The book had to honor Ron’s extraordinary life and ideals. It had to reflect his constant insistence on quality, his exceptional creativity, his ability to inform as well as enchant. It had to be stunning! Yet, also functional. It had to be casual, yet elegant. The problem? We had to do this without Ron.
In April 2024 I held in my hands the culmination of our efforts. I think WE DID IT!
The Spirit of The Herbfarm Restaurant by Ron Zimmerman is the story of a vision, a garage and a garden on a working herb farm. The memoir section of this book, “What the Rain Said” tells how that vision grew into the internationally renowned farm-to-table restaurant The Herbfarm is today. It is expanded by the and seasonally oriented, full-color cookbook bound with it.
Ron and I ran The Herbfarm, in all its iterations, for 35 years. We took over his parents’ “hobby” herb farm in Fall City, WA with the idea of testing different aspects of an herb business to find out which area would succeed. Serving multi-course luncheons featuring herbs and garden produce was one of the experiments along with an herbal education program, festivals, and herbal products. The restaurant soon dwarfed the other components.
In the process, by mistake (or by fate?) Ron became the chef in our garage dining room. At heart, being a writer, researcher, marketer and educator, he started work on a cookbook too. The book explored and philosophized the use of fresh herbs and seasonal cooking–which was quite revolutionary in those days. In 1990 he had a contract for a book- advance from 10 Speed Press but with our myriad other activities the book was never completed.
This is a fact, over the next 23 years he would bemoan (over and over and over again to me, his wife) the fact that he had not published. The book stayed, in a looseleaf binder, singed around the edges from the fire, on his shelf until late Spring of 2022.
And this is the story of how that book ended up in your bookstore, on Amazon, or in your kitchen.