At Windrose Farm, Artists Embrace Country Life | BESIDE Magazine
Photography by Megan Rogers
“Love and care translate into some type of nourishment,” Cho tells me. “You eat food like this differently. You appreciate it. You meditate with it.” When sourcing supplies for the orchard dinners, Cho partners closely with fellow chefs and local farms. Part of her mission is to close the gap of food waste: the green beans, prepared in hoisin and mulberry sauce, were salvaged from a fashion party earlier in the week, which had much more than they needed.
We spend all day crouching low in the dirt so that we understand the food we’re eating here at the table. The dinner stitches together the day’s work with its reward.
Driving up State Route 46 from Los Angeles, the city slog gives way to open, flaxen hills. The road carves through still-active oil fields, past dusty miles of almond groves, and beneath the towering figure of James Dean: a memorial to the actor’s last stop before the crash that took his life in 1955.
Starting in springtime, a flurry of curious spirits make this trek on the last weekend of every month to visit Windrose Farm in Paso Robles, a town on the central coast of California named for the oak trees that dot its landscape.
They come to work, mainly, but also to feast and luxuriate at a gathering known as All Hands. San Luis Obispo County is an Eden of lush farms and vineyards, but few are quite as welcoming as Windrose.
The farm’s owners, Catherine and Justin Welch, created the event with the LA-based chef and community organizer Saehee Cho, who lovingly prepares meals for the participants in the spartan farmhouse kitchen.