Farm Tour

We have a feel good philosophy that food is medicine and we feel it important to steward that belief to younger generations. Health begins with what all living things need – food – so we really are what we eat. There is an undeniable connection that one creates with the earth when one sees how and where food grows, just like the connection one feels to the land upon seeing a beautiful mountainscape. That being said, we host farm tours with lunch, a chance for educational tour groups to smell, taste, and see where their food comes from. A chance for them to understand why it is so important to have local sustainable food growing practices and to eat healthy.

The pictures are from a farm tour where we hosted groups from Florida International University College of Medicine Green Family Foundation NeighborhoodHELP and from the Celebrity Kids Club & Childcare Center. These groups provide nutrition education sessions, cooking demonstrations, and other activities designed to promote a healthy lifestyle from a young age.

One of the chaperones in charge stated, "one of the experiences we want to bring to the kids is seeing the process of their fruits and vegetables from seeds to their plate. We want to do this by bringing the children, ranging in ages from 3-5 years, to your farm to give them some education on the different fruits and vegetables."
We are so happy that we can steward such positive, healthy influences upon younger children! Great tour, great day, (great local lunch!), and the kids loved it!

Once upon a Groupon

We recently featured a Groupon deal for an in-depth tour of our farm, hands-on gardening session, a fresh lunch, and a Q&A with Gabriele, founder of our beautiful farm. Our excitement only grew as guests began arriving armed with pen and paper, comfortable clothes (i.e. were ready for some hands on experience!), and an eagerness to learn and converse about organic gardening.

We love utilizing our farm as a setting for which to learn about organic gardening. We don’t teach in a sterile classroom setting; our “classroom” teems with the life forces we teach about. It is this live interaction with the subtleties of nature that inspires both questions and amazement.

…And so we started our guests off with a tour of the farm.

There is much to learn about our subtropical climate, one that is unique to the rest of the continental United States. Our summers are quite long and it is rare for our winters to see temperatures below freezing, a breaking point for many plants. We do not take for granted our location and work in harmony with nature to ensure year round fruit and vegetable growth and year round floral beauty.

Above we have Will Dukes discussing oyster mushrooms. To learn more about oyster mushrooms, please visit our blog post titled “The Fun Guy who grows the fungi”. There were a lot of great questions and a lot of great insights as we toured the farm and by the time we concluded the farm tour, everyone was super excited to apply all that we learned! We got our soil ready by giving a final sift to the nutrient rich compost, and then we dug in! We had seeds at the ready, some of which were harvested from our own plants, a very sustainable way to garden indeed! With seeds all planted, smiles were stretched ear to ear. Anyone who’s ever planted a seed knows how great it feels! Things could only get happier as lunch was served.

A meal at Paradise Farms always brings the whole experience wonderfully full circle as guests dine on plants they’ve seen, touched, and smelled. We had a great time and were so glad we were able to connect and reach out to an even greater audience interested in organic gardening philosophies and knowledge. Though the tour started with a sprinkling of rain, it was short lived and the day turned out to have beautiful weather, a beautiful sun, and a really great group(on) of guests!

Farm tour

We had received numerous phone calls and emails from individuals who wanted to take a tour of our farm. Excited energy is certainly contagious and so we had decided to open our farm to the public for a tour!

The tour went great! We were so excited to talk organic gardening as this was a group that came specifically for a tour of our farm. It might be July, but there was still much to see, smell, and taste on our lush farm. I think the favorite part of the tour group was the cranberry hibiscus. This beautiful plant is makes an attractive leafy addition to any garden and the leaves and flowers are both edible. The leaves are slightly tart, maybe even a hint salty. Either way, they make a tasty and eye-catching addition to any salad. They could even be used as a garnish for a dish that needs a little tang on top of every bite. I did a quick Google search of cranberry hibiscus and found that the flowers are commonly made into a smoothie with a little sugar and lime. I personally have only had the leaves in salad, but I would imagine the flowers would make a delicious smoothie! (Who doesn’t love a smoothie?!)


Everyone had a blast. We inspired many to begin a backyard organic garden and we felt ‘mission accomplished’! The tour was this past Saturday and despite the warming summer months and subtropical rainy season, beautiful weather prevailed! Not one rain drop fell from the time that the first guest arrived to the time that the very last guest left. As soon as we exchanged goodbyes with the last guest, the sky broke and heavy rain drops began to fall.