Celebrating Petite Sirah & SuSol in Suisun City

Nov 3, 2025

By Sustainable Solano

Karina Cook and Princess Washington at the Petite Sirah meet & greet in October

It was a wonderful evening of wine, music, poetry and conversation around Sustainable Solano and local food at the Petite Sirah meet & greet with board members Princess Washington and Karina Cook on Oct. 25.

As part of the SuSol’s board’s community outreach, board and team members have paired up for intimate gatherings to connect local community members and leaders with SuSol’s work in the county. Princess and Karina, both influential residents of Suisun City, wanted to do something special that highlighted Suisun’s special place in the county and the world through its Suisun Valley wineries — particularly Petite Sirah, for which Suisun Valley’s climate is ideally suited.

This led to a fantastic evening planned by Princess and Karina and hosted at the Solano Yacht Club, surrounded by the beloved marshlands, and showcasing local wineries. SuSol’s Local Food program manager, Chef Stephanie Oelsligle Jordan, planned out a variety of food pairings for the donated wines, and SuSol Board President Maggie Kolk spoke about our work in the county.

Princess called the focus on Solano’s agricultural community and local food deeply meaningful, and was excited about future opportunities to showcase Suisun Valley wine and local food in the city. “As the Petit Sirah capital of the world, it was a joy to honor our harvest and community spirit through Sustainable Solano,” she said.

We are so grateful to those who donated to make the event a reality and to Sustainable Solano that night!

Thank you to the following for donating products, services, time and talent to make this evening a success!

Fairfield-Suisun Rotary Club

Caymus-Suisun

Sunset Cellars

Tolenas Winery

Whim Cellars

Solano Yacht Club

Supervisor Wanda Williams

David Camper (Excalibur)

Essex Cook

Leon Echols, the Working Class Violinist

Slideshow

Click through to see photos from the evening!

Photo credit: Essex Cook

All About Agritourism

Oct 29, 2025

By Stephanie Oelsligle Jordan, Local Food program manager

While purchasing crops and products from local farms is an important part of supporting our local food system, it is only one way to support the work and livelihood of local farmers. Another way is agritourism, which puts farms and farmers face-to-face with community members who can grow to know them.

Agritourism can take a lot of forms. Some examples include a u-pick, farm dinner, farm tour, harvest event, etc. Small and mid-sized farmers are utilizing agritourism more and more to supplement their income as farmers and help make ends meet.

The Solano Local Food System Alliance is dedicated to supporting an environmentally sustainable, economically viable, socially just and equitable local food system in Solano County. The Alliance brings together a variety of stakeholders, organizations and agencies that work within the local food system, from producers to retailers to food access providers. An important part of the Alliance’s work is education. It holds regular educational forums to learn more about topics that intersect with the local food system.

On Oct. 2, the topic was agritourism. In Solano County, the Suisun Valley region has been employing agritourism for many years, but other regions have not. The Alliance wanted to understand more — what agritourism is, how it can benefit farmers, its economic impacts and best practices from around the region.

The Alliance invited Rachael Callahan, Statewide Agritourism Coordinator for UC SAREP (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program), and Olivia Henry, UC Cooperative Extension‘s Regional Food Systems Advisor, to address these questions during the online forum, which you can watch in the video above. Also included is a short interview with Lisa Howard, owner and winemaker of Tolenas Winery, who explained how agritourism began in Suisun Valley and the benefits it has for growers in the region today.

Agritourism Resources

Click on the links below for additional resources on agritourism

Little Free Library and Pollinator Garden Installed at the Rio Vista Roots Community Garden

Oct 6, 2025

By Willa Gruver, Resilient Communities Program Manager

SuSol Program Manager Willa Gruver cuts the ribbon at the dedication of the new Little Free Library in Rio Vista

SuSol installed a Little Free Library in the verge strip next to the Rio Vista Roots Community garden on Sept. 6. This library will serve as a resource for the community and  was made possible by the Rio Vista Youth Air Protectors program.

This community library was made possible by the work of many hands. It was created collaboratively by the Rio Vista High School woodshop students who built it, the Youth Air Protectors who painted it, the SuSol team members and volunteers who installed it, and the greater Rio Vista community, who came together to contribute books and install a pollinator garden around the base of the library.

The Youth Air Protectors program and our air quality work in Rio Vista is funded through the California Air Resources Board and is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly in disadvantaged communities.

This library is being hosted and stewarded by the newly established Rio Vista Roots community garden, and will contribute to its vision of the garden as a vibrant community space and social hub.

The Rio Vista Youth Air Protectors worked in small groups back in March to design and paint each side of the library with artwork of their choice
We also painted kindness rocks to spread positive messages around the site and neighborhood.

The native pollinator garden was planted with California native plants such as Yarrow, California Fuschia, Blue Sage, and Narrow Leaf Milkweed that will provide valuable habitat for butterflies and other insects, while also beautifying the site and providing benefits to the air, soil and water quality in Rio Vista.

This event provided an opportunity to discuss our local air quality, a topic that is of particular importance in Rio Vista. Rio Vista is in the 86th percentile of California census tracts for ER visits due to asthma. It is in the 84th percentile for ER visits due to heart attacks; both of these conditions are exacerbated by poor air quality.

