grosventrewines, @breathlesswines, @dunstanwine, @tberkleywines, @marinelayerwines, @scharffenbergercellars, @hirschvineyards, @domainesott, @matanzascreekwinery, @liocowineco, @cruesswine, @leosteen_wines, @theharrisgalleryandwine, @ernestvineyards, @rootdownwines, @county_line_vineyards, @copainwines, @drinkkally, @altaorsowinery, @captûrewines, @untiwines.com, @guv_hales, @natalienelsonkirby

Special Friends who always bring it: Chef Francisco, Alexis Ioconis, Ari Rosen & Geoffrey Hales, Scott Beattie (in search of a cocktail no doubt), the irrepressible Susan Preston, Lukka Feldman in from London, Releigh and Asijah, Barndiva’s wine Director Emily Carlson, Eric Sussman, Dan Fitzgerald, Jil Hales & Chappy Cottrell, Dawnelise Rosen, and another belle of the ball in her pink frock, Birdy.

Our thanks to all the winemakers for donating to the raffle benefiting Corazón.

Healdsburg has an abundance of vital community organizations that welcome new energy - join one!

All photographs by the incredible Chad Surmick can be shared. TM us @barndivahealdsburg. And heads up: If you are one of many who missed attending when The Pink Party because it sold out so early, consider signing up to receive our newsletter, Eat the View, so you are first to know about future public events. we’ve got some doozies up our sleeves.

Tickets are now on sale for Fête Blanc, August 20.

@dragonfly_floral, @singlethreadfarm, @longertablefarm, @filigreenfarm, @frontporchfarm, @whodoestheflowers!

@airick72, @franciscoa_, @healdsburgbagel, @chefdegan

Love thy Neighbor

80% of all species living on earth are anthropoids, they are the largest phylum in the animal kingdom. These include bees, ants, spiders, butterflies, and moths. Live on a farm and they are happily your daily companions, going about their business, as you go about yours. Though I was admittedly once a diehard city girl who would quickly default to ‘is this a predator?’ toward anything unknown (whether it walked on two legs or crawled on four) I’ve come to love the muck and tosh of farm life. Yes, it has taken me years to stop killing spiders – who for the most part do not bite – but I now marvel at the beauty to their balletic grace, the cunning in their designs for living.

And I am not squeamish. Or so I thought, until one sunny winter day just after the recent torrential rains when Dan, Nick and I began to tackle the ¼ acre of ‘treasures,’ aka trash, that had grown to fill a neglected corner by the front gate. A few minutes after we started, Dan lifted the edge of a rotting tarp and a family of centipedes scurried out, followed by a score of creatures, all webbed feed and slimy exoskeletons. I jumped back, fully creeped out. Dan, on the other hand, was positively joyful. He immediately set about transporting them, giggling like a child as he ran the ten feet to the edge of the forest where he deposited them to a new life.  It went on: Beneath a pile of warped ply from some long forgotten project he found blue tailed skinks “beautiful!”; in the grassy muck around an old stove, several alligator lizards. Then beneath a stack of rotting ply, for Dan, a treasure trove of “three species of Salamander!”

Revulsion is the act of stepping back from something, it is generally instinctive, rather than rational. Like all forms of prejudice, it usually comes from ignorance. As the sun crept beyond the canopy of trees casting us in shadow, it was hard to miss the difference between what Dan and I were experiencing. If I have learned anything in over three decades dry farming organically up here on the ridge it’s that while insects may make strange bedfellows, they make grand partners in building the layers of biodiversity our farm has needed to survive and flourish. Why then, do most of us treat things that crawl out from under rocks- arguably where we all started - differently than those that float from flower to flower? We anthropomorphize some creature and not others, easily finding connection to ‘anything with a face,’ but repulsed by slithering snakes and slimy bug eyed creatures. Even within a species most of us hold to established standards of coherent beauty. Why else do we more frequently ooh at the butterfly, ignore the dusty moth circling the porch light on a summer night?

Dan is still, happily, the director of our big farm programs in Philo, though he now delegates from London most of the year, coming back to do a big push in winter and again in fall. He is especially wonderful at reminding us to always take a closer look at the impact our lives up here have upon the surrounding ecology of this ridge; reminding us that as form often follows function, so too beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This trip he gifted us with the knowledge that its often the unseen life on the farm, that over time contribute essential layers necessary to healthy biodynamic structure. These creatures happened to be feasting in the dump, but it is the feces of arthropods which are the basis for the formation of soil aggregates and humus, which physically stabilize soil and increase its capacity to store nutrients. Ecosystem engineers.

