whose farm? whose table?

Soil conditions and water rights and land history and mountain views and new food model visioning and lemon balm savoring and greenhouse wondering and driving and walking and bike path lusting and dinner dreaming.  I spent the day running around the Roaring Fork and Crystal River valleys looking at land and talking with ranchers and learning this land and the people of it. 

Friends, we’re ready.

Something shifted for me today about internalizing the fact that there are people who are aligned with the vision of The Guest House and prepared to manifest and enact that vision.  There is a farm and there is a table ready and our work right now is about where it is and what we shall put on it. 

And it got me thinking….a lot about land and table and even the language we are using right now about the connection of our food and land.  Jason – a rancher in the valley – and I were talking today about how this innovative model we are envisioning is actually the old model – one in which our table was intimately connected with our farm which meant that in cold seasons we ate boiled potatoes and dried meat for several weeks out of the winter.  A table in which we only ate food that was actually able to grow on our land, in our climate.  We’ve learned a lot about food and cooking and preserving and fermenting in the last one hundred years which makes us more capable of serving a varied, beautiful table even in the winter months.  But we say the phrase “farm to table” still a bit too easily.  Its been a growing step for us all for sure – a moment of coming back from an ongoing cycle of industrialized food in which eating food that comes from a place that we can actually name and locate on a map is a revolutionary act.  But we’re never content to stop asking questions, the next question, the new wonder about our world and how we can do better by it. 

And the next questions I’m asking are Whose farm?  And Whose table? 

Which farmer grew that sorrel and how did he end up on that land?  what was the history of that land before she landed there?  How far back has someone been cultivating it and what was it before then?  What makes it possible legally and financially for it to be a food producing plot now?  What makes it hard?  And where is that table?  Who built that table and who is invited to it?  Is it in a home or in a restaurant and if in a restaurant, why have they chosen farms over industrialized producers?  What is the inspiration for joy at that table?  And who serves it?  What are people excited about as they come to that table?  Who are they with and what are they celebrating? 

Maybe these are too many questions for dinner.  Certainly more than I asked before I sat down this evening with my lovely friends and wine.  But this is where we’re heading.  We’re hungry for more than just calories.  We’re hungry for compelling ways of living in this world and relating to this land and caring for each other.  And we’re setting that table.

Grey Day Reflection

The grounding grey of this Front Range day is so welcome.  We continue to be on such a fast-moving trajectory in our work that the moments that we can pause, drink some tea, reflect, and ground for our next cycle of movement are so valuable. We talk a lot at TGH about how all generative cycles are ones that maintain a constant rotation between action & reflection and we are deeply aware that we err on the side of action at The Guest House.  Reflection is our work and our practice and for that these cloudy days are a teacher. 

Seth spent the morning yesterday harvesting nettles that had been broken and slashed from the hail storm the night before so the resilience of the plant’s life is close for us right now – we’d like to provide some updates through a metaphor of the plant.

Roots…continuing the expansion of our own resource-base, we have begun to actively build roots in the Roaring Fork Valley where we are seeking land to build the physical site of The Guest House.  We find such an abundance in the valley of new community, collaborators in the work, and connection with the land.  Seth will be moving up to live in the Roaring Fork Valley part-time throughout the summer, while maintaining our base of operations in Denver and connection with our community on the Front Range. 

Stem…responsible for connecting the resources of the roots with the growth of above-ground plant, the stem is the central channel conduit.  Our expanding team takes on this role and strengthens the ability of the plant to expand in wise & informed ways.  In the last two weeks we have added to our team realty, accounting, farming, land-management, and culinary expertise in the form of some of the loveliest people that we are sure live in Colorado.

Leaves…as we finish the last dinner of our Spring pop-up series we are setting out our Summer schedule of community learning & hospitality experiences.  The summer will find us more oriented towards community workshops & learning with continued commitment to the practice of our craft of dining & hospitality.  Cheese-making, Herbal practice, Roaring Fork Dinners, and a Devoted CSA event for CSA members are all things we are looking forward to.  The full schedule will be posted by May 20th.

Enjoy all the tea and reflection today - thanks for all of your continued support.

the fish story

We’re back in Denver from the Roaring Fork Valley after four days, a pop-up dinner, some potential property visits, and many inspiring meetings with new friends and collaborators.  I could write a multi-chapter book about the last ninety-six hours, but instead have chosen to report back on just one story of the weekend.

