From Flatbed Farm To Table

And a Farmer Daughter Who Also Welds

By David Bolling 

The idea was to profile the latest member of the local farm-to-table family, a tidy eight-acre spread called Flatbed Farm, sitting on Highway 12 hard up against the Sonoma Valley Regional Park and across the road from Bouverie Preserve. Parked in a very nice agricultural neighborhood, Flatbed grows a fascinating variety of esoteric varietals, like dragon tongue beans, two designer strawberries to die for, an explosion of floral beauty deep in dahlias, and a farmstand open for business every Saturday year-round. 

There was just one problem – the farm’s General Manager, a young woman named Olivia, who also carries the title Creative Director. For a farm? The problem was, her last name is Bolling. She’s one of my three daughters. She likes to claim she’s my favorite. The other two disagree. How can you write about your own daughter? In public? Doesn’t that violate the most sacred rule of journalism – objectivity? What would Donald Trump say? Will he threaten to indict me? 

The more immediate question is, how did one of my most favorite daughters become a professional farmer? I certainly didn’t teach her. I have trouble growing a zucchini. 

Liv (what most of us call her, for greater vocal efficiency), who has a UC Davis degree in International Relations, with a focus in land and resource management, claims she reverse-engineered her way into farming while working as a waitress for the esteemed, farm-to-table Santa Cruz restaurant, La Posta. “It was Italian farm-to-table, sustainable seafood, all local organic, morels foraged from the mountains. I truly fell in love with it.” 

That experience led her backwards from the table to the farm, and she still describes herself as a “novice farmer, grossly under-qualified.” She is also, just to flesh out her resume, a welder, metal fabricator and construction foreman, at least at Flatbed, where she has helped repair, build and upgrade much of the agricultural infrastructure. Some of her skills she learned working for a custom welding shop in Marin, and some of her work there actually went into the Chase Center in San Francisco.

One other Santa Cruz experience helped sharpen her horticultural credentials. While attending community college, Liv discovered a legendary flower shop in Aptos, called Ace’s Flowers, which became her go-to source for cut flower arrangements. Exhibiting the unstoppable stubbornness that extends back to her resolute adolescent refusal to clean her bedroom, Liv asked Ace’s Flowers for a job, and continued asking until they gave up and quit resisting.

“The flowers were magical for me. And half an hour from college. I begged for a job, they finally hired me.”

Boom! She became an adept and gifted flower arranger, even started her own business arranging and selling small succulent floral designs, called Tiny Arrangements. But arranging flowers is a far cry from growing them.

For that, she is quick to credit Mike Benziger, the pioneering Glen Ellen winemaker, vineyard manager, cannabis cultivator and truck farm biodynamic guru, for most of what she knows about organic growing. “I fell in love with organic farming practices through Mike,” she says. “It all started with foraging at Mike’s insectary, and sourcing beneficial flowers for the Glen Ellen Star.” Liv not only got a job at the Star, she did their flower arrangements, another step along the farm-to-table highway. 

All the while, step-by-step, Liv was learning the flower business, learning “what does well and what grows well,” becoming a regular early morning buyer and seller at San Francisco’s famous, all-night Flower Mart, where everyone seems to know her name, and where the evolving flower trends are easiest to track. 

“I study the trends,” says Liv, “it’s like the fashion industry. I learn what’s showing up at weddings, what’s in seed catalogs, what’s on Instagram. Flowers start shifting colors and petal patterns. And you want to grow flowers that are hardy and long lasting.” 

All of which led her to Flatbed Farm. 

The property is owned by Sofie and Chris Dolan, a couple from San Francisco, who bought the land after “falling in love,” says Liv, “with Sonoma Valley’s open space.” Their vision for Flatbed (named for a farm truck) seems to be evolving in various directions, anchored by the weekly farmstand selling flowers, fresh produce that changes with the seasons, eggs, herbs, microgreens, garden starts, pantry goods like preserves, syrups, pickles, tasty salsas and on and on. 

Everything is grown on about an acre and a half of valley soil and although the farm is not certified organic (frequently a bureaucratic headache that does not guarantee best sustainable farming practices), the farm uses all organic compost, no sprays or pesticides, and recycles whatever isn’t sold, pickled or canned, back into the soil. “Sophie,” says Liv, “doesn’t like to waste anything. Neither do I.” 

Current produce available at Flatbed includes lettuces, salad mixes, dragon’s tongue beans, eggplant, peppers, the last summer tomatoes, cucumbers, radicchio, squash are coming in, pumpkins too, but she says the wildly popular strawberries that are featured at local restaurants like Stella and Baker & Cook are all but gone.

“I’ve been over a decade in the service industry,” reflects Liv, “and it’s so cool to see something that I’ve grown from seed appear in a restaurant. Farming has meaning and value to me that has nothing to do with money.”

Flatbed Farm is located at 13450 Highway 12, Glen Ellen. The farmstand is open every Saturday from 9 to 3. For more information: flatbedfarm.com, 415.425.0589.