Have you been to Flora Farms? It is one of THE top destinations in Los Cabos. The top of the top for events and mind-blowingly beautiful weddings. It’s a community, a restaurant, a farm, a labor of love, and it was once all just a dream which took on a life of its own, with the skilled and relentless vision and drive of several people; however, two in particular: Gloria Wallace and Patrick Greene.
We have had the pleasure of knowing the Greene’s for close to 30 years – they are part of our chosen family. Gloria has had a huge impact on both of our lives as a mentor, friend, and one of our many ‘moms’ who helped raise us.
This is our version of history of how the Greene’s came to Cabo, helped shape the community, and ultimately built this fabulous, international, elite destination, Flora Farms.
Gloria and Patrick Greene are one of the original expat families of Los Cabos. They moved here in 1991 from San Francisco. You see, back then they were living the American Dream, but also a bit of the ‘rat race’. They had a baby (shout out to Holden!!), and they were each running their own businesses. That meant a lot of commuting. A lot of working. Oh, and they owned two homes…they purchased their family home before selling their previous property – so, two mortgages. Gloria says, if you really want to test your relationship, have a baby, two businesses, and two mortgages. Just kidding, don’t do that.
They came down for the full solar eclipse of 1991, and never looked back. Well, maybe they looked back in a self-appraising, growth-opportunities kind of way; but, not at what they had left behind, necessarily. What they gained was so much more. A little bit of the Baja freedom.
The Baja was not completely new territory for them. Patrick’s family had been coming here since the road down the Baja was (somewhat) paved, and eventually his parents made it their part-time home, and then their full-time home. Starting their adventures back in the 70s, they would race down the Baja (seriously, no stopping) and they’d drive into Santa Maria Beach, set up camp, and fish to their heart’s galore.
So then, Gloria, Patrick and their son Holden moved here permanently in 1991 after deciding this was the place they were meant to be. Whether it was destiny or just a better quality of life, it was decided.
They moved into a small trailer park which was on the hill just next to what used to be Trattoria Da Giorgios (if you know, you know – but, seriously killer salad bar and the best pizzas). They found the simple life there, with friendly neighbors and incredible views of the bay. They would spend evenings at the old Palmilla hotel, enjoying cocktails and playing backgammon while the friendly staff would play with Holden. Life was pretty perfect. Then, it got better – after a short time they moved their camper up to a property with a palapa at the top of the mountain overlooking Palmilla (now home to the prestigious La Montaña homesites valued at multiple millions of dollars) – it was the perfect, rustic paradise.
Gloria had owned a hairstyling service back in San Francisco – so, when she arrived in Los Cabos, she set up shop in her in-law’s garage and started working. Then one day, one of the locals had their hair done, and when it was time to pay, said she wasn’t going to because Gloria wasn’t set up legally to work – the woman said she’d turn Gloria in to authorities if she said anything. This was the beginning of Gloria’s indoctrination into how to do business. She got busy getting her working papers in order and then started working with Spencer, another Los Cabos icon, in the Zipper’s parking lot. You guys, it was the coolest salon ever – TAKE ME BACK TO THE OLD DAYS!!
Meanwhile, Patrick was working as a carpenter at Madereria Esquinas out in Santa Rosa. He eventually went on to be a master concrete worker, building some amazing homes and centers in the area, more on that later.
Paradise quickly fell apart when the 100-year rainfall came in November 1993. It was worse than any Hurricane Cabo had seen at that time, it poured for 3 days straight. So many lives were lost, many homes destroyed, the new bridges over the arroyos completely collapsed. In fact, we are pretty certain there wasn’t a single bridge left intact after the rains. Huge sections gave way to the rushing water. Nothing stands up to that much water.
It was a huge shifting time for the Greene’s. They decided to ride out the storm with the in-laws on Gringo Hill. At first thinking maybe it was just a bit of rain. But when the rain would not let up, the family realized they would soon be without power, and Gloria and Patrick had borrowed the family generator, which was still up on the hill in Palmilla. The roads were already in too bad of condition to drive, so they set off on foot. They made it up the hill, and then started back to Gringo Hill, trudging along with the generator in tow. They made it down the hill and started out across the Palmilla bridge (the highway, not the overhead turn-around bridge), the arroyo was already gushing below, and pieces of the bridge had started breaking away. Surely this wasn’t happening, right!? They set off across at a quick pace, and then they had to make a run for it – they could hear and see the bridge crumbling beneath their feet. They barely made it across, almost getting swept out to sea, panic set in (nausea, tears, shaking) they both collapsed in the immediate aftermath, but it also took months to recover from the emotional upheaval.