We had known for a few weeks that one of our beloved guests for the Roaring Fork dinner only ate fish and the entire menu was based around a whole lamb primal roast.  Commitment to bringing the same quality and connection to the land for the fish as we were to the rest of the meal and the lamb was important to us so we immediately began a search for a local Roaring Fork valley fish and hopefully one that sourced from someone that shared connection to our work and ethos.  A couple of weeks of long-distance searching revealed no good sourcing and we forged on believing that the right fish would reveal itself to us once we were in the valley. 

Joe and I arrived in the valley on Saturday and had a full day of foraging for our center table platters, meeting with some new farmer friends, checking out Meat & Cheese in Aspen for lunch, and meeting the land of the valley.  We decided on our way back to Kathryn’s (TGH home-base for the weekend) to stop into Marble Distillery to say hi to our buddy John Paul and ask about some fish connections.  He immediately pointed to two groups of people in the room who were fly-fisherman. 

I understand that its not the generally accepted social way to strike up a conversation, but never being one for small-talk I marched over to those groups of unsuspecting fisherwo/men and introduced myself as “Seth, I’m looking for a fish.”  The distillery bar room lit up with fish-brainstorming, firestorm education about fishing rights & rules in the various waters of the Roaring Fork, local fisherman’s schedules and ideas of who could get one for us in the next twenty-four hours, surprising (not surprising) connections of each of those fisherwo/men to staff of The Guest House and a lot of laughter about local bar fish haggling.  One of the fisherman said the whole scene reminded him of the Foghorn Leghorn episode where the cat asks the dog who asks the chicken who asks the mouse….We left with four potential fish leads, three phone numbers, and a lot of hope & joy. 

Sunday found us welcoming the rest of The Guest House crew to the valley, sewing table linens, prepping food & lamb primals, setting up the frame for the open fire, and meeting Chris & Jody who were our gracious venue hosts.  Every hour or so I would call out “Has anyone heard anything about the fish?” with no hopeful reply.  We believed we believed we believed a fish would come to us.

Monday morning we had to be at the other end of the valley early to set up the fire and I knew that we’d have to have the fish in hand before we headed there.  Resigned and sad I decided to stop at the grocery store to pick up a fish and as I was pulling up to the stoplight next to the grocery store my phone rang with a local number I didn’t recognize. 

-      Hello this is Seth

-      Seth!  Its Foghorn Leghorn!  I just pulled a beautiful brown trout out of the Frying Pan River for your dinner!  Where are you??

Overjoyed with faith restored we agreed to meet in the grocery store parking lot to exchange the fish.  Foghorn Leghorn it turns out was Derek – a professor at Colorado Mountain College and local fisherman.  He told me he had continued to think about my pleas for an honest fish in the bar and our story about the way we want to feed our guests and our foraging & gathering spirits and he felt a connection with all of that.  And he came through and saved the day and our dinner and was the conduit for us being able to serve the most beautiful fish to our guest.

It might be our favorite part of the development of this project: building surprising connections with people who in their souls & spirits want a new way that is connected to our old ways and know that we can all do better – by each other, by the land, and by the animals with whom we share this land (and these waters).  Any way we inspire each other to live into that spirit more is a way that we know we are successful. 

All of the gratitude to everyone involved in this story for the bravery to live into this spirit with us. 

springtime apprisal

Friends and community, we are feeling all of the energy, movement, inspiration, pushing-through-the-ground growth, reaching-for-the-sun stretch that this season calls forth from us.  March and April have been months filled with momentum for us and we are preparing ourselves to have a summer of realization of the foundation-laying work that we have invested over the last two years. 

We also find the springtime energy of personal connection and community-building.  Kathryn and I were talking this morning about the growing community of new, old, and re-connected friends that we are starting to recognize in Guest House spaces and in our daily work and find that as an indicator of success. 

Here are a few updates for you all about our spring:

·      Kathryn, who has been a constant witness in my life over the last five years about the conceptual and then operational development of The Guest House is coming on board with our team in some concrete ways!  You all will be seeing her in more of our event spaces supporting community development and contributing super-woman style operations support

·      Joe & Seth have already hosted two dinners this month – our Volcano Dinner on April 3rd and a private dinner for Trilogy Financial at Beacons Community Space last night.  We continue to find inspiration for our hospitality practice at our pop-up dinners and are so thankful for all the folks we’re meeting.

