Suzanne Peabody Ashworth, ‘Willy Wonka’ of Sacramento farm-to-table dining, dies at 70

Suzanne Peabody Ashworth, whose farm supplied many of the Sacramento region’s best restaurants with choice produce over the last 25 years, died at age 70 on Dec. 23 due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Ashworth grew up under the shade of a giant fig tree on her family’s farm at 20030 Old River Rd. in West Sacramento, then turned it into a crucial part of Sacramento’s farm-to-fork movement. Restaurants such as Mulvaney’s B&L, Masullo, The Waterboy and Grange came to rely on fruits and vegetables from Del Rio Botanical, named for Ashworth and her husband Roger’s onetime home street in Land Park.

The 68-acre organic, open-pollinated farm supplied more than 50 restaurants as well as the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, mostly through local wholesaler Produce Express. At the heart of it all was Ashworth, a brilliant grower and teacher who planted seeds of wisdom throughout the region’s culinary scene.

“If there was a Yoda (of Sacramento farming), it’d be her,” Origami Asian Grill co-owner and executive chef Scott Ostrander said. “She was definitely renowned as somebody more specialized than anyone else we’d known or come up with. There was nobody in that league.”

Born on May 6, 1951, Suzanne Peabody earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC Davis, where she met Roger Ashworth. The two wed in 1971 before Suzanne earned a master’s in language development from Sacramento State.

Suzanne and Roger, a dentist, kept a garden at their Del Rio Road house until her parents grew too old for their hay-and-bell pepper enterprise in West Sacramento. The younger couple then moved to the farm, where Ashworth lived the rest of her life surrounded by family.

Produce Express boxes are ubiquitous in Sacramento restaurant kitchens in part because of the company’s deep roster of local farmers; Del Rio Botanical was its first Sacramento-area client, said former salesman Jim Mills, who talked to Ashworth virtually every week for 20 years after forging the partnership.

Ashworth had a relationship with chefs not seen by other farmers, said Mills, a partner in some of Randy Paragary’s early restaurants. She was the only one to type up weekly lists of available produce, which included arugula well before it was grown on other area farms, in addition to zucchini, herbs, chard, tomatoes and lettuce.

Yet Del Rio Botanical’s more esoteric crops were its calling cards, the Sichuan peppercorns and African horned melons called kiwanos and west Indian gherkins. Ashworth grew cornichons mostly for Oliver Ridgeway’s staff to pickle and serve at Grange when he was the head chef there. Chefs with dreams of locally sourcing niche ingredients partnered with the certified master herbalist, then altered their dishes when she came through.

“You would tell her to grow something and wouldn’t hear anything from her for a while, and then next thing you’d have 60 pounds of Hatch chili peppers coming in and she’d say, ‘Well, you asked me to grow them,’” Ridgeway said. “I’d say, ‘Well, you’re not wrong,’ and then all of sudden we’re changing the menu.”

Del Rio Botanical used cover crops and rotating crops to keep soil healthy, and was one of the first area farms to grow vegetables that could be harvested year-round, Mills said. Seeds from her 1,500-variety collection were sometimes planted just to yield more, which she happily gave away via Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and spreading heirloom seeds.

“She was very in tune with her farm, almost like at a spiritual level,” Ridgeway said. “You could walk around her backyard in addition to the farm, and it was almost like a Willy Wonka-type experience where she could entertain you and tell you all about everything that was growing there. ... She’d pick leaves and seeds, shove them in your mouth and say ‘Taste this.’ Some things would have a very unique flavor, some things would make your mouth go numb and you’re like ‘What’s that?’”

Ashworth and Del Rio Botanical’s star grew with the Sacramento dining scene and the farm-to-table movement. Golden 1 Center used many of her products (farm-cultivated honey in a barbecue sauce, for example) to fulfill its “90% of concession ingredients from within 150 miles” pledge. Del Rio Botanical saw a 10% jump in sales when the arena opened, Ashworth told The Sacramento Bee in 2018.

Chefs hunted turkeys at Del Rio Botanical while Ashworth made them lunch, or gather on the farm for communal dinners, often catered by Patrick Mulvaney. Ridgeway brought out-of-town visitors to the farm, knowing Ashworth might make them milk the goats or get their hands dirty some other way.

Ashworth gave Ostrander the seeds and know-how to plant Park Winters’ vegetable garden as the high-end Yolo County hotel’s executive chef, he said. When he quit in 2017 to open Origami, she gifted him two free CSA boxes each week throughout the yearlong transition.

“It’s been a magical place since I first stepped foot on there,” said Ostrander, who met Ashworth in 2008. “It’s the most unique farm we have in Sacramento, I think. I don’t know any other farm like it.”

Now the chef/owner of Camden Spit + Larder, Ridgeway remembers Ashworth dining at Grange on multiple New Year’s eves in the early 2010s. Dressed up and enjoying a glass of wine alongside her husband, she seemed to glow watching chefs transform her products into high-end dishes, Ridgeway said.

Aside from those visits and trips to restaurants, Ashworth lived well off her own land, making wine, beer, limoncello and goat cheese and raising quail.

“She was just a well-rounded Renaissance woman,” Mills said. “She was a good cook, a good farmer, a good teacher. She did a lot.”

It’s not clear yet what’ll happen to Del Rio Botanical in the immediate aftermath of Ashworth’s death. The farm’s output tapered off as her dementia worsened over the last two years, despite the best efforts of some of her employees, chefs said. Mills said Produce Express had no Del Rio Botanical produce when he called old friends Monday as news of Ashworth’s death began to spread.

Ashworth is survived by her husband of 50 years, Roger Walter Ashworth, her mother Jacqueline Mott Peabody and sisters Jane Yeung and Joanne Chasey. She is preceded in death by her father, Edward Charles Peabody Jr.

Ashworth’s family requests people make donation in her memory to Yolo Hospice P.O. Box 1014, Davis, CA 95617 in lieu of flowers.