last year, i stumbled across a website for farm to fork, an oregon event company that hosts dinners where you travel to an oregon farm and meet the farmers and winemakers and eat a meal outdoors in community. it sounded so amazing that i immediately added it to my (very long) list of things that i wanted to do someday.

a friend and i, somehow, serendipitously, heard about this year’s dinners at the same time. we both wanted to go so we bought tickets for the dinner in bend the morning they went on sale. the bend dinner was in july, which seemed like light years away at the time.

the dinner was last saturday!

oh my goodness. it was so wonderful.

we toured the farm, heard from the farmers and winemaker, and ate.

the food was delicious. among other things, there was a cold goat cheese tart with blueberry salsa, shrimp in tomato consommé, roast beef, and a creme caramel cake with strawberry-rhubarb compote. (i don’t know why i didn’t take more pictures of the food, except that i was too busy eating it.)

i suspect everyone there was amazing, but we had really fabulous luck in table companions, and we had lots of time to talk to them between courses.

there was something so wonderful about eating good food at long tables outdoors under the sun and moon, with other people who love food, in a very leisurely manner.

i want to go again next year. also the next year. and the next. really, it needs to become an annual tradition.

i have to tell you a story, though. i live in hillsboro, which is about 3.5 hours away from bend. i was at my favorite pet store one day with atlas, talking to the girl who was working, when a couple came in to ask about the orenco station farmers’ market; they were thinking of becoming a vendor. we wound up chatting with them for quite a while. we all introduced ourselves and they said that they were jerre and sean and they owned the dancing cow farm in central oregon. a week or two later, i got an email from farm to fork with updated information about our event. it announced that the protein for the event would be beef from the dancing cow farm. i almost jumped in the air because i was so excited at my luck in meeting the people who were providing the meat for our event! isn’t that fun?! it made the world seem so small and friendly.