·      The Roaring Fork Valley Dinner on April 24th has taken on a life of its own – open-fire cooking, a full lamb & fish roast, and a beautiful host home in Snowmass.  Chefs Kodi & Shawn are going to be joining Joe in the cooking extravaganza.  Not to mention the work we’ll be doing before the dinner meeting with farmers in the valley, learning more about the land there, and foraging/building all of the elements for the dinner.

·      We are so excited for our History of US Agriculture workshop being hosted by Mile High Farmers on April 25th – this will be our first community popular-education workshop and will showcase an art-gallery style timeline of US agricultural history that we’ve been writing for a couple of months.  Building the connections between the land, our food, and our community is so ingrained in the ethos of The Guest House and the unveiling of this workshop is a realization of a long-time coming goal of ours.

·      The first media piece about our work was published on 5280.com two weeks ago with the genius work of Monica’s writing & Lauren’s photography!

·      And we welcomed three new Devoted CSA members this month – the growth of that visionary crew brings fire to our hearts and our daily work

"We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply."           ~ Audre Lorde

Deep Roots

by seth o'donovan

The sky is so wide, the land so vast, the colors are the full spectrum of browns and grays with some sprouting spring green laid like an accent every few miles on the blanket of the hills.  Kansas hasn’t been a destination for many people in our social circles – often talked about as a state that you are forced to drive through to get to somewhere else and part of the “flyover” states of the Midwest – but we’ve been being called out in our study of the history of agriculture in the U.S. on our dismissal of this landscape, this land, and its people.  Joe and I had some laughing moments before we left for our planned visit to The Land Institute in Salina, KS about how we’d never experienced Kansas as a destination before, but we were both feeling so excited about the trip.  Laughing at ourselves and our own growth and surprise at our own perspective shifts is something we consider a healthy marker of change and one that we value in the ethos of The Guest House. 

We spent a hot March afternoon with the folks at The Land Institute – an organization dedicated to research on perennial grains and their viability for replacing annual grains in the landscape of U.S. agriculture.  Every aspect of their work that they educated us on and demonstrated for us in the greenhouse, in their farm fields, and in their research labs caused tiny explosions in my head about the potential of the work of The Guest House.  Is there a viable option for a perennial oil seed plant in the Colorado landscape?  Would an inter-planted landscape of grain be possible at high-altitude?  Are there limits to the viability of no-till practice on a functioning farm that serves a restaurant?  What are the implications for baking & brewing with perennial grains?  And Joe’s eternally inspired chef-mind question: can I start practicing with that flour right now?!  The questions in this endeavor are limitless and building relationships with people, like those at the Institute, is so fortifying to our spirits and our minds in this work.

One of the themes that drew out over the course of our trip was the idea of deep roots. Tim at the Institute pointed out that we’ve become very accustomed to not thinking about roots.  They are unseen, impact on them isn’t in the realm of our vision, and focus is most often on the result of the root system – the plant above ground.  The cost of not thinking about roots, however, is high.  They are the structure that literally holds the land together.  They determine a plant’s viability during any time of adversity or challenge: drought, mineral deficiency, wind, or flood.  They resource the plant through highly developed intelligence for its life above ground.  It is why perennial approach to the land is so important, because deep roots are only developed over seasons, years, and varying weather conditions.  Our vision around land that we wish to endure through years and generations requires a perennial approach; an ask of questions to ourselves about what will the impact of this moment be on the plant and the land five years or fifty years out, which is really different than our current dominant approach of asking what I want for dinner in August. 

We also spent a lot of time talking about applications of ‘deep roots thinking’ to ourselves as people and as social groups.  Because Joe and I are interested in building for decades and having an impact on generations, we find ourselves asking questions about the implications of how we are thinking, interacting, and working now on the larger ethos and culture and work of The Guest House.  Who are we in the first season of building relationship with and how do we build those as perennial relationships?  What does it mean to build relationship and work that stands the test of drought, flood, mineral deficiency, and wind?  Who will we be sitting at a table with for dinner in twenty years and how do we sustain the deep roots of our individual lives to show up at that table vibrant and fruitful?  And while we honor the multiple needs of our life-systems – there are plants meant for a season [tomatoes] and there are plants meant for a lifetime [grape vines] – ‘Deep Roots Practice’ is our newest explicit endeavor, both on the land and in our own lives. 