As for all those piles of trash we’ve kept around that we no longer have hopes of someday using, we are going to take another look at them before we pay someone to haul them off to yet a bigger trash pile we just can’t see. Before he left he urged us to listen to a John Little Podcast - John, who founded the Grass Roof Company.Co.UK (@grassroofcompany), in 1998, has been a seminal force in both macro and micro thinking around fly-tipping (dumping) and how it adversely affects biodiversity.

If  you are in the least bit curious how to come to meaningful terms with all the junk that invariably surrounds us - how to cultivate your living situation in ways that encourage and protect wild life so it might thrive alongside you, how to cultivate plants that will more easily adapt to our changing climate, I recommend spending some time with this gentleman. Choose any podcast that strikes your fancy - and look at his website. John Little is a marvel rethinking how we live, especially in cities and towns, where every day we pass refuse in both private and public spaces that could be transformed to be pleasurable, have purpose. He grows things in unimaginable places, with very little resources beyond his ingenuity and vision - even top soil has a relegated place in his world. His work in the private and public spheres offers imaginative and inexpensive ways to create remarkable gardens and landscaped installations. So much to learn here.

And yes, upon much reflection, the skinks were pretty awesome.

There is breathtaking beauty everywhere you look in Anderson Valley this winter, and it’s easy to see while passing vineyards which are dedicated to cultivating more than grapes. Handley Cellars Vineyards, always a Barndiva Family Favorite, is particularly stunning. And check out a recent @barndivahealdsburg post about Navarro’s remarkable annual approach to sheep season, captured during a joyful visit with the incomparable Sophia Bates.

Finally, We’d be remiss in closing this newsletter failing to mention how pleased we were with the turn-out for our Book & Film Event on Sunday January 22, which launched Studio B in 2023. It exceeded our expectations. Thanks to the help of Copperfields Bookstore the authors sold a great many books and fully half the sold- out audience stayed for the end of Elizabeth Falkner’s documentary “Sorry We’re Closed” which resumed after a probing, and frank Q & A about the state of the restaurant industry. A difficult conversation at times, it was a necessary one for anyone who loves dining out and is having trouble getting their heads around why and how it has become so expensive. We were proud to have helped facilitate it. Hopefully, there will be more to come like this for Studio B!

Our thanks to Heather Irwin and the Press Democrat ( @pressdemo, @biteclubbeats) for advance publicity for the event; to @shoplocalhealdsburg, @heatherfreyer, @jillkd, and our good friend @alexisconis for their IG follow ups - which we are admittedly dreadful at - so many reached out to say they were sorry to have missed the event but wanted to attend the next one!

And of course Big Love to our incredibly talented divas - Tanya Holland (@mstanyaholland, #californiasoulcookbook) who started the ball rolling, Jennifer Reichardt (@duckdaughterjj, #thewholeduckcookbook), Elizabeth Falkner (@cheffalkner, #sorrywereclosed) and the inimitable Duskie Estes, who guided the Q & A so deftly. (@farmtopantry).

We’ll leave the last word to @shophealdburg and their succinct take-away from the afternoon: #eattheview!

The Fête Blanc Album!

This is a photo album and the following images speak in a language we all understand. Our first Fête Blanc since 2019, it was lovely to gather once again to celebrate fine white wines and the people who make them. We wish to thank our guests for the delightful energy they brought to our gardens on Sunday. Fête Blanc draws incredible talent from across Sonoma and Mendocino; it attracts one of the most discerning and engaged group of wine drinkers we see in the year. But boy, do they know how to enjoy an afternoon. You brought the shade friends. Thank you for joining us. Onward!

Our executive chef is Erik Anderson, our pastry chef is Neidy Venegas. Natalie Nelson directs our event team. The exquisite floral arrangements in both gardens were grown in Philo at Barndiva Farm, under the direction of Nick Gueli.

Over $2,000 was raised at Fête Blanc through an auction of wine donated by participants toward our continued support of Healdsburg’s Farm to Pantry.