Gloria and Patrick luckily lived to tell their tale, but they lost their home and most of their belongings from the floods. There was flooding for weeks, no electricity and no running water for almost a month, maybe longer. The community came together to help people however we could. Neighbors would come to our pool to get buckets of water to flush toilets – we would share pantry items, food, anything we could. We would walk a short way up the Costa Azul arroyo to ‘shower’ in one of the little waterfalls. It was both a beautiful and traumatic time for so many.
Once things started normalizing again, there were people still without a home or their business – and this little family of three, with all their losses and trauma and very little hope needed to make a decision. Do we move back to the states? What will we do?
Luckily, one of our neighbors and amazing friends Jill, being the angel that she was, stepped up to help Gloria and Patrick. She found them a place to live in Chamizal on the corner of Calle Remolcador, and they found a way to get back on their feet with the help and support of their family and friends.
Patrick continued to do carpentry and Gloria still cut hair but became inspired by the community around her and started organizing community events. She started the infamous ‘La Jolla Art Festival’ to support local artists and bring community and culture together. We would all get together and hand paint posters at the Greene’s to put up around town. We have the most amazing memories of the Art Festivals and to this day still see our local artists thriving. The La Jolla Festival went for a few years until she started her first restaurant.
See, during this time Gloria and Patrick invested in a 25-acre property in Las Animas – a rural neighborhood behind La Playita. It was their dream to have a farm one day and to be able to grow all kinds of fruits and veggies, have lots of animals, and maybe even have a home there.
The land was barren, and the ground was mostly nutrient-depleted sand. With the exception of a few historical brick ruins and mango trees, there was not much to work with. The Greene’s knew there was potential and started working their butts off to get it going. It takes a special kind of vision and determination to turn a little hidden, sandy valley into one of the top businesses of Los Cabos.
It started with an outdoor kitchen, and a 3-bedroom yurt on the property and the little family of 4, (their daughter Lily was born by this time) lived there for close to 20 years while their dream started evolving and manifesting around them. They also built around the old adobe buildings creating the perfect environment for Gloria’s famous cooking classes.
Gloria opened her first restaurant called ‘Flora’ in the Plaza behind Mega, close to where the now famous Cynthia’s Fresh is located. The original Flora was a hit, and just kept getting more and more popular as time went on. Gloria was serving the most delicious, fresh food (who remembers their insanely good turkey burgers!?) The restaurant was created with the farm-to-table ideals and the food was fresh, vibrant, and colorful full of farm veggies and local free-range meat or cheese with gorgeous salads, burritos and the renowned turkey burger (seriously, it was SO good). It quickly became a local’s favorite. Cynthia, from ‘Cynthia’s Fresh’ started working for Gloria back then and when Gloria closed Cynthia continued her legacy by starting her own version of organic fresh cuisine. Cynthia’s is another local’s favorite!
They were growing their veggies, raising chickens, and working on the new restaurant. During the time of the restaurant the gardens at the Farm were growing and the soil was becoming more and more nutrient dense and ready for more variety and production. Maybe it was all those basil plants Patrick grew (there was a time when they were going to be basil farmers) but slowly and surely the land was getting nurtured and filled with love. It took about 10 years from the time they started planting the first seed to really get the soil ready for business.
After a little over 5 years, the lease was up on the restaurant and they decided to close the restaurant and to really focus on the cooking classes and selling produce and organic eggs. This is around when Gloria, along with her dear friend John, started the Organic Farmers Market, which back then began on their friend Lupe’s land…and has evolved over the past 20 years to what it is today. Gloria’s produce attracted all the who’s who of Los Cabos, and she started growing most of her veggies for Charlie Trotter’s Palmilla restaurant, which is where she met Chef Guillermo – now part of the Flora family.
And now, on to Gloria’s next adventure, the BBQ pit!! Which she started with DJ and sold the most delicious BBQ at the Saturday market, and was available for events. She ran these events with her still loyal employees Erika, Julian and Deborah. And while it was loads of fun (and incredibly delicious for all of us patrons), it was backbreaking work hauling the huge BBQ around to every weekly market, and all the different events. It was fun, it was delicious, and…it ran its course.
All the while (are you keeping up with all this doing!!?) Patrick was busy running their contracting company, specializing in poured concrete work – building some amazing homes in the Los Cabos area, and then getting a huge contract in the Turks and Caicos’ – so, Patrick and Gloria then spent several years living back and forth between their farm in Los Cabos, and the Caribbean (and eventually also Carbondale, Colorado, which is where son Holden was going to high school – FUN FACT: we went to the same high school!! Shout out to CRMS!!).
The small business with the Organic Market and the BBQ was only the beginning. Gloria also hosted cooking classes at the building which is now the main kitchen and dining area of Flora Farms Restaurant. They thought, in the beginning, that the farm would be a great place to host parties and events, never did they imagine it would develop into the successful Farm to Table Restaurant it is today.
