Temecula Chef Fundraises For Farm-To-Table-To-Pharmacy Movement

TEMECULA, CA — Temecula chef Leah Di Bernardo and Cultivating Good owner Joanne Di Bernardo are inviting you to their table, and to a movement to change the world when it comes to farm-to-table as pharmacy.

To do that, they are rebuilding a food system through a Kickstarter campaign and need their village's help to make dreams a reality.

Her $200,000 fundraiser will go towards building greenhouses and a community marketplace on a working farm in Pala, and towards a regenerative, working farm that becomes a living classroom. In thanks, they offer levels of support in the form of coffee, farm tours, private cooking lessons, and even your name in the credits of a documentary film or on a greenhouse in lasting tribute, among other layers of sponsorship.

Leah Di Bernardo's enthusiasm about the project is infectious. She has put her "food as medicine " theories into practice with everyone she feeds at her Temecula restaurant, EAT Marketplace.

"EAT sources directly from farmers we know by name. We were named Business of the Year in 2006, have led over 24 school garden programs in our region, spearheaded the first middle school Slow Food chapter in the nation, and have built relationships with Alice Waters and the Slow Food Foundation in Bra, Italy. Over two decades of proving that food done right —good, clean, fair— is not only possible but necessary."

The Di Bernardo sisters believe that their corporation, Cultivating Good, exists to be a force for good in the food system and an homage to their sister, Deborah, one of the first women in America to build a fully organic, fair-trade, shade-grown coffee company from the ground up. "The vision was the values, and we carry her forward in everything we build, CFO Joanne Di Bernardo said.

Cultivating Good exists to be a force for good in the food system and the next chapter of their multigenerational story.

"We are building something that has never been done quite this way," she said. "A replicable model that starts here in Temecula and is designed ot travel anywhere in the world that is willing to do this right."

The goal is to raise $200,000 to secure rights to land, a greenhouse, farm infrastructure, and a farm-direct community marketplace build out for a living classroom where chefs, culinary students, and community members can walk the land, attend agritours and experience regenerative agriculture firsthand.

"Every dollar raised will build the farm expansion in an operation dedicated to growing the food that feeds our community," she said. "It's a living classroom, as much as a working farm."

Di Bernardo says that her EAT restaurant was just the first chapter of this major project that includes growing healthy food that feeds us, without pesticides, herbicides and "industrial shortcuts.

"Have you noticed that your groceries cost twice as much as they did five years ago, and yet the food tastes like half as much? Your food is not actually feeding you," she says in her fundraising campaign. "Food has so much to do with our mental health. The food we are eating now doesn't have the same nutritional value that it had when I was a kid. As a chef, I have an obligation to care about what I put on your plate."

With farmer and fellow chef Sonny Alcaron, they will use land that is already in process to grow food. "It is a place to learn, connect, and reimagine what agriculture can be. We are building a living classroom — open to the doctors EAT partners with, to children through our school garden programs, to community members, chefs, culinary students, and anyone who has ever wondered what it actually looks like when food is grown the right way."

Want to help? Visit the Kickstarter Campaign or drop by EAT Marketplace.