We love this image. It speaks to both our history and our future, and the intersection is a good part of why we continue to love this community. The gentleman on the far right, Daniel Fitzgerald, was Barndiva’s very first bartender, his sister Emily, our very first server. The man sitting next to him, Sam Bilbro, also worked behind our bar quite a few moons ago. It gives us immense pleasure to welcome them both back for Fête Blanc as singularly talented winemakers - of Daniel Wines and Idlewild, respectively. This story of connection was repeated through the gardens on Sunday. As for the three rogues on the left, well, hopefully they are here to stay for a while. The renown mixologist and gleaner Scott Beattie, also a dear friend of many many years, now directs our beverage program. He is flanked by Barndiva’s newest bartenders, Charles and Daniel. The beat goes on.

All Rights Reserved Barndiva, LLC. Photography: Chad Surmick and Jil Hales.

Remembering Sally Schmitt

The Philo Apple Farm, looking towards Hendy Woods and Greenwood Ridge

We talk about farm to table a lot these days without understanding the back breaking, thoroughly unglamorous hours of work it takes to accomplish anything close to that profound connection. Or, for that matter, loom to sweater or clay to vase… instead we covet power and the goodies that come with money and recognition as proof of some notion of success that increasingly seems to come and go with the season. But the deeply felt rewards of following your intuition and putting in the time and work because you care was Sally Schmitt’s genius, and clearly something she taught her children. In her case it came in the form of taking honed traditional values and making them ‘true’ to her own time and her family’s ongoing needs. It’s very old fashioned to think of character in this way - in the sense that True North is philosophical as well as directional. Sally Schmitt didn’t set out to be a trendsetter for so many of the things we’ve come back around to valuing today - she lived those values. And it was bloody hard work until it became easier. 

Sally, who passed away peacefully at The Apple Farm on March 5, was the formidable mother of my good friend Karen Bates who moved to Philo with her husband Tim the same year, 1984, that we bought our farm on Greenwood Ridge.  Whenever I saw Sally after she and Don had sold the French Laundry to Thomas Keller and re-located to Anderson Valley, first to Elk and then the Apple Farm, I was still hopping on planes from London every summer to get my family back to our ‘work-in-progress’ farm. Always in her apron, moving slowly but with purpose, she’d stop and break into a beatific smile when she saw me and the kids. I like to think this was because she knew I loved her family, but it also just might have been that she knew I connected all my crazy dots about life in a way that also revolved around family, creativity, hard work. Our backgrounds could not have been more different except that I had a mother for whom nothing was impossible if you believed it was the right thing for you and your family. So. A kindred spirit. 

In interacting and observing the world Sally built with her children over the years, I saw how much it centered around family, and food. Specifically food that exemplified Brillat-Savarin’s ideal that all great dishes must ultimately come down to satisfying ‘le goût du revenez-y’ – the taste you come back to. Savarin never established where this longing started – in childhood perhaps – but it has always rung true. And Sally’s cooking nailed it.  

The last time I saw Sally for any length of time was at her granddaughter Rita’s splendid wedding to Jerzy. Never the social butterfly and moving more slowly by then, she was happy to watch her family celebrate around her - she did not move far from her chair that day – and I took the opportunity to keep her company. We talked about the whole pig we roasted per her recipe at Barndiva for Grandson Perry’s wedding and the extraordinary dancing at Grandson Joe’s wedding at The Apple Farm years before that – Joe’s sons now running wild in the orchards below us. At some point I remember her turning in her chair to look me straight on and ask how things were going “at that barn of yours in Healdsburg.” I shook my head, said something like “I may have bitten off more than I can chew,” expecting some pithy Sally response like “take smaller bites.” What she said, simply, was ‘You know what you are doing.’ I didn’t fully. Not that day, and not now – do any of us? We hope and too often our hubris allows us to think we know, but do we? 

But thinking back now it wasn’t that she thought I “knew” in the sense of planning for a tomorrow that might never come, especially in the crazy world of hospitality and restaurants, but in Montaigne’s sense that “the greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.” Staying true, somehow, to that indefatigable North Star even as it moves across the sky of your life, through loss and success, joy and sadness. Just willing to put the work in.  

There’s a wonderful line in Richard Powers The Overstory – one of many in that great book – that seems applicable here: “As certain as weather coming from the west the things people know will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.”

I’ve had trouble learning humility. My mother warned me of this. But as a woman in a man’s world, being fierce was – as I saw it and built my life – the only way forward without being compliant to anyone’s version of the status quo, or, crucially, becoming complicit in supporting values that were morally reprehensible. I am still learning to lean into humility.  But I do know it starts with looking. 

