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Hello and thanks for stopping by...
This is the website for the Habersham Hacienda, my farm, inn and wild foraging culinary adventure I started in 2005 after selling my Atlanta restaurants. I sold the Hacienda in March 2019. The beautiful North Georgia Mountains were home for more than ten years, but it was time to move on. I have been traveling and helping other people create their sanctuary in their corner of the world with my lifetime of hospitality, writing and home renovation experience. 2020 weirdness has put a couple wet blankets on some of the travel work but I'm still at it! I have become a Wandering Nester. The original Hacienda blog is here and there's some good stuff in there back to the farming days, Big Chicken, gentlewoman farming and how to go broke, mid life reinvention (are we there yet?) and more. The first two books in my Decade of Dish series are available on Apple and Blurb below. 
beautiful, prickly, Tucson
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Brady has earned some serious hotel chops. Here in Saltillo, MX
Goodbye to the Grand Dame,
2005-2019 the longest relationship I've ever had was with a house.
villa del mar playa, state of Jalisco I think? I couldn't tell you how to get there. I was deep lost and then finally, this. Pacific Coast Mexico
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Mr. Ribby, RIP June 2019. Here relaxing in a rare patch of grass in Nayarit, Mexico at Casita Tranquila
Oklahoma. Who'd a thunk?
Brady taking the beach view in pretending to be a Mexican roof dog in the coastal Santa Cruz in Nayarit
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Cooking class with my work buddy sidekick Juanito aka Mowgli the Man Cub featured in my 2009 Essay 'How to Save 89cents' winner of the non fiction prize in New Southerner magazine.
HOW DID I GET HERE? (TLDR, but if you're curious...)
In 2007 I sold a couple of restaurants in Decatur, GA and got a wild hair (hare?) idea to move out to the country and start my own farm. It'll be fun, they said. It'll be rejuvenating, I thought.
Actually no one said that. Most of my friends and coworkers said, "What?! Why??" but away I went. I was pulled to the country lifestyle and peaceful days. Swapping the Atlanta traffic for pastoral mountain views of Northeast Georgia. Harvesting my own organic vegetables and trimming the tops off my ever replenishing sprouting cilantro. My mind conjured up all kinds of narrative about my flock of hens and their bounty of eggs with tangerine colored yolks. Fresh air. The soft pastures underfoot. I'd start a farmer's market in that front field near the entrance. Enjoy the small town chat at the feed store and slowly renovate a big old house and slowly add guest suites, a big central kitchen where I'd harvest my wild herbs and make tinctures and old timey remedies. The stress of being chef owner of 2 busy restaurants had taken its toll on my lifestyle (hello 30s, goodbye 30s) and my health. I needed radical change.
I got it. It just wasn't how I had played it out in my head.
It was not always an easy transition, this bucolic life. But over a decade of many trials (and many errors), I finally got the Habersham Hacienda up and running to the sustainable, magical vision I had always dreamed of. The guest suites, the loft apartment, the cooking classes, the rain gardens, the Apothecary, the wild meadows, the pollinator organic gardens, the wild harvested herbs, the chickens, the rotational grazing pastures, the compost, the soil and eco systems finally balanced. The songbirds, bats, beetles. Snakes, hawks and bees. I had the right crew to help me build, create and carry out my visions. A neighborhood family of endless brothers and cousins from Guatemala headed by Antonio, my work buddy for over 7 years. Juanito, Victor, Pedro, Calixto, Esteban. And one Mexican, my genius friend and muse, Fernando. Everything was coming together.
And then, I ran out of money.
In 2007 I sold a couple of restaurants in Decatur, GA and got a wild hair (hare?) idea to move out to the country and start my own farm. It'll be fun, they said. It'll be rejuvenating, I thought.
Actually no one said that. Most of my friends and coworkers said, "What?! Why??" but away I went. I was pulled to the country lifestyle and peaceful days. Swapping the Atlanta traffic for pastoral mountain views of Northeast Georgia. Harvesting my own organic vegetables and trimming the tops off my ever replenishing sprouting cilantro. My mind conjured up all kinds of narrative about my flock of hens and their bounty of eggs with tangerine colored yolks. Fresh air. The soft pastures underfoot. I'd start a farmer's market in that front field near the entrance. Enjoy the small town chat at the feed store and slowly renovate a big old house and slowly add guest suites, a big central kitchen where I'd harvest my wild herbs and make tinctures and old timey remedies. The stress of being chef owner of 2 busy restaurants had taken its toll on my lifestyle (hello 30s, goodbye 30s) and my health. I needed radical change.
I got it. It just wasn't how I had played it out in my head.
It was not always an easy transition, this bucolic life. But over a decade of many trials (and many errors), I finally got the Habersham Hacienda up and running to the sustainable, magical vision I had always dreamed of. The guest suites, the loft apartment, the cooking classes, the rain gardens, the Apothecary, the wild meadows, the pollinator organic gardens, the wild harvested herbs, the chickens, the rotational grazing pastures, the compost, the soil and eco systems finally balanced. The songbirds, bats, beetles. Snakes, hawks and bees. I had the right crew to help me build, create and carry out my visions. A neighborhood family of endless brothers and cousins from Guatemala headed by Antonio, my work buddy for over 7 years. Juanito, Victor, Pedro, Calixto, Esteban. And one Mexican, my genius friend and muse, Fernando. Everything was coming together.
And then, I ran out of money.
my wild front yard. I cut paths into the native growth over the years to add depth to the postage stamp of the previous flat lawns.
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the carpet of December. Each year the Japanese Maples dropped the firecracker leaves. Magnificent trees on this property, a specimen tree nursery in the 1950s
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