Summertime in Boulder is a thrill on its own. But eating dinner outside in Boulder in the summertime? That’s more like outdoor theater with a side of salad.

A red-legged grasshopper might hop into your rosé. A rogue gust of wind could lift your linen napkin into the next field. There’s always a chance of thunderheads rolling in on what appeared to be a bluebird evening. And yet, people here line up — whether by lottery, or by waiting two months for an open reservation — for the chance to eat among the carrots and kale, to sip wine beside a working tractor, to watch the sun dip behind the Flatirons with a just-picked tomato on their fork.

In Boulder County, where food and farmland occupy the same rarefied terrain, the farm dinner isn’t just a novelty these days. It’s something closer to fantasy fulfillment.

Land in Colorado is expensive, acreage is rare, house prices are ballooning and single-family homes are increasingly out of reach. The closest many Boulderites will ever get to living a “Little House on the Prairie” dream is at a farm dinner. Farm dinners offer a brief, romantic glimpse into what it might feel like to live on the land, and to step into the boots of a 19th-century homesteader, minus the hardship, and plus a very good rosé.

Boulder County is a place where chefs double as farmers and menus are dictated by whatever the fields decide, from a surprise cold snap, a sudden flush of cherry tomatoes, or a last-minute scramble to pull the heirloom carrots.

Whether seated at a long wooden table under a canopy of string lights or nestled into a glass-walled cabana with views that stretch to the Continental Divide, the purpose behind the farm dinner remains the same — to feel a little closer to the land, to the people who care for it, to the vegetables underfoot and the sheep in the pasture over.

And maybe, for a few hours at least, to slip into a version of Colorado where the signal fades, the basil is fragrant and nobody is asking you to circle back via Slack.

If there’s a farm dinner that’s on your wish list this summer, chances are it’s being hosted by Meadow Lark Farms. Although calling it a “farm” is a bit of a misnomer, as Meadow Lark doesn’t grow produce or raise animals. What it cultivates, instead, is experience.

Now in its fifth season under chef and owner Lena Miller, Meadow Lark has become one of Boulder County’s most beloved and ephemeral summertime traditions. Each dinner takes place on a different local farm, and each one is planned in just a few days, depending entirely on what the farmers are harvesting that week. There is no back stock of produce, no off-season storage.

“We plan the menu based on what the farm is pulling out of the ground right then,” Miller said. “We’re working with what’s most alive.”

Miller hires a different chef for each dinner and collaborates with an assistant and intern on the food. The team gathers on Fridays to prep, then arrives on site Saturday morning around 9 a.m. to begin the full transformation. Six people, a school bus kitchen, tables, chairs, lights and linens all pop up in the middle of a pasture or orchard or plot of heirloom vegetables.

“We all show up and there’s this moment of pure chaos,” she said, laughing. “But then it just… happens. We turn this blank patch of land into something really beautiful. And then by the time the stars are out, we’re packing it all back up.”

She continued: “It’s like this beautiful little world we build, and then we disappear. It’s a lot of work, but we have this rhythm. Everyone knows what to do, how to move. And it always comes together.”

This summer, farms included on Meadow Lark’s summer farm dinner tour are Esoterra Culinary Garden, Aspen Moon Farm, Cure Organic Farm, Toohey & Sons and Speedwell Farm and Gardens.

Dinners cost $195 per person, which includes four courses, gratuity and paying staff and chefs a livable wage. The price also supports local sourcing, much of it from the very farm hosting the dinner — and a share of the profit goes directly to the farmers themselves.

To book a spot, reservations open once a month through a 24-hour lottery. From there, Miller handles the matchups by hand, assigning guests to specific dinners, organizing invoices, and finalizing guest lists — all while coordinating with farms, staff and chefs. Once confirmed, guests receive only a date. The location and directions arrive two days before the event.

Menus shift as the season progresses. Early dinners lean on hearty spring vegetables like turnips, carrots and mustard greens. Later in the summer, tomatoes, corn, stone fruit and squash blossoms start to appear.

“I love watching the transition week to week,” Miller said. “It’s like getting to eat the whole arc of summer.”

If Meadow Lark offers a roaming, build-it-then-break-it-down kind of magic, Black Cat Farmstead is one based on permanence.

After a multi-year hiatus and more than four years of permitting and construction, chef and farmer Eric Skokan has officially brought back the farm dinners that began as a COVID-era solution and have now reemerged as something far more ambitious, far more grounded.

“Back then, we were bailing out the lifeboat as fast as we could,” Skokan said. “It was chaos. It was emergency mode. But now, the sea is calm. And we’ve had time to really build something.”

That something is a set of private and semi-private glass-walled dining cabanas scattered across his 425-acre farm — each with its own wood-burning stove, proper roof and views that stretch toward the Continental Divide. The new cabanas sit on land once used by Scandinavian blacksmiths and dairy farmers in the late 1800s, and feel, somehow, both historical and happily modern. There’s now a full commercial kitchen on-site, a wood-fired rotisserie grill and indoor plumbing housed in handsomely restored outbuildings.

But for Skokan, it’s still all about the food.

Each Sunday and Monday, he walks the fields, observing what’s ready, what’s peaking, what might need to be picked immediately before dinner.

“I plan the menus on those days, based on what I see,” he said. “I can’t forecast two weeks out. I’m just not that good of a farmer.”

Dinners are harvested each morning, ingredients pulled from the soil just hours before they appear on the plate. On any given night at Black Cat Farmstead, the menu might include Japanese turnips, summer squash, fragrant herbs, or sourdough bread made from the farm’s heirloom grains. Fresh ricotta, crisp greens and pasture-raised lamb or pork — sourced from the 500 sheep and more than 100 hogs on-site — round out the meal.

“To put it in perspective, the average vegetable in a U.S. grocery store is at least two weeks old when it arrives, and it might sit on the shelf for another two weeks before being sold,” Skokan said. “The difference between a month-old carrot and one that was harvested this morning is stark. The flavor, the vividness, is tremendous.”

Dinners can be booked on OpenTable, and right now are booking out to August. The price of dinner, after service fees and all, adds up to about $416.56 for two people.

Meadow Lark and Black Cat may be the most ambitious, but they are not alone. The region’s summer calendar is dotted with long-table feasts and chef-led pop-ups, nonprofit fundraisers, wine dinners and backyard collaborations that stretch from Lyons to Lafayette.