This week marks the opening of a big new complex in Healdsburg, unlike anything else in town, next door to the former Cyrus (soon to be Chalk Board Bistro). It’s called SHED, and married owners Cindy Daniel and Doug Lipton have dubbed it a “modern grange,” where food, gardening, homesteading, and community all come together. There’s a café component with a wood-fired oven that will be operating seven days a week, serving food made from locally grown produce (obviously) by chef Niki Ford, and a “fermentation bar” serving wine, kombucha, hard cider, beer, and natural sodas on tap. And there’s a retail component with food products like house-made vinegars and kitchen and garden tools too.
Daniel and Lipton own HomeFarm in the Dry Creek Valley, where they raised a family and began a small sustainable farming operation in 1998. Part of what will be sold at SHED will be products derived from their own produce, like preserves made with HomeFarm fruit, and wine made with their grapes.
They promise that the rest of the product array will “reflect our enthusiasm for traditional, forgotten tools and tastes; the hand crafted and the homemade; the tried and true, the everyday, and the classics.”
For dining, there’s both indoor and outdoor seating, with an open-air deck facing Foss Creek.
Upstairs in the large, barn-like building is the 2,750-square-foot space they’re dubbing the Grange, where classes and events will take place. Expect things like book events, cooking and food-crafting demos, farming workshops, and the like.
Cindy Daniel describes the range of goods and services thusly, using the example of vinegar: “We will make our own vinegar, use it to prepare our café and to-go food, and sell it from our pantry. We’ll also present workshops to teach you to make your own vinegar at home. And, we’ll have the traditional tool — a vinegar crock — available for purchase.” So, more of a DIY Williams-Sonoma, in other words.
SHED - 25 North Street, Healdsburg - 707-431-7433 - Open daily, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