Ok, back to Turks and Caicos: once that project was completed, there was potential for a new development in Abu Dhabi…however, this was being proposed right around the time the markets crashed…and thankfully, in retrospect, the project did not go through. Thankfully because it left Patrick and Gloria with a lot of time on their hands. So, what did they do? Well, first…they traveled.
They spent a year traveling and eating throughout Europe…this is when Patrick discovered his love for the classic Neapolitan wood oven pizzas. Then, they went on a ‘BBQ, Blues and Baseball’ tour through the US…mostly through the South – sampling all kinds of comfort foods and upscale cuisines; and, exploring farm-to-table communities…they were beginning to envision what maybe possibly could be…someday…
When they came back from a couple years of traveling, they started planning. And raising capital. And building. And planning. And reading. And building. The work was never ending. Gloria says they read “You Can Farm” over and over. The list of their favorite books goes on and on (I smell another possible blog post??).
Years and years of trials and errors and reading and research went into building the farm and creating a business…all with the purpose of figuring out what they could do to combine their passions and expertise: farming, feeding and building – it was all about creating for the Greene’s. Creating food, creating a business – creating a community.
During all of this work, Gloria also spearheaded the first humane society in Los Cabos called C.A.R.E. – Dr. Bravo was the veterinarian and she convinced her good friend Donna to head its board. The famous ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ was a fundraising event that was held out at the Farm, which started in 2004 and went on for 6 or 7 years, raising thousands of dollars for the dog and cat community of Los Cabos. The fundraiser would feature silent auctions and, more importantly, it was a collaboration: all the best restaurants in Los Cabos had a booth presenting an array of their offerings. Eventually, CARE and the Los Cabos Humane Society merged in 2009, and many other humane societies have emerged to help the Los Cabos dog and cat populations. The farm was a fun space for community and family, and for doing their part to give back.
Photos of Wendy and Adrienne at the 2005 Dog Day Afternoon – Wendy has a couple of the pups that were up for adoption at the event.
A fun bit of history behind the Farm is that during the development and planning stages, Gloria and Patrick were inspired to breed and raise their own pigs for the restaurant. They wanted to provide a safe and organic space for humane pig farming, while also creating a unique and full-bodied flavor in their pork. So, they went into the high hills of the Baja Sur mountain range and found wild black Iberian hogs. Yes!!! There are actually Iberian hogs living in the mountains! They eat acorns from the Oak trees – yes! Baja is home to some incredible oak trees, some of which are endemic to the Baja.
Gloria and Patrick safely brought back a few wild hogs and bred them with Dutch pigs, thus creating their own breed. You really haven’t lived until you try one of their world-renowned pork chops, or Patrick’s cured bacon or prosciutto. The list of incredible pork products continues.
Now about the pizzas – this subject deserves its own post, but for now, here it goes: when you eat a bite of Flora’s pizza, you aren’t just enjoying one of the best pizzas down here, you are experiencing years of hard work and history in one bite. You may be eating a 7-year aged Prosciutto or homemade sausage, a house-made cheese, or farm veggies. Does it get any cooler than that!?
While mastering BBQing, perfecting organic farming, raising hogs, curing meats, building a restaurant and a business… Patrick also experimented with homemade pizza dough and sourdough. He was determined to create as close to authentic Neapolitan pizzas, going as far as to build their own clay oven for wood-fired pizzas. Back in the day, we did ‘Pizza Night’ on New Year’s Eve with the Greene’s, stocked with Champagne, pizza, and pate, what more could one need? They worked hard at making the best pizza dough, and if you have ever had a Flora Farm pizza, you know all the years of hard work paid off. It is to die for.
The restaurant started as a family style concept…each night there would be a different menu, and all would be served family style. In the beginning, the pizzas came out of the oven whole, and were served to your table with a large knife where you were supposed to carve your own pizza, and chow down! The early days of family style pizza, salads, and homestyle meals are forever memories and the true roots of the beginning of Flora Farm restaurant.
The modern-day Flora Farm still holds true in all its culture and family-operated charm, with the addition of art classes, cooking classes, spa services, carefully curated shops, wedding and event services, baked goods and groceries, and award-winning residences, the Culinary Cottages and Hillside Haylofts – you can experience the beauty and hard work of one family’s dream. One that brings community together and gives back to the place that helped them get through the challenges, struggles and victories of Baja life. Always there to give a helping hand to their friends and family, creating jobs for the local kids that need a place to start out, they are an example of hard work, determination, vision, and inspiration.
Flora’s Farm is so much more than just a famous restaurant and real estate investment community – it is a dedicated family venture, a place of community support, and an inspiration for us all. Do yourselves a favor, take yourself to dinner and a garden walk at Flora’s (no, we are not paid for this article, we really just love Flora’s Farm this much.
Cheers,
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