Lena Miller is the owner and operator of Meadow Lark Farm Dinners, a farm to table business specializing in connecting local communities with their farmers in Boulder, Colorado via shared meals. Lena and her team host weekly dinners for up to forty people on the farms that provide the produce. This unique experience breaks modern dining traditions and encourages her guests to reconnect with food that travels several hundred yards from the garden to their plates.
A dinner with Meadow Lark is so much more than a shared meal. It is an open invitation to interact with your community and the land that sustains you; a step away from the traditional framework of “dining out” and a recognition of what meals are supposed to be – slow, inspiring and intentional.
Lena grew up in a food centric culture in the Bay Area. When she was young, she had a CSA (community supported agriculture) and assumed getting weekly fresh produce from local farms was normal.
Growing up, home cooked meals with local produce were simply part of the routine. But she quickly realized not many people have the same connection or appreciation for food that she did.
Lena went on to study sustainability at John Hopkins University and wanted to use her education to look at both sustainability and food systems on a global scale. During her studies she worked for an organic produce distributor and catering company.
When she graduated, she envisioned herself doing environmental policy work in Washington, DC. But before she could get too far, she was offered an opportunity to work on a farm in Tuscany, Italy. After having her nose in the books for four years, Lena deemed it was time to get her hands dirty.
From weeding to planting to harvest, Lena was involved in all of the farm operations. But her favorite part was lunch duty, where she would use ingredients from the farm to cook the staff meals.
While she was working on the farm in Italy, she found out about Meadow Lark through the Intern Director at Spannocchia. She learned about their mission to connect farmers with their customers through farm to table meals, which really appealed to her. When she came home in 2016, she started an internship with Meadow Lark.
Lena was balancing her duties at Meadow Lark and thinking about graduate school at the time the current owner, Veronica, began looking to sell the business. She could never find the right buyer until she approached Lena. At first, Lena said no, she didn’t want all the responsibility.
But the more she thought about it, Lena couldn’t bear the thought of Meadow Lark being broken into bits and pieces and sold or worse – closed for good. So in 2021 Lena bought the business and has been happily running it ever since.
Meadow Lark is not a farm or even a catering company. The business model is a gritty blend between restaurant, agrotourism, and farmers market. Lena likes to think of it as a service to farmers. Farmers are too busy farming to do much of anything else. The garden doesn’t take any days off. Weeds don’t rest on weekends. And there is no PTO in the benefits package.
In order to understand and appreciate real food, you need to experience it – taste it at peak ripeness on a wide table nestled into the fertile land that it came from.
They work with a handful of farmers in Boulder County during the growing season. Meadow Lark sets the table and cooks the food in this unique outdoor setting, and even gives the farmers and sometimes their employees a seat at the table with the guests.
Customers buy tickets in advance to the dinners (they sell out quickly) while Lena and her team work with the farmers to plan the menu. When it’s time to host, Lena and her team arrive to the farm with Bella, a pale-yellow short bus with sheepskin seats that serves as the prep house. A Ford F250 with an extended flatbed, Alice, carries tables and equipment, and tows Holstien, a wood-fired grill where they do over the fire cooking.
It's a restaurant on wheels with a dining atmosphere that surrenders to the elements. Here the same breeze that pollinates the garden carries the hushed conversation. Lena and her team strive for perfection and go above and beyond to ensure the guests have the best possible experience. This time, the farmers, this food and this opportunity mean a lot to her and her team.
Lena speaks highly of her team and their passion for this non-traditional dining experience. They truly love what they’re doing, the food they’re working with and the interdependence of guests and hosts that comes from this popup restaurant.
Lena and her team hold nothing back. They champion the ingredients, many of which were harvested hours before the meal, and strive to make meals their guests don’t just remember, but will cook for themselves once they are home.
For the guests, it’s an opportunity to dine with others who share a common interest. And let’s be honest, great food unites us. The dinner is an invitation to interact with the farms and with the land that provided the ingredients.
These dinners give the farmers a front row seat to watch the guests enjoy the fruits of their labor – grinning over the sweetness of corn or admiring the beauty of radicchio.
The business model is unique, and it works. Lena has been approached by several people with ideas of how to scale the business. “There is so much potential,” they say.
But Lena doesn’t care about the potential; she cares about the quality. She cares about so much more than just the bottom line – the farmers, the land, her guests and her employees. Like Kuhl, she is ruggedly independent and insists on doing things her own way. What makes Meadow Lark special is the intimacy of the meals, the attention to detail and her relentless commitment to quality.
Lena may not be doing environmental policy in DC like she once dreamed, but in many ways Meadow Lark Farm Dinners are her grassroots approach towards connecting people and communities to healthier habits and ecosystems.
Join the lottery for a seat at the table for your next meal and keep up with the farm on Instagram.
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