~Guest Post by Anna Sullivan
As the sun dips behind Carnation Farms’ western ridgeline, my new friend, Martin, and I stare each other down. Somehow, miraculously, a server has placed an extra third-course salad on the table between us. In the twilight, the salad’s centerpiece—a gloriously plump grilled peach—shimmers under Alveare Winery-produced hot honey. “Should we fight for it?” I say as he asks, “Should we split it?”
Three hours earlier, I’d walked alone into a crowded pavilion, a bit nervous about my first assignment as a Living Snoqualmie contributing writer/food critic. I stood in line for a craft mocktail while the team from NoWhere Foods slapped sage sprigs before dropping them into glasses of farm plum and rye whiskey.
I refrained from making a weird joke about August Moon, the name of both the cocktail and the fictional band from The Idea of You. I tipped back a martini glass of sharp, cool tarragon gazpacho and ate many corn jalapeño and farm tomato fritters with roasted chili crema, as demanded by journalistic integrity/my taste buds. I did not refrain from joking about how I’d “commit to the ‘frit.”
Between then and now, I sweated in a field and tasted the best mole sauce of my life. I made new friends who felt like old friends. As Martin and I laugh about the peach salad (but really, do we fight for it?) I am grateful and present, bubbling with goofy happiness. I’m not trying to oversell it; I haven’t felt this playful, connected, or young in a while.
If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: you must get yourself to a food event at Carnation Farms.
Body and soil
Eric Popp, Carnation Farms’ Director of Regenerative Agriculture, leads us on a tour from the pavilion full of corn fritters to the tomato field, where he points toward a row teeming with green Romas. “This is our dry-farming experiment,” he explains, describing how they’ll measure the fruit to determine whether dry farming makes sense at scale.
There are questions (“Does it matter when you plant them?”) and skeptics (someone behind me mutters, “I don’t buy it!”). Carnation Farms is a regenerative operation focused on building a restorative, biodiverse ecosystem from soil to product and beyond. This tour, which I’d considered an appetizer to the main event, is a feast unto itself, a rich and thoughtful exploration of how we interact with the land and its bounty. My fellow attendees are engaged and curious, Eric an approachable and instructive educator.
As we meander back toward the long, beautiful table where we’ll continue dinner, Eric points to a field of Sudan grass, a ground-cover experiment that might control bindweed but makes the soil less resilient. He poses the questions that guide his approach: “How do we work with nature? What does nature want to do well?”
Love the wine you’re with
As a sober vegetarian (aka a really fun party guest!) It’s easy to feel like an afterthought at these kinds of things. Wine pairings and meat dishes are central to the experience! I am prepared for this eventuality, having invited my carnivorous, wine-drinking partner to the event. Turns out, I don’t need him.
The non-alcoholic pairings are an experience of their own. Provided by NoWhere Foods, an impact-driven gem based out of a 1953 Silver Streak, each drink bubbles with ingredients born out of PNW regenerative farms. I fall particularly hard for the Vista—an elderberry, rosemary, honey combo that tastes like the tinto de verano I spent my junior year guzzling in Spain. But I could probably drink about five Ridgelines—Oregon ginger pressed two ways, tart cherry from eastern WA—and I think the Alpenglow is an easy comp to dry-hopped cider.
While I may not sip the wine, I very much enjoy the experience brought by Alveare Winery’s owner/winemaker team. As they open each bottle, Xander and Samantha Kent enliven the space with funny stories about their family, farm, and wines. They dance around the table, refilling glasses for the many people who literally “ooh” and “ahh” over The Dandelion, a malbec rosé, or white malbec.
The huckleberry cider, The Donkey, has people (like my husband) racing to buy a 4-pack. And we’re all tickled by the story behind the full-bodied red malbec, made in 2019, bottled in 2021, and launched as a centerpiece of this Argentinian-inspired evening after Chef Kristen Schumacher demanded it.
All this to say nothing of the food, which is, as advertised, a feast.
Farm, meet table
It’s mostly pointless to share the many foodie details I want to share here because this beautiful menu has come and gone. But allow me a brief rave and a little fangirling for Chef Schumacher, of whom I’ve been a devotee since the Heirloom Cookshop days.
You know those people who just have “it”? Chef Schu is like that. Her menu, poetry. Her food, art. Her spirit, ebullience. Many people talk about food as a community, but Chef Schumacher creates it. If I sound overly ardent, I am.
After our field tour, we pile into the miles-long table, passing cumin-salted plantains (the dish at which I force myself to stop writing “delish” lest it becomes the only word in this review), melon & serrano & basil salsa and tigre de leche ceviche with Eva’s Wild salmon & tuna. Note: Eva’s Wild is the team that will be hosting the next and final Feast in the Field this year! Get your tickets for September 7th here.
Up next, empanadas—squash, and beans for the vegetarians, Spanish Dancer braised short ribs for the carnivores—with that mole I mentioned (the best…possibly ever?) and cilantro flowers.
And then the 3rd course. Tender and supple farm butter lettuce, grilled peach, burrata, white balsamic, tarragon vinaigrette, and the pièce de resistance: Alveare hot honey. The salad I would have fought Martin over. Martin! Who taught me how tigers are transported cross-country (FedEx) and what gorilla kids drink when nursing’s not an option (Enfamil!).
We don’t fight over the salad, which is swept away and replaced by our entrée—grilled Painted Hills ribeye; halloumi for me—with smoked farm garlic scape chimichurri, fresh corn polenta, roasted farm cherry tomatoes, farm basil oil, and onions described perfectly by Chef Schu as “frizzled.” I sip a NoWhere Tidal Break that tastes like a fruity espresso martini and lament that I must leave early to relieve my babysitter.
Which leads me to the only negative thing I’ll say about this night: the fact that I have to relieve the babysitter before dessert—a pavlova with blackberry compote, lemon curd, black currants, whipped cream, and farm petals plus Rousey Coffee Roasters affogato with chocolate ice cream—is a crime. Committed by me, against me. It won’t stand.
Beyond the feast
As I rush to leave, while my husband tucks happily into his pavlova, I remind him to get Matt’s and Leah’s numbers before he goes. We met over corn fritters, and we’re friends now, even though they heard me say, “commit to the ‘frit!”
This is the ultimate gift of the feast: connection. In four hours, the whole lot of us have found some deep, meaningful form of it. Connection to the land, which sustains us; to our bodies, nourished by this delicious food and by the team behind the food: visionaries, makers, servers. To each other, both those with whom we arrived and those from whom we depart new friends.
As I drive home, I effervesce. I want to tell everyone I know to go to the next Feast in the Field. I wonder if the babysitter is around on September 7th and if she can stay later. I think about Mandi from Carnation Farms HR, who told me they hug the sheep to socialize them. Will she remember me if I come back, asking to hug a sheep? Or is the night’s magic specific, gone after we all depart?
It doesn’t matter. We got the night. I’m so grateful.