I am not in the habit of making predictions but here’s one I am sure of: Six California Kitchens is going to be a classic. Troyce, yet another talented grandson, has done a magnificent job melding the old photographs of Sally’s life with images of dishes she and daughters Karen and Kathy cooked and styled at The Apple Farm.  There is no spiffy cookbook artifice here - gorgeously photographed dishes you can’t hope to recreate - just wonderful recipes, and the story of one remarkable woman’s life.

If you find yourself heading up to Anderson Valley and can cage a reservation to stay at The Apple Farm to experience a real small family farm, do not hesitate, and try to talk to Tim about apples. The extremely talented Perry Hoffman, now working with his Uncle Johnny at the Boonville Hotel can cook you dinner there - the best Anderson Valley has to offer. And don’t miss stopping off first for some wine and cheese at Pennyroyal Farm, where if you are very lucky you may get a glimpse of granddaughter Sofia if she’s not off on some mountain above Navarro tending their sheep.

Life is not easy to get through unscathed, but the trait of character that gets one through it – at least to the extent you are satisfied with the life you’ve led at the end of it - is something I’m pretty sure Sally Schmitt figured out.

What a legacy. RIP Sally. 

Return of The Pink Party (and other stories you need to hear)

We hope this Eat the View finds you well, your spirit intact and exciting plans for gathering with friends, extended family, and co-workers gaining momentum. It is so great to be out together again, maskless, re-connecting. While It’s been beautiful here in Sonoma and Mendocino - cold, sunny, green - we need more rain and the News of the World continues to be challenging (to say the least). Call it the new normal - but all we know for sure living in these wonderful, confounding, delicious, too often heartbreaking times is that life is so much better trying to make sense of things with other people who are passionate about food and wine and design and gardens. we hope like us you are intent on rooting out genuine storylines that are ongoing and real, if slightly fantastical. We have been largely silent of late on the blog front for a reason, taking stock and getting ready for a spring… of emergence. We’re ready now.

This Eat the View contains three events we want to tell you about that capture what we’re feeling and planning right now: the first is a deep dive dinner party Wednesday, March 9; the second is a scoop for Eat the View readers; the third a temptation around libations unlike anything we’ve done (or seen) before.

Read on. And thank you for your continued support!

DEEP DIVE DINNER PARTY Our wine director the inimitable Sally Kim, formerly of the Delfina Restaurant Group will be curating a seasonal series of unusual wine maker evenings in the elegant Studio Barndiva this spring kicking off 9th March with a Deep Dive into the best of Sonoma Coast’s wines, starting with the legendary Littorai vineyards. Biodynamic grape growers, farmers, winemakers and educators Ted & Heidi Lemon will be joining us, pairing their wines with a dynamic five course menu created by Barndiva’s Chef Erik Anderson. $350 per person, all inclusive.

CLICK HERE FOR THE MENU, WINE PAIRINGS, AND A SEAT AT THE TABLE.

THE SCOOP: Tickets have quietly gone on sale, online as of today, for the long awaited return of The Pink Party on the 3rd April, 11am – 2pm. Our 40+ winemaker Sunday extravaganza (you know if you’ve been there) is a glorious collaboration and celebration of over 35 local wineries, with winemakers in attendance serving their finest local Rosé’s accompanied by delectable, Barndiva canapé & hors d’oeuvres. Served beneath the flowering wisteria and mulberries of our gardens- with Nick Gueli this year doing the honors of our instagram floral wall- you won’t want to miss this launch of the season. Be advised dear Eat the View Readers, tickets will disappear.

CLICK HERE

THE TEMPTATION:. if you follow us @barndivahealdsburg you may know that come April 1st - no fool he- the legendary mixologist Scott Beattie will be joining us as our Beverage Director. Future Eat the Views will no doubt have to be sub-titled Drink the View in future as Scott, after a short honeymoon, puts the finishing touches on an exciting new cocktail service to be followed with a return to dining at the bar.

And we are pleased to offer the very first series of Scott Beattie Cocktail Classes at Barndiva. These will be lively, full sensatory experiences where Scott will teach you how to make classic and original cocktails using the finest spirits, elixirs and organic fruit material, much of it forged from the Barndiva Farm. Classes start at $150 per person and can be booked for 6 – 24 ‘students’ in a spectacular classroom otherwiseknowas The Studio Barndvia Gardens.

Learn how to make great seasonal cocktails from the man who wrote the book on it.

DIRECT BOOKING ONLY: 707 4310100.