Sustain Supper Benefiting the Homeless Garden Project

We're excited to invite you to our organic farm for a gourmet, 4-course dinner prepared by exceptional, local chefs featuring fresh food grown on our farm. Enjoy a farm tour, drinks - including special wine pairings - live music and engaging talks by speakers focusing on sustainability, including our fantastic Keynote Speaker, Nikiko Masumoto.

Chefs:
Marci Carl of Suda will prepare the entree. Jeffrey Wall of the new restaurant, Alderwood, will offer an oyster bar during the appetizer course. A sophisticated new fine dining restaurant, Alderwood is set to open in downtown Santa Cruz this fall. Andrea Mollenauer of Lifestyle Culinary Arts will be preparing the salad, Justin Williams and Danny Mendoza of Kickin Chicken will be creating additional appetizers, and Anna Bartolini of La Balena in Carmel complete the line up with dessert.

Keynote Speaker:
Nikiko Masumoto first learned to love food as a young child slurping the nectar of overripe organic peaches on the Masumoto Family Farm. Since then, she has never missed a harvest.

Farmer, artist, and leader, Nikiko works alongside her father to raise organic peaches, nectarines and grapes. She hopes to add another generation’s voice to the story of the Masumoto Family Farm. She calls herself an “agrarian artist” cultivating the richness of life in the Central Valley through farming, food, stories, art, & community.

In 2007 she graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies and in 2011 completed a Master of Arts in Performance as Public Practice at the University of Texas, Austin. She debuted her one-woman show “What We Could Carry” about Japanese American Redress hearings in 2011. In 2017, she and Brynn Saito co-founded the Yonsei Memory Project. Through art and creative engagement, the Yonsei Memory Project awakens the archives of Japanese American history to foster understanding, healing, and justice. Her intellectual & artistic curiosities continue to inspire creations and inquiries into community building, memory, place, public art, justice and healing.

In 2013 she published her first book The Perfect Peach (Ten Speed Press), co-authored with Marcy & David Mas Masumoto. She and Mas co-wrote, Changing Season: A Father, A Daughter, A Family Farm published by Heyday in 2016.

We're honored to have Nikiko join us on the farm for this event! Stay tuned for more info on the menu, chefs, music and more!

For over 27 years, the Homeless Garden Project has worked to achieve our mission: "In the soil of our urban farm and garden, people find the tools they need to build a home in the world."

The Homeless Garden Project provides job training, transitional employment and support services to people who are homeless. 80% of our graduates go on to find employment and secure housing. Programs take place on our organic seaside farm, crafts workshop, and downtown Santa Cruz retail store featuring products made in our training program. Our community education and volunteer program serves more than 2000 people each year.