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

Damn the Torpedoes

If your impulse is to dive under the bed this NYE, close your eyes and just wait for the end of 2020, you are not alone. But there are reasons to pause and even celebrate the milestones, accomplishments, and resilience of this year in particular. While there is abundant evidence that we are making a mess of things as a human race, individually and often collectively we witnessed great forbearance and courage. From frontline essential workers who kept going with empathy and an extraordinary level of care, firefighters who battled blazes across the state, and towns like Healdsburg where shopkeepers and citizens stepped up to keep supporting local businesses, this was a remarkable year of true grit.

And right up there with efforts to ensure our personal survival was the inspiration and focus of Black Lives Matter. Millions marched peacefully to make the point - which should be self evident but sadly, tragically, is still not - that change must come in the way we treat one another. We have much to learn and many bridges to build, but in the face of everything else we struggled with as a country this year, it was a hopeful start.

In raising a toast to the end of 2020, here’s to the things you love, the people, places, work, and passions that kept you going. Hold tight to them. 2021 will no doubt prove another hell of a ride.

The people we worked alongside this year - every single member of staff at Barndiva - many now furloughed - did not falter. We are still here because of them. This was the year we were able to build the most creative and talented team we have ever had - which is saying a lot. Jordan Rosas, our executive chef, lured his sous chef Francisco Aguilera and the inordinately talented pastry chef Neidy Venegas up from LA only months before the first shutdown and despite COVID managed to build an incredible team while forging more relationships with local farmers and purveyors. Jordan crafted menus that satisfied the understandable desire right now for comfort food, yet managed to inject an exciting indication of where he intends to take us. Hats - or toques- off for all the chefs, especially those who lead smaller independent restaurants, that have worked through this dreadful time, fighting for a way of life that transcends any single career.

Glass raised to World Central Kitchen. Support them if you can.

The food they cooked. Comfort dishes like fried chicken sandwiches, hoe cakes, burgers and pastas flew out the door to the gardens and To-Go since April, and hopefully will continue to do so, but Jordan and Neidy still represented the food they love and came to Healdsburg to cook in dishes that were beautifully sourced and an utter delight to the eye, the palate, the soul.

Glass raised to all the farms listed on our menus, in Eat the View and @barndivahealdsburg throughout the year, with a special shout out from Jordan to Kindred Spirits Care Farm and Shemesh Farms

The farm continued to sustain us. Barndiva farm relies on the strong backs of two dedicated individuals with a passion for farming and flowers, Daniel Carlson and Nick Gueli. They tend and harvest our fruit and nut crops (often with friends we rope in to help) and produce the incredible floral arrangements Barndiva is known for, which continued to delight everyone in the gardens all summer long.

Glass raised to Farm to Pantry and it’s is intrepid leader Duskie Estes. Join, and support them if you can.

The Barndiva Gardens allowed us to define safe distance dining on our own terms and in our own style this year. They offered brief respite to all who braved the pandemic and the fires through an otherwise beautiful summer and glorious fall. Not a day goes by we don’t give thanks for them. It was a very conscious decision on our part 16 years ago to design open space in the middle of a town that seemed to have loads of it, filling dining gardens with antiques and local art, herbal and edible floral beds. It may now seem prescient. It wasn’t. We missed the weddings, the collaborative wine events, the anniversary and birthday celebrations and can’t wait for their return, but the beauty of a garden if well loved is that it’s heart keeps beating.

While we were fortunate we did not have to erect a tent on the street to keep going this summer, many did at great cost and difficulty. We greatly appreciate the The City of Healdsburg and The Healdsburg Chamber for encouraging parklets, and for all their other efforts to help keep wine country hospitality alive and well. Staying connected to community is not easy right now, but it’s never been more vital. Independently owned news organizations cast a wide net of interests that can support, expose, and explore stories that affect our lives, day to day.

Glass raised to the incredible reportage and photography from The Press Democrat. From front line reporting on the fires through their continued human interest stories that bolstered local restaurants, farms, and purveyors, they stepped up and it mattered. Subscribe.

Any year that welcomed this little guy into the family can’t be all bad. Just can’t. And while my issues with life lived primarily on Instagram only grew more complex this year, it often made my day to see glimpses of the children we know on social media getting on, growing up, coping. They marched with their parents, cooked for firefighters, contributed to the family labors, continued to educate themselves online. Their remarkable resilience is a testament to youth, but it draws, each and every day, from the time and care we put in as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and beloved friends, even remotely. Here’s to you Carlo. Your big sister LouLou and I can’t wait to take your hand and walk through the gardens and up into the forest together. Nothing to fear there buddy, only a bear or two.

@saverestaurants #staytuned #stayhealthy @stayhealdsburg #healdsburgchamber #eattheview #barndiva #togo #healdsburg #thisishealdsburg #sonomacounty #mendocinocounty #sommtablehealdsburg #sonomastrong #ediblemarinwc #lovehealdsburg @barndivahealdsburg @sonomamag @winecountry @slowfoodusa @socomeatco @chef.jordan.rosas, @spontaneidy, @wckitchen, @independantrestaurantcoalition, @BarndivaHealdsburg, @kindredspiritscarefarm, @shemeshfarms, @FarmtoPantry, @CityofHealdsburg, @HealdsburgChamber, @PressDemo

As the Smoke Clears...

Photo Credit: Mike Lucia

Well it wasn’t fake news, that’s for sure. It took all the resources we could throw at it - with help from across the state and the country - to fight back the very real, swiftly moving, voracious Kinkade fire. Winds were against us, and the terrain made it extremely difficult, but in the end determination, experience and bravery were on our side.

