My Pizza Farm Season is officially underway. I want to express so much appreciation to my Mom for encouraging me to find Pizza Farm style places while on vacation last year and to my sister for reminding me to check out the area on this 
vacation. Because of them, I was able to combine the start of my 2018 wedding season with the start of my 2018 pizza farm season in Stuart, Florida! It also gave me the opportunity to try out some new wardrobe combinations.
The term Pizza Farm is used and recognized most readily in certain parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin and I often receive funny looks when I talk about Pizza Farms elsewhere in the country. But I don’t mind the puzzled expressions. It gives me a chance to explain that driving out to a small farm with a few friends and eating pizza made with ingredients directly from the farm while enjoying the countryside and a beer is one of my favorite summertime activities. And it is one of my favorite experiences to share with others.
About 25 miles north of Jupiter, Florida, the site of the wedding, I discovered a place called Ground Floor Farm with a website showing some true Pizza Farm potential. I reached out to them, told them about what I do, and asked a few questions, expressing my excitement to find a place like this so close to where I was headed. They welcomed me graciously, but suggested that they might be too small to be considered a true Pizza Farm. 
But I insisted! All the underlying principles and themes were there. The vision of the Ground Floor Farmers is to use their urban farm to create a place that improves the community. The pizza menu highlights the ways Ground Floor Farm connects people to the food they are eating. Ingredients from the farm are in green. Ingredients that aren’t grown on the farm are sourced thoughtfully with a focus on local and sustainable practices. This was a place worth checking out, so I reached out to some of the other wedding guests and found a few pizza fans willing to go along with me before the weekend festivities.
By dinner time on Friday, it had already been a long day of traveling and we knew we had a long night of old-friend reunions ahead of us at Jupiter, Florida’s best Tiki Bar, but I was thankful that Meghan and Martha liked pizza and farms and pizza farms enough to take some time out of an already busy day and travel up to Stuart with me.
Ground Floor Farm, as they had told me, was quite small and very urban. It was an unsuspecting location for a farm of any sort. We walked through the small market into the cafe and bar area where there were quite a few tables and some
musicians setting up in the corner. The far side of the cafe opened into the farm area and few outdoor tables. We ordered some drinks, one of each of the pizzas on the menu, and moved outside. I loved how different this Pizza Farm was compared to the midwest Pizza Farms I spend most of my time visiting. One of the menu items that I noticed right away as being highlighted as coming from the farm was a pineapple salsa. My surprise while ordering gave away to the server that we were from out of town. Tropical fruit doesn’t grow very well in the midwest! Once outside, we noticed how the farm was surrounded by palm trees and lizards ran between the tomato plants. We also saw what appeared to be mangoes growing. I learned that one of the goals of Ground Floor Farm is to demonstrate that a small space can be very productive. The towers of greens and tomato plants in planters sparked our curiosity. The website gives a little more information about Ground Floor Farm’s farming practices.
As an urban farm and cafe, Ground Floor Farm does not have a bucolic space like some of the others, where I set up my blankets and bring my picnic supplies and eat pizza while reclining on the grass, but they did provide for us a comfortable space to eat outdoors and a pair of scissors to cut our thin, sourdough crust pizza. All the pizzas were visually beautiful. The edible flowers on the Pollinator, the mounds of arugula on the Mushroom Pie, the green of the cilantro pepita pesto on the Mexi-Maui, and the classical pizza beauty of La Mariana made a wonderful sight. While bringing out the pies, our server managed to point out Jackie, one of the owners of the farm. It would have been nice to chat with her for a bit, but for me, the call of the hot pizza was too strong, and she was already being called back to the oven to prepare more as the tables began to fill up.
After eating a taste of all of our pizza and packing up the rest to share with our friends who weren’t able to come, the consensus was that Jackie and her team at Ground Floor Farm makes a delicious pizza with some creative flavor combinations and a very solid classic. My favorite was the sweet tomato sauce and olive oil drizzle of La Mariana. The Pollinator with the addition of hot honey, balsamic, bee pollen, and flowers was another top choice. But I can’t deny that I enjoyed them all.
As we ate, our server took a little time to tell us how much she enjoyed being a part of Ground Floor Farm. She felt that it brought so much to the community and gave a space for food, art, and culture that wasn’t present at all before they opened up. For me it was another inspiring example of how Pizza Farmers are creating community around healthy food. I am happy for the community of Stuart that they have the resource of Ground Floor Farms and I am happy that I got to experience it with some of my friends from Portland, Oregon. Pizza Farms might be a Midwest Term, but this was truly a cross country experience!
Yes! I got a shout out as the reminding sister 🙂 So excited to hear about your Pizza Farm adventures…and maybe even join you on a few of them. That reminds me that I need to talk to Farmer Charlotte about whether she will be doing an pizza farming at Prairie Winds Farm in Lakeville IN this year….