To join us for more deep roots exploration:

April 3rd, Volcano Dinner in Denver

April 24th, Roaring Fork Dinner in Aspen

April 25th, History of US Agriculture Timeline Workshop in Denver

Suffering & Love

We’re spending the morning organizing, cleaning, and reflecting on the High-Alpine Wine/Low-Country Food pop-up dinner last night that was hosted by a friend of ours in a historic Baker Neighborhood home.   When the goodness and connection and company are so abundant, it takes some moments to sort through and apply meaning to all that’s happened in an evening.  Our favorite moments included hearing the raucous laughter coming out of the kitchen from our chef’s counter guests and staff, table-side pours for the Rabbit Cassoulet, and after-dinner conversations with new friends scheming about all the goodness we want to do in this world.  But in our late-night reflecting time after everyone had gone home, we talked about a moment that stood out to us as one of the most meaningful of the evening – the moment we started talking about suffering.

As we were having a dessert course conversation with the dining room table about the development of The Guest House, our current work, and our capital-building & land search, one of our dear friends at the table brought up the concept of suffering.  Its not usually a topic that’s promoted at dinners or even in general culture; often considered a downer in the conversation, we do a lot to avoid bringing this theme up.  And here we were: twelve guests, Joe & Seth, and an exquisite Biscuits & Marshmallow dessert diving head first into the topic. 

Another guest had asked what was important about developing this project in Colorado specifically and we were speaking to the foundational theme of The Guest House being ‘accountability to the land’ – an ethic that asks us to restrict our cuisine to what a specific, local piece of land provides for us.  This restricting of ourselves leads us into places that spur on creativity and allow an identifiable, local cuisine to emerge.  So when our friend brought up suffering, he was speaking to another value that branches out of accountability to the land.  Living in the U.S. in the context of an industrialized, globalized world, has led to an internalization of the idea that we can get whatever we want whenever we want it and that denial and suffering and discipline only serve to obstruct our immediate pleasure.  But the reality of a life lived in accountability to the land is that suffering and discipline are absolutely required as part of the path to creativity, joy, nourishment, and security.  Our friend spoke to the realities we have distanced ourselves from in our food of the suffering of animals in death, and the suffering of plants in the harvest, and the suffering of ourselves in the difficult work of stewarding the land and feeding ourselves from it honestly.  And also the seeming paradox that it is in those sufferings that we find our greatest joys and inspiration in feeding those we love, and building relationships with those animals, and creating food that connects us to memory and to each other.  This kind of suffering isn’t one of martyrdom.  It is one that only can come from the source of love.  A love of our own bodies and worth, a love of the land, a love of other beings who share this land with us, and a love of each other. 

We loved that this was our dessert conversation because it speaks to the space this project is already opening up for all of us to live in more explicit ways with each other and with the land.  We can be fierce in the truth of the reality of our lives and bold in our love for each other, and if we continue to foster the spaces for that truth and love through the practice of hospitality and the cooking of food, then we are already living into the work we have said we will do at The Guest House.

We’re so thankful for all of those who show up at our table to do this work with us. 

Lessons in Cheese

We’re swimming in cheese here, friends.  Cheese practice, cheese reading, cheese recipe testing, cheese musing, cheese pictures, cheese pondering.  We’ve never thought more about the life of a community of bacteria and organisms and the results of time, temperature, age, and source in our lives.  From the moment Seth milks the cows to the minute Joe salts the cheese, every step is considered with attention and not a small bit of awe.  And we find, that similar to every other (re)connection we build with the land, we are schooled daily by the process and by the results. 

Lesson number one: milk, it turns out, has all of the internal resources it needs to become cheese. In fact, cheese never happened in the context of human culture because people had advanced science degrees and specialized inoculation cultures; it happened because the organisms in milk relate in complex ways to each other resulting in new forms of that milk.  Industrialized cheese processes have become necessary because processes of pasteurization kill most of the community in the milk in the name of sterilization.  As long as the environment that fosters life isn’t sterilized, killed, or compromised, milk has everything it needs to perpetuate its own life process.  This has left me thinking a lot about what creates an environment in which life thrives?  And what are the balancing factors in life that serve the larger community growth in healthy ways, similar to the use of salt in a cheese aging process? 

