Cultivating a Micro Farm at Sawgrass Marriott Resort

Sixteen colonies of bees occupy the opposite end of the property, which is the hub of the landscape. This micro farm, Sanchez says, is the result of both the support of Sawgrass Marriott’s culinary staff and hotel management as well as a failed tomato-growing project.

“I remember we were doing menu planning a couple years ago. The temptation is to consult the catalog and see what we need to order,” Sanchez says. “One day, executive chef Joe (Natoli) and I just stopped and said: Can we get off the wheel? Are there things we can do ourselves?”

He pauses and kneels before a colony of buzzing honeybees. “This is our wheelhouse. Beekeeping is the gateway drug,” he says. “I feel so grateful that the staff here has basically given me carte blanche and put faith into my crazy ideas.”

The vision is to cultivate a self-sustaining agricultural space that can be replicated throughout other Marriott hotel properties, although for now, Sanchez is the only beekeeper on Marriott’s payroll, according to a company spokeswoman. But Sanchez is ready to propagate his vision, having already prepared a syllabus with chapters that cover such topics as beekeeping, safety and inspection regulations and hygiene. Natoli allocates a certain amount of the food and beverage spend toward supporting the micro farm’s endeavors, though much of it was developed through resourceful practices. Items destined for the trash (think wood pallets and food waste) are up-cycled for building materials and compost. Queen bees were grafted to form new colonies. “People from different departments of the hotel are coming out and adding their special touch,” Natoli said. “A gentleman from the laundry department wood-worked all our signs, and an engineer tapped the sprinkler system to bring us water to the hill.”

Sure, the likelihood of an institutional buyer such as Sawgrass Marriott growing all its own food on premise is unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future. But the micro farm’s supporters view the project as a portal into a different philosophy of food sourcing and a corporation’s obligation to the environment. “The big thing is contributing to the health of the local ecosystem and in turn, learning how to farm and grow more ourselves,” Sanchez says. “Our focus has to start right here, with the earth.”

For Sanchez, who owns his own micro farm in a rural area of Jacksonville, the seeds were planted a few years ago, when successive attempts to grow good tomatoes that didn’t require pesticide applications kept falling short. “I grew thousands of varieties of tomatoes, before I realized it comes down to bees and pollination. When you have beneficial insects, flowers are pollinated. The fruit forms more perfect, and you don’t lose them to pests. I will never waste a tomato again.”

Sanchez, a state-licensed beekeeper who also is in the University of Florida’s Master Beekeeper program, studies the bees’ foraging travels with binoculars, and can tell which nectar sources they’ve been to by the corbiculae, or pollen baskets, on their legs.

“It’s called flower fidelity — they go to the flowers with the most food,” he says. In spring, holly, black cherry and tallow represent the dominant flavor notes. “The 32082 zip code spring honey is sweet, light in color, delicate and low in moisture content,” Sanchez says, in reference to the zip code for Ponte Vedra Beach. In the summer, honey bees look to palm trees as their main source of nectar, resulting in honey that is darker and higher in moisture content, while the fall batch will have elements of golden rain tree and goldenrod.