Welcome to a post for all subscribers, recap of the Flourish retreat that Emily and I hosted. Next week, paid subscribers will receive a recipe. As always, thank you for being here! Learn more about my work here and browse past editions here.
It’s no secret that I feel extremely, wildly lucky to do what I do, and I’m here today with another essay about just that. Last weekend, Emily and I led our third (!) annual retreat in the Driftless region of Wisconsin at the beautiful Red Clover Ranch.
This year held some sort of special magic. Did we prove that the third time really is charmed? We couldn’t have asked for a better group of people for year three, from fermentary school owners to pastry chefs to photographers to herbalists to wildly talented home bakers. They formed a special bond over the weekend and left talking about matching tattoos, which made me feel like a proud aunt.
The weekend was lovely as always, full of cake decorating and foraging walks and the art of noticing. This year, we added a fun activity that focused on color stories, too. Each guest was assigned a color to search out over the weekend. By Saturday night, they had to send me 6 photographs that encapsulated the weekend as shown through their color. I printed them off for us to admire over breakfast, and I was absolutely spellbound by how wildly different each person’s interpretation of the weekend turned out to be.
Of course, I couldn’t help but play too. More and more, color is how I organize my work. I assigned myself brown to write into a color story, which you can see below. I was pleasantly surprised by the coolness of the browns that I found around the ranch, and I love the way the color story shows the equal parts nature and human nurture that I have come to associate with our time at Red Clover.
Because I couldn’t resist, I also put together an orange/pink color story. To me, that’s the color that best captures these summery, magical weekends in Wisconsin—maybe because it reminds me of the gorgeous sunsets we see nightly at the ranch.
This activity was so sweet and so fun. I can’t wait to do it again, in France, when we embark on our next adventure. Imagine the colors to come!
A million thank you notes: to Red Clover and the amazing team there for welcoming us back for the third time. To Chef Dani Lind and her team for keeping us well-fed, well-hugged, and well-caffeinated. To our sponsors (!) for the weekend for generously supporting a weekend of art and baking: Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, Club Backdrops, and Plugrà Premium Butter. To my co-host, Emily, for asking me to do this in the first place. And, of course, to our attendees. You made our dreams come true!
See you back here next week for a recipe! Thanks for being here.
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