Eat the Sun: A two part Dye-to-Dine Immersive Experience in Natural Color & Culinary Craft
Did you know you can use the same plants you eat to Natural dye your clothes?
Join us for Eat The Sun, a Dye-to-Dine immersive two-part event that celebrates the vibrant intersection of natural dye, textile artistry, and seasonal farm-to-table cuisine. Hosted in collaboration with Tami Fuller of BluBird Studio, Chef Jessica Arends of Cornelia@AKG, and Crown Hill Farm, this series invites you to experience the full cycle of creation—rooted in the land, expressed through your hands, and savored at the table.
Part 1: Natural Dyeing with Tami Fuller
Begin your journey with an inspiring afternoon led by second-generation fiber artist and educator Tami Fuller. You’ll explore the ancient Japanese art of Shibori and learn to coax golden hues from onion skins, marigold, and turmeric—plants grown for both color and flavor.
Under Tami’s expert guidance, you’ll craft a hand-dyed golden natural fiber place setting, including napkin and coordinating placemat. These naturally dyed textiles become more than functional objects—they are textile memories, infused with the summer sun, essence of the farm and your own creative touch. Artifacts of your time, rooted in experience.
Part 2: Farm-to-Table Dinner with Chef Jessica Arends
Two weeks later, return to Crown Hill Farm and complete the circle dining on the farm where your dye plants grew. At this special sunset dinner, you’ll be seated at a beautifully set table using the very linens you dyed by hand.
Chef Jessica Arends, Executive Chef at Cornelia@AKG will craft a seasonal menu, each course highlighting the edible nature of the dye plants—turmeric, marigold, and onion—celebrated now as both pigment and provision.
As you dine, your hand-dyed linens become more than a place setting; they are a living part of the experience, anchoring you in the moment, and the memory of the plants and place.
This experience is more than a meal or workshop…
It’s a celebration of creation, connection, and the power of Rooted place.
Over these two transformative sessions, you will:
Discover the ancient Japanese art of Shibori and natural dye techniques to create beautiful one-of-a-kind pieces for your home.
Create a hand-dyed natural place setting in golden hues that capture the summer sun.
Savor a delicious meal where each course features the same ingredients used to dye your place setting.
Enjoy the tranquil beauty of Crown Hill Farm, with its rich history and stunning views.
Benefit from the guidance and expertise of three Women Leaders:
Tami Fuller, a renowned fiber artist and educator,
Jessica Arends, Executive Chef at Cornelia @ AKG
Missy Singer DuMars, shepherdess, farmer and owner of Crown Hill Farm
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to blend hands-on artistry with culinary exploration.
Join us for Dye to Dine and leave with more than a meal—you’ll carry home an experience etched in cloth, flavor, and memory.
Part 1: Sunday, July 20, 4:30pm
part 2: Sunday, August 3rd, 3:30pm
$187 Includes:
workshop, materials, supplies, farm tour, & multi-course meal
(see below for additional ticket options)
Tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis. If you need to cancel your reservation, you may do so (and receive a refund) up to 3 days in advance. Any cancellations less than 3 days before the event will not be refunded unless the event is cancelled due to inclement weather.
We’ve partnered with Humanitix for our ticketing platform. They make the process easy for you to buy tickets and for us to keep track! Also, we LOVE that they are committed to turn annoying booking fees into a force for good. 100% of their profits go to their vetted children’s charity partners.
Refunds are not available after 1-week before the event. In the case of a refund, ticketing fees are non-refundable.
We look forward to sharing this unique weekend of creativity, food and community together with you!
With Love, Missy, Jessica & Tami
Tami Fuller is a second-generation fiber artisan, and works as an educator and exhibiting fine fiber artist. Her work integrates the traditional foundations of hand-constructed processes with modern technique, using foreign objects and metal as she explores provocative concepts related to female life and experiences. Tami is passionate about inspiring and empowering a new generation of creators by teaching the fiber arts in new, modern contexts which are still strongly rooted in traditional practices. Her workshops are designed with an eye toward revitalizing and modernizing fiber, ensuring the continuation of these skill sets by exposing the art form to new people within new contexts. She teaches throughout WNY and into the North East and has a professional connection to the Pacific Northwest, where her family has a large sheep farm that specializes in breed conservation for rare or at-risk breeds of sheep. Her work has received awards from NY Sheep and Wool and the Carnegie Art Center. In 2022, she was defined as a WNY artist culture-maker and a recipient of the NY Council on the Arts “Creatives Rebuild NY” grant, tasked with rebuilding arts access post-COVID. She is an exhibiting member of the Buffalo Society of Artists and a 2021 Roycroft Emerging Artist. She currently serves as the chair of the Roycroft Emerging Artists Program and was recently appointed Executive Coordinator of the Roycrofters-at-Large, the nonprofit serving modern Roycroft Artisans nationwide, and the primary fiber art event coordinator for the Arts Council of Wyoming County, where she is in charge of educational outreach and fiber arts programming for the FF2024 Fiber Festival. Her work is currently on view as part of the 2023 Art in Craft Media bienniel at the Burchfield-Penney and she was the inaugural recipient of Lake Affect Magazine’s Emerging Art Leadership Award. She works out of her studio at 17 Elm Street in East Aurora, where she also co-operates and co-curates The COMMA Fine Art gallery, in collaboration with two other women artists. See more of her work at her profile on the Buffalo Society of Artist’s website and at oneblubirdstudio.com.
About Jessica Arends: Jessica graduated from Paul Smith's College with a bachelor's degree in culinary arts and service management in 2008. During her time at Paul Smith's she attended the Marco Polo Institute in Italy for 3 months on a culinary internship. After graduation she went to work as a pastry chef at the Michelin Star rated restaurant The Cliff House Hotel in Ireland. She then went on to Mexico to work as a personal chef in Quintana Roo. When she returned back to the states, she went on to Nashville to work at several locations including the 5 diamond property The Hermitage Hotel and the prestigious Richland Country Club. She is currently Executive Chef at Cornelia @ the AKG where she gets to showcase her passion for local seasonal ingredients with creating art on each plate. Jessica and her husband, Stephen, own B.A.B.S Artisan Meats creating small-scale sausages using locally raised meats and custom, farm-fresh flavors.
I come from a deep tradition of entrepreneurship and business having grown up in a multi-generational family business. From the many chapters of my life, I bring an unorthodox pastiche of skills. With a deep background in business and technology, a life-long involvement in the arts, and a varied spiritual background, I channel the power of connecting people, cultivated aesthetics, sacred awareness, and inspired leadership to every endeavor I undertake.
Having left careers in Theatrical & Entertainment Lighting, as a Therapeutic Massage Therapist and Business Coach I now get to bring everything I know together on my farm, Crown Hill Farm.
Winding up in the farming world grew out of a desire to dig deep into health, wellness, and connection to the land. In an unconventional way, life at Crown Hill Farm is the sum of all the lessons learned along the way, fused with the incredible responsibility of working with the Earth’s natural rhythms. Every part of life on the farm is sculpted around conscious being, with extreme care and attention paid to empowering health, wellness, and simplicity.
As an Entrepreneur and Business coach, I’m a staunch advocate for growing business in a way that is authentic, conscious, accessible and sustainable. These values translate to my farm and to my podcast, Women in Food.