Lesson number two: the process of cheese, outside of industrial controls, is generally predictable, but also so complex that every variable affects the outcome.  We’ve been finding the need to keep increasingly detailed notes about every batch we practice because temperature, time from milking, age, humidity, cooking time, hang time, and infinite factors influence every cheese.  Wendell Berry says in The Use of Energy ‘it is the nature of the soil to be highly complex and variable, to conform very inexactly to human conclusions and rules.’ Cheese as a product of the milk as a product of the cow as a result of the cow’s relationship with the soil is only an extension of this principle.  It’s a practice for us of submission to the limits and design of the land, and to show up to the practice with discipline, patience, and humility daily.  Just show up.  Attend to the details with consistency.  And be astonished by the result. 

**Opportunities to ponder cheese, food, and the land more with us coming up: 

March 8th: High-Alpine Wine, Low-Country Food Dinner

March 13th: Home Fermentation Workshop

and this...

and this is the life we live:

a life that restores our land, ignites our spirits, & compels our bodies.

a life that rises early with the sun to be with the land and our animals

a life that stays up late with the moon to serve and to cook for our community

a life that spurns performance in exchange for practice

a life that seeks joy and believes desire points to a wisdom we have yet to articulate

a life that orients ourselves towards service

a life that prepares our bodies and minds and souls to show up for something larger, more eternal than this reality, this time

a life that asks ‘what does hospitality require of us?’

this moment asks nothing less of us. 

we sing the song of this life again:

plant your feet
plant your feet
plant your feet again upon the land.
lift your chin
lift your chin
lift your chin again to the sky.

Amaro & Women & Duck

A carnelian clad table set with Amaro Sibilla, fifteen guests fed five courses with four ducks, power-house women and feminist men conversing about their work of transformation and craft in this world.  We are treasuring the picture of our table last night for the Feminist Wine Dinner at Leisure Gallery and the privilege of the opportunity to extend hospitality in that setting. 

We felt the gravity of our first dinner – the weight of who our guests would be, how our food would taste & nourish us, what our style of service and hospitality would be, and how we would be setting the space for the development of all of our future hospitality.  We were all discussing moments that define success for us in hospitality while cleaning the gallery at the end of the evening – here are a few of my favorites: 

·      the moment after we had served the Squash & Mushroom Socca to the table and all walked back into the kitchen and Joe said, ‘Do you hear that?’ Silence.  A holy moment of tasting, being nourished, and reflecting on the land that feeds us in the dining room. 

·      when Seth noticed that forty-five minutes after dessert was finished, our table was still mostly full of guests talking, drinking, and sharing their evening with each other…whenever you dine with strangers and find you want more, a space of hospitality has been created.

·      our owners team reflection at the end of the night was that our hearts felt full, our spirits fortified, and our souls thankful…affirmations to me that as a group of people building this project, we are simply honored to have opportunity to serve and facilitate spaces in which people are connected to their own bodies, each other, and the land. 

And this morning our work moves forward – Joe is crafting our next dinner menu (High-Alpine Wine/Low-Country Food, March 8th), Seth is meeting with new CSA Devoted members and planning the Herb Craft One workshop (begins Feb 21st), and Troy is scheming about the herbal recipe to craft our own Guest House Amaro for the 2017 season.  

We are so thankful to all of you in the growing Guest House family…thanks for your presence, care, and all of the ways you are changing and serving our community and land. 

tradition

The theme of tradition has been floating around The Guest House team over the last few weeks.  Seth has been spending time in an apprenticeship with a raw dairy farmer, Joe has been building our History of U.S. Agriculture timeline for an upcoming workshop, and in meetings with potential investors we find the conversation of restoring almost lost agrarian technologies incredibly present.  We’ve been unexpectedly comforted by the reality of how many people are as concerned as we are with the reality that pre-industrial technique, land stewardship, and food-craft is incredibly close to being generationally lost.  Tradition – or the loss of it – it seems, is present on so many of our minds and hearts. 

Edi Keber – a wine-maker in Friuli, Italy – defines tradition this way in his interview in Friuli Venezia Giulia: The Taste Soloists: “that transmission of knowledge that unites generations – knowledge that advances, looking towards the future but firmly rooted in the past”.  We love his explanation of the concept. 

