It's been a long year. It was a crazy year. An amazingly inspiring year.

And here we are, off on another adventure.

And it's nearly time to welcome in the New Year!

So 2024 will bring our inspiration to life—a new project in Blue Ridge and a partnership on the other side of the pond.

Harvest on Main turns 15 this year; our daughter Sophie will get married; our son Josh and his band are soaring to incredible new heights; and we're spreading our wings across the pond to Sicily.

Our children serve as inspiration and encourage us on this new adventure. What began as a wedding in Stresa this past summer ended with a family road trip around Sicily: seven days, more than 400 miles, dozens of meals, and an endless landscape of dreams. Our kids saw our joy and listened to stories of our discarded dreams of living in Europe. They challenged us, saying we should consider our five-year plans with our dreams in focus.

We imparted our wanderlust and self-imposed drive for success to our kids. Whenever they hit a wall in their lives - a mountain they thought they could not climb - we would challenge them to look behind them and see the incredible vistas they had already conquered. We drilled into them that nothing was out of their reach. And being happy with the journey is as much a part of the journey as the destination. They reminded us how we pushed them to turn dreams into goals and that everything was genuinely attainable with the right vision.

We left them at the Palermo airport and headed off aimlessly on our own. Unencumbered, we set our windows down, a tactile feeling of excitement and discovery in the wind. We tasted our way through seaside villages, street-side stands, pizzerias, gelaterias, and cafes. We shopped daily, driving around with fresh cheeses, sausages, and freshly baked bread.

In search of a place to lay our heads one evening, we booked a villa at a B&B in Vittoria. Baglio Occhipinti. We checked in late, stumbled to bed in the dark, and awoke to a mist over an expansive field of farms.

We were reminded of long-ago dreams as soon as we opened the doors to the gardens outside our room. I pulled my hand along the thick stone walls of the Baglio, soaking the story of the sun-warmed stone into my skin. We stared at the dry-stone walls that kept our eyes traveling along the countryside. Danny was quickly lost in the fields, gathering wild asparagus, chicory, and lavender - returning to the room beaming with treasures before we made our way to breakfast. He unfurled his shirt and dropped a pile of caracoles, companions to the wild fennel stalk bouquet he handed over. 

It's funny now when I sit back and think of our first road trips to Blue Ridge after decades of our home base of Florida. We fell in love with the mountains' landscape, the rivers' rush, and the forests' wildness. We embraced it. We made it our home and thrived in our new surroundings, which nurtured us. Danny always found solace in the fields here, away from his kitchen, gathering mushrooms, fiddleheads, and ramps.

Most of my time in Florida was spent abroad for work, often in Europe; I loved my time away. The European lifestyle always appealed to me - life itself is central to living. And nowhere is this more evident than in Sicily. Not what you do but who you are is central to a conversation. What you bring to the table is less important than your being there.

In a way, the folks from Appalachia and Sicily share the same cultural humility. A welcoming spirit that greets a newcomer with a meal and an authentic conversation. It is this authenticity we crave. And I think we both have longed deeply for it of late—that connection to a place and its people.

When I think of Blue Ridge or Sicily, I cannot help but smile, knowing our kids immediately told us we belonged to both locales. When we first brought them to Blue Ridge, they agreed we would be happiest there. As soon as we all rolled around the countryside of Sicily, they murmured the same things. It was no surprise to them when we booked our second and third trips back to the countryside in the months that followed that first excursion.

And so that leads us to today; we found two great partners in Sicily who will guide us on this next great adventure. Marcelle and Filippo Sardo embraced us from the day we landed on their doorstep. Their friendship brought us home and will help us to continue to create in Blue Ridge and share our love of culinary travel and traditions on both sides of our little pond.

The Sardo's have a lovely olive grove in Chiarmonte, Sicily, where Flippo's family has harvested and pressed olives for over 100 years. The couple reside amongst the thousands of olive trees tended to by his father, Angelo, pressing and bottling their own DOP Extra Virgin Olive Oil. We are proud to share their story of Sicily and the story of so many others in the three culinary adventures we have planned for 2024.

We will design these tours and craft new adventures on our Blue Ridge properties. The Cooks' Farm will relaunch in 2024 with dinners in our newly renovated downtown location and dinners in the field at our Morganton Farm. Stay tuned; our local Blue Ridge events schedule will be released in the Spring! 

Our Sicilian schedule will be forthcoming this week. We hope to be fully booked out for 2024 by the end of January, so get ready - a maximum of 28 guests will be able to travel with us this year, with each trip limited to eight guests.

We are so grateful to always come back home with new inspirations and stories to share. We can't wait to share more with you in person. 

Cheers!

Danny & Michelle