Community members were able to sign up to receive free air purifiers from the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District, provide feedback on air quality solutions they would like to see in their community, and learn more about health impacts and mitigation tactics.

These plants will grow quickly and provide food and habitat for birds, butterflies and other beneficial insects.
Rio Vista community members gave feedback on what types of air quality solutions they’d like to see implemented in their community.

We filled the library with resources that address air quality and environmental health (for all ages). If you’re in the neighborhood, we hope you’ll stop by, take a book, and leave a book!

If you’d like to get involved, we’re seeking volunteers to help steward (and weed) the pollinator garden. Please email nicole@sustainablesolano.org if you’re interested. You can find out more about our upcoming events at sustainablesolano.org/events – we’d love to see you there!

Learning All Things Compost at the Vaca Valley Garden Club

Sep 24, 2025

By Jill Hopkins, Vaca Valley Garden Club

We were excited to bring speaker (and composting expert extraordinaire!) Lori Caldwell to the Vaca Valley Garden Club for their September meeting. Here, club Vice President Jill Hopkins shares about Lori’s talk and the garden club.

Lori Caldwell presents all about compost

At the first regular meeting of the 2025-26 year for the Vaca Valley Garden Club, 54 members and guests were treated to the energy of Lori Caldwell, The “Compost Gal,” on Sept. 10. Lori’s presentation covered a series of compost contrasts for the Garden Club when she spoke of the appropriate Brown/Green Ratio; the difference between Damp and Mushy; the distinction between Aerating and Turning, and the distinct qualities of Hot vs. Cold piles.

Some important compost tips:

  1. Aerate that pile like you are “tossing a salad,” not stirring pancake batter!
  2. Chop your ingredients before adding them to your pile. Do not “dump and run.”
  3. Know your compost’s mood. Too much sun? Too much water? Bad bugs? Stinky? All fixable!
  4. Compost Happens! The time it takes depends on the ingredients, the care, and attention it gets, like most things in nature.

Sustainable Solano connected Lori Caldwell, consultant, landscaper, and educator, with the Vaca Valley Garden Club. In turn, Lori’s expertise in All Things Compost got people excited about a positive use of leaves, fruit peelings, straw, eggshells, tea leaves and branches. It was a good day for the Garden Club and a good day for Mother Earth!

Vaca Valley Garden Club

The Garden Club welcomes everyone with an interest in flowers, vegetables, trees, water, bees, bugs, birds, and the preservation of natural resources.

For additional information about the Vaca Valley Garden Club, attend one of its meetings at 10 am on the second Wednesday of the month (September-May) at Presbyterian Community Church, 425 Hemlock St., Vacaville. Before each meeting, an informal plant sale and boutique are held. Call President Glenda Riddle at (707) 330-8338 to learn more about the club.

May There Be Rain: Challenging times in nonprofit funding

Aug 25, 2025

By Sustainable Solano

We think about our organization, Sustainable Solano, as a living organism, and this approach informs both our work in the community and our understanding of and holding the organization itself. In this picture, we consider funding as rain, the sacred water that lets the seeds grow into strong plants — our programs on the ground, in the community.

We all hear the news: significant reduction in federal funding, resulting reductions in state and local funding, uncertainty for the nonprofit sector overall, massive layoffs in the sector. …. The rain is drying up! It has affected so many nonprofits in Solano County, including Sustainable Solano. It was already tough to work in Solano before all these changes — according to the United Way Bay Area’s report, just 1 percent of Bay Area philanthropic dollars went to Solano and Napa combined in 2018-2020. San Francisco, by contrast, received over 130x that investment, despite having the same need score. Things only got worse this year.

In these uncertain times, it’s a breath of fresh air to have foundations like Magic Cabinet working on our side! We were the lucky recipient of the second cohort of funding for Solano County. Magic Cabinet is not your typical foundation that reimburses your well-documented expenses and requests a detailed quarterly progress report. They listen! They also dig deeper, trying to understand the landscape of Solano County and to bring other funders. We are forever grateful to the wonderful staff at Magic Cabinet for their trust and support in our unfolding.

One of the latest initiatives of the Magic Cabinet Foundation to highlight the need of Solano County and bring in other funders is this recorded conversation with Magic Cabinet’s Chief Strategy Officer Tiffany Johnson, United Way Bay Area’s Kelly Batson, Solano Community Foundation’s Mike Ioakimedes, and our own founding Co-Executive Director Elena Karoulina. Here is a very informative conversation highlighting the disparity of funding in Solano County. We invite you to listen, first to understand, and then take action.

The time for action is now, and the Solano Community Foundation is hosting the county’s first day of giving, Live Solano, Give Solano. This one-day giving event on Oct. 1 will be a truly grassroots effort to support Solano County nonprofits, including Sustainable Solano. The event is similar to Sacramento’s day of giving, which raises millions in one day — with most donations at $50 or less. So every dollar counts, and when we all give together, it can make a big difference.

Theory of Change

Below is an illustration of SuSol’s Theory of Change, which shows the funding (“rain”) that is an important part of the ecosystem of work we do.

Live Solano, Give Solano

Going Live Oct. 1!

See Sustainable Solano’s Live Solano, Give Solano profile here, and please share with your friends and networks about this new giving opportunity to support the important work going on in Solano County!