There has been a dusty connotation that has settled around the concept of tradition over the generations that have lived through the industrialization of agriculture.  As our bodies and families have departed from the land, our view of tradition is that it holds us back, limits us, or restricts growth and transformation.  It is an interesting reflection for us that all of our recent conversations about tradition have not centered on how we are held back, but rather, what we have or are losing.  The departure from our roots doesn’t allow for a very sustainable or long-term above ground growth and we are all feeling that in various ways culturally. 

We are actually finding in our own growth at The Guest House that tradition calls us back, brings limits that inspire creativity, and provides a solid root system for our growth and transformation.  The personal and generational healing possible in that context is one that we wonder if there is ever an end too.  The power of that potential is one that we feel in awe to serve and explore. 

the fearless team

In the last eight weeks our team at The Guest House has taken on a life-force and momentum of its own.  Throughout last year, Seth has been the primary worker for daily tasks and business of TGH.  The month of November felt like an explosion of energy, capacity, and people and there is not a day that goes by that we literally don’t feel as though our hearts might explode with gratitude for our team and their vision and their work.  Here’s an introduction to them and what they’ve been up to this last week:

Troy – Development Director extraordinaire and wine nerd has spent the week finishing setting up multiple databases for us in order to effectively organize information that we are researching about crop planting, land management, CSA Devoted membership, budgets, event planning, and internal time-management.  While that might not sound like the sexiest work, Troy makes our thousand moving parts look more like a ballet rather than a mosh pit.  He also did some very helpful R&D taste-testing for Seth’s breakfast cheese that she’s working on for TGH mornings.

Joe – our inspired chef and one of the owner’s team is also serving currently as our operations director and the planning of all things land & kitchen for TGH.  This week he’s been doing some research and learning for us in Western New York on land, food, and wine as well as watercolor painting in his spare time an art piece as a gift for each CSA Devoted member. 

Brandi – making us look pretty, Brandi directs us around all things branding and marketing and ensures that our internal culture is reflected externally in ways that are accurate and maintain our integrity.  She has pushed us hard this week to finish up our new member packets for The Devoted CSA that has launched this week; Seth just picked them up from the printer this morning and almost cried at how beautiful they are…since inspiring connection to beauty is one of TGH’s top values, we just don’t know where we’d be without her.

Alexa – event planner & coordinator genius, Alexa is creating and finding venues for all of our events and pop-up dinners for 2017 in places that we never knew they could exist.  She is who makes our food and community events ooze with hospitality and seamless logistics and we thank our lucky stars that she likes us as much as we like her.

Team TGH out...we gotta get back to art, recipe testing, organizing, designing, learning, and probably some wine drinking sprinkled throughout.

january second two thousand seventeen

The turn of this year has us in strong place of reflection & imagining, remembering & visioning, resting & acting.  2016 at The Guest House was filled with foundation building and root-setting.  Incorporating as a Public Benefit Corporation, setting up structures for building capital & resources, and solidifying our ownership team were the tasks that we knew were necessary to a structure that would serve us long into the future.  Our sights for this project have never been short – our plan is to serve the span of our lifetimes, the land that is far older than us, and build practices that serve the generations and people that will follow.  Putting in the time now to set a solid structure has been our act of service to that plan. 

The end of 2016 propelled us into a new form of action.  Within the last six weeks of the year we went from an owner’s team to a group of nine people actively working on the project and an extended network of almost twenty people investing in various and vital ways to the next phase of our work.  We finalized our investment structure, hired staff, brought on our chef, and made changes in our personal lives in order to invest more fully in The Guest House.

2017 finds us leveraged & ready. 

We’ve set an ambitious event calendar full of workshops and dinners that reflect the kind of work we will do on our land.  We are in an active land search that will result in us purchasing land in September.  Our first six Devoted members will sign-on in two weeks in a celebratory cocktail gathering.  We will enter an intensive brand strategy process in order to ensure that our external words & images reflect our internal culture accurately.  We’re scheduled to spend time with others in the country who share vision with us about land usage, food cultivation, and community-building. 

And in the moment, we hold ourselves to our daily practices and disciplines that continue to mold & shape us as individuals and as a group: fermentation practice, cheese-making, cooking, restaurant service, community organizing, art, anti-racist practice, daily study, wine study & drinking, archery practice, gardening, herb craft, veterinary technology study, and menu conjuring.  

We are excited about the year with you all.  I’ll be holding a practice of weekly blog updates here throughout the year in order to invite you all into the life and practice of this project.  And we are always open to wine & coffee dates with you all about the work.