Photos by Carrie McCluskey

Flowers wave in the fields and hundreds of stems overflow an expansive community dining table. Guests enjoy chilled melon soup, nasturtium and marigold salad, end-of-summer sweet corn ribs, grilled grass-fed strip steak braised in stone fruits, Moroccan vegetarian b’stilla, heirloom tomatoes with grilled summer squash and herbs, and a roasted strawberry tart – all created with ingredients from local growers including Rancho San Julian, Tutti Frutti Farms and Babe Farms.

Local wines and craft beer complement the artisan menu, including selections from Foley Wines, Montemar Wines, Alma Rose Wines, Kessler Hawk Wines, Sweetzer Cellars and Solvang Brewery.

Is your mouth watering yet?

If you’ve been craving a feast that will delight the palate, eyes and spirit, a September 7, 2019 event at Ocean View Flowers in Lompoc is ready to satisfy your hunger.

The flower grower will give a few hundred people a unique opportunity to learn about its operations as it hosts an outdoor multi-course locavore dinner amid blooming fields of stock flowers. Here, guests will learn about the 100,000 to quarter-million stems a day harvested on the flower farm and enjoy a meal prepared by Clark Staub of Full of Life Flatbread in Los Alamos, California.

It’s all part of the American Grown Field to Vase Dinner Tour that gives guests the opportunity to dine in the middle of some of the nation’s most beautiful flower farms.

“Consumers want to know where their products are coming from — their flowers, their food, their whatever,” shares Ocean View Flowers President Dan Vordale. “What better way to do that than to invite people out to your farm to see what you’re doing and see all the effort and just what it takes to really get a bunch of flowers to the market?”

Dan will share his passion for cut flowers and the amazing variety of blooms Ocean View grows. All of its flowers are field grown and bunched at one of three California locations, depending on the season. From the fields, refrigerated trucks transport flowers to the Lompoc facility for packaging and sales.

The dinner provides a first-hand look at the operation, punctuated by an artisan meal, and renowned event planner and florist Debi Lilly will be designing the tablescape for the expansive dining table and visiting with guests.

“We want the consumers to understand that we’re good stewards of the land, and we’re here to protect the environment and use best practices to do our farming operation,” Dan says. “We also want consumers to understand where their flowers come from.

“They can literally walk into a supermarket … and know that two days ago those flowers were in a field and today they’re fresh in the supermarket chain,” he says. “And they can buy those flowers at a really, really reasonable price.”

Dan, who has attended Field to Vase Dinners at other farms, says the enthusiasm of guests from outside the industry particularly have delighted him.

“It’s the foodies and just that whole other element,” he says. “I was really surprised but happy to see just how excited people get.”

But after nearly 35 years in the business, including 23 years with Ocean View, perhaps Dan shouldn’t be surprised. “It’s a great industry,” he says. “You’re dealing with flowers. It’s joy and happiness.

“When’s the last time someone put a frown on their face because you gave them flowers?” Dan asks. “That doesn’t happen.”