Even the evacuations - widespread, emotionally upsetting, and costly for many - were by any standard known for this kind of calamity remarkable for how well they unfolded. In Healdsburg alone, only 84 residents out of 11,000 refused to leave in order to let the firefighters do their job unfettered. Families, friends and strangers opened their homes; shelters and organizations like World Central Kitchen and Corazón Healdsburg housed the homeless and fed the first responders. Incredibly, thanks in great part to coordinated efforts by Cal Fire and remarkable teamwork between City, Fire and Police Departments, there was no loss of life. How we got through Kinkade as a community, the outpouring of concern and care, is something I hope will not be lost as we eagerly return to our lives in this beautiful place.

 While there is no making light of the destruction, property loss, and fear for life this fire generated, there are larger questions now for those of us picking up where we left off during harvest, reopening our businesses, restaurants, shops, tasting rooms and vineyards. How do we proceed if this is - as it’s being touted everywhere - as ‘The New Normal’?

Normal, as compared to what? California has a wild rugged history we take pride in rewriting every time tragedy strikes. Climate change - call it what you want… something has changed, and drastically - will no doubt bring increased challenges. We have populated out instead of up, increasing our use of fossil fuels, been forced to put our lives into the hands of utilities that are run for profit before safety, mismanaged our forests and strained our water resources. It’s important to take stock, to ask what Northern California can do to mitigate the challenges ahead, but calling something which threatens to turn our beautiful landscape into a disaster movie ‘normal’ doesn’t seem quite right. Is acquiescing the best we can do?

Tip the country, the old saying goes, and whatever crazy thing isn’t tethered will roll down and stop here. My father was fond of this saying even though he came to California of his own volition; the same inexorable drive spurred the gold rush, the film industry, aerospace, tech. I knew nothing about farming when I homesteaded on a ridge in Philo with two small boys three decades ago. Geoff, Lukka and I knew nothing about restaurants when we built Barndiva and naively but passionately joined the farm to table movement. The thing about California and the folks who tend to set up camp here is that – for good or ill – it inspires schemes and dreams that have always found a home in the West.

But it’s important to understand we came into a landscape that has been here long before us. A professor I worked with in film school at UCLA had been burned out of Malibu – in the appropriately named Carbon Canyon- four times. He told me this almost as an aside one evening as we sipped tequila looking out over the chaparral: “It needs to burn, to cleanse itself from time to time.”  The way he saw it he had the choice to get out of the way when that happened or lose what it gave him when it was whole, when the coyotes sang their sad poems and the clean dry winds blew, clearing his mind. That was many years ago. Up and down the state we have built too much, love too much of what we have built to move aside and let it burn, though sometimes it may be out of our control. What is in our control is what we must focus on now.

The rueful headlines generated as we fought the Kinkade fire were meant to sell papers and push likes on social media. While the next sensational headlines have already taken their place there is great concern that several years of fires have reached a tipping point that is going to cause great harm to many sectors of our economy. I don’t believe that in the long run people will stop coming to Sonoma County to visit or to live. Not a chance. Because it is a very good life here indeed, a landscape of extraordinary beauty, a phenomenal food shed, great wines, chefs that cook with passion and purpose. It may well flip our tourist seasons, which would not be the most awful thing. The greater issue is how we, as a larger community, move on.

My family was lucky we had our farm to retreat to when evacuation started in Healdsburg and spread to Windsor and Santa Rosa. When the electricity cut out we were still able to cook by propane. We dined by candlelight, and as a talisman, drank fine California wine. By day we picked the last of the apples, put the gardens to sleep for the winter, cleaned far corners of the barn. Incessantly, we checked Twitter for news. By Tuesday, waiting for the second round of red flag winds, we wandered out to the coast, haunting darkened hardware stores looking for generator parts, restaurants for a hot meal. In the town of Mendocino we ran into so many neighbors from Healdsburg it began to feel like a reunion one hadn’t planned on attending but found, in its satisfying sense of camaraderie, oddly comforting. People draw together in times like these. Then they forget.

We should not forget. As we get on with our lives we should move forward with new resolve to ensure we run our businesses and our homes so they are formed to fit a new paradigm of using less, more wisely. It is time to rethink the manner of all development to come, and the way we are set up to run our local economies. If we are private or public stewards of open land we must do better in managing our seasonally volatile terrain.

Photo Credit: Erik Castro

Some fires will not be preventable in the coming years, for those we must plan as they do in the Midwest for hurricanes or tornadoes. Improve lines of emergency communications, support infrastructure necessary for temporary housing and feeding residents. It is most essential we make sure there is adequate support for first responders - we were only able to contain Kinkade because Cal Fire took a proactive tactic in which evacuation was key, allowing strike teams to focus on making a stand to stop the fires and not have to worry about saving lives.

Crucially, despite the fact that no one in positions of authority or power seems to be held accountable for anything anymore, as taxpayers and consumers we must reconsider how California’s resources are being managed. There is no avoiding the fact that some fires, and it’s looking like Kinkade is among them, are preventable. It is time to seriously consider moving a bankrupt PG&E into public ownership, which would not be without its own problems but a step forward in having safety of the citizenry as its primary concern.

Whether it’s political action or the nuanced changes we must now take as individuals as we approach the ‘New Normal,’ we will only continue to thrive in the coming years if we commit to growing a more pluralistic definition of community, town by town by town, building a citizenry less obsessed with their own version of the good life, more invested in a good life for all, one that educates as it moves every income bracket forward. The smoke has cleared. What do we see?

The entire Barndiva family will forever be indebted to the bravery and talents of the following organizations: Cal-Fire, Central World Kitchen, Corazón Healdsburg, The Healdsburg Police and Fire Department, supported and working with the City of Healdsburg.