It was so fun to look out across the orchards and rolling hills to see silhouettes floating through the tall grasses with glowing orange glasses in hand. Meanwhile, Chef Daniel Sabia of Wood Fire Food was stoking the cooking fires to prepare a midsummer feast of local treasures, showing off this region’s spoils. We sat down together for dinner against the beautiful backdrop of the farm, the heavy grey skies of the cloud-covered day serving to brighten the greens of the surrounding grasses and set the white fur of the goats in their pens gleaming.

Nestled within a residential community, this little agricultural wonderland with a sliver of seashore on display from the fields was the perfect place to set the table for a Supper celebrating local sourcing.

It’s every chef’s dream to break out of the kitchen and cook outside over open fire, and Chef Rick was equally focused and full of smiles as he passed between the pizza oven and the Asador all night, cooking and plating a beautiful meal inspired by Italian and Spanish flavors, full of ingredients grown in the valley or pulled from the Pacific Ocean nearby.

‍January is decidedly not high season in Maine. The small towns along the coast are sleeping through the season’s short days and the weather forecast is anything but welcoming to outsiders. Mainers embrace the beauty of this time of year, though. They pull themselves out into the elements to enjoy every bit of the season, no matter what it brings.

The drive down highway 94 from Detroit to Ann Arbor is a transformative one. You leave the Art Deco mosaic of Motor City highways and the clean lines turn soft, the expanse of Michigan’s farmland begins to emerge as a pastoral pastel.

As the evening deepened, the big sky turned technicolor with an incredible sunset. The night ended in the kind of wild darkness that makes you feel small in the vast landscape, without any light pollution to dilute the immensity of the stars. After an evening of amazing connection, no one felt alone in the endless night as they left the pastures together, kicking dirt off their boots on the way back to the bustle of reality in the valley below.

When the food is this good, we can worry a little bit less about things like weather or whether or not the table is so perfectly set (although we still try our best, every time). But, as rain poured all day the day before the Supper and flooded the lawn outside The Barn at Bedaw Farms, we started to wonder if we’d be able to set the table there at all.

There are many reasons why we love the Pacific Northwest and we feel lucky to call it home. On July 24, we packed our car and hit the road for one of the most beautiful drives, up to Victoria, BC. We stopped midway for a lunch feast at Hama Hama Oyster Co and eventually, we boarded the ferry in Port Angeles. We arrived in Victoria that evening, so energized by the beauty of the area and so ready to host our very first Supper in Canada!