North Bay Woman

18 NORTH BAY WOMAN | F A L L 2 0 1 8 Get a fi fth sense of By Leslie Harlib here are occasional late summer afternoons in the North Bay that seem like warmed organic honey has been poured over the world, with everything the sweeter for it. That's what it felt like on a Tuesday afternoon in late August, talking to farmer, herbologist and fl ower arranger extraordinaire Katina Connaughton while sitting on a hay bale at the edge of her fi ve-acre organic farm in Healdsburg. Katina's husband is Kyle Connaughton, a fi ne dining chef who has cooked in some of the most innovative restaurant kitchens on the planet (The Fat Duck in England and Michel Bras' restaurant in Hokkaido, Japan, to name a couple). Together they own and operate the acclaimed restaurant and inn SingleThread in downtown Healdsburg. Not yet 2 years old, SingleThread, almost overnight, shot to the apex of Sonoma County's restaurant scene. It quickly became one of the most coveted dining/travel experiences on the West Coast because, when it was only 10 months old, it earned a coveted (nearly unprecedented given its youth) two Michelin stars for its daily-changing 11-course prix fi xe dinners that are $295 per person, excluding wine or juice course. The Connaughton's land, which produces up to 70 percent of what is served in the restaurant each day and is harvested daily for that purpose, is tucked away in a river valley just 10 minutes drive from up-market Healdsburg's central plaza. But we could have been far from even a one- gas-pump town in the peace of this rural landscape with the Russian River fl owing at the bottom of their farm, hidden by a copse of trees. There are fruit and olive orchards. Vineyards. Greenhouses. Soft clucking added percussion from a free- range chicken area where scores of hens are raised for their pale blue-shelled eggs, gathered each day and always served as one of the restaurant's courses. Fields hum with honeybees (there are on-site hives) that help pollinate the farm's more than 100 types of vegetables, herbs and fl owers. Many of these are hard to fi nd heirloom varieties, sourced by Katina from growers all over the world. Such a fecund landscape is an organic food lover's paradise. The Connaughtons' passion for what they're doing, their living of a lifelong dream, is Katina and Kyle Connaughton's passion for what they're doing has made SingleThread the apex of Sonoma County's restaurant scene T SingleThread founders Katina and Kyle Connaughton take locally sourced dining to the next level by growing up to 70 percent of what they serve in their acclaimed restaurant from their nearby farmland. – Photos by Eric Wolfi nger, Roman Cho and Garrett Rowland

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