GREENFIELD — Dark skies and light rain didn’t stop nearly 1,100 people from attending this year’s rendition of Harvest Supper on Saturday, a celebration of local farmers, food and community.
Started back in 2005 by Juanita Nelson, Harvest Supper has grown in the over two-decades since the idea first became reality. Forming the idea after her husband, Wally, died in 2002, Nelson created the “Free Harvest Supper of Locally Grown Food.” Chef Maggie Zaccara and Evelyn Wulfkuhle of Hope & Olive originally prepared the meal, until 2015, after Nelson’s death that year.
Now being prepared by Stone Soup Cafe, its Executive Director and Chef Kirsten Levitt, its staff and volunteers, the message of the event has stayed the same — when the community comes together, great things can happen.
“I think the original ethos of the meal itself; nutritious, delicious, locally grown food, lovingly donated by the people who harvest it or turned it into something else for the good of the community is still at its heart,” Levitt said. “Juanita’s legacy is still alive and well right here. I can’t say her name without crying most of the time.”
Levitt said that the process for preparing a meal for so many — over 1,000 people this year — has taken a lot of time.
“When you’re prepping for 1,000 people and you’re doing 17 or 18 different menu items all in mass quantity, you have to start earlier,” Levitt said. “It used to be, organizing would happen for months, but then it was like Saturday prep, and Sunday, and that was it.”
The importance of community ties was especially felt during this year’s rendition of the event, as the rental company that Stone Soup Cafe had contracted with to provide the tables and the chairs for the supper ended up not pulling through on Saturday morning. David Levitt, the husband of Kirsten, said that they picked up every table that they knew of, before Steve Goldsher, the owner of Hawks and Reed Performing Arts Center donated tables for the event.
According to volunteers and staff members, this community solution is the epitome of what Stone Soup Cafe hopes to accomplish with this event.
“Relying on one another, that’s what we had to do today,” Jansyn Thaw, the director of marketing and fundraising for Stone Soup Cafe, said. “To get everything set up, we had to talk to our neighbors. … We depend on one another. We made a call, and all of these volunteers came and helped us out. It’s all about building community, and building community ties so we can support one another.”
Local businesses were also present at the event, including Tara Brewster, the director of philanthropy and vice president of business development at Greenfield Savings Bank.
“Greenfield Savings Bank is so proud to be from Franklin County, from Greenfield,” Brewster said. “One of the pillars, one of the core values of our organization is to give back and to support the community, and we do that a lot through supporting nonprofits like Stone Soup. This event is just an incredible showcase of what happens when you have a collective vibrancy.”
In remarks to the crowd, while thanking staff, volunteers and all of the business sponsors of the event, Levitt, asking the crowd to repeat after her, said “the solution is local.”
“This is what community resilience looks like in practice,” Brittany Hathaway, the owner, marketing and outreach specialist for PV Squared Solar said. “It is neighbors feeding neighbors, local farms nourishing our community, volunteers giving their time and local organizations choosing to invest in one another.”
This idea of organizations choosing to invest in one another is something that in the past, Stone Soup Cafe has experienced first hand. Thaw shared that for the Harvest Supper a few years ago, floods had affected Franklin County farmers and they wouldn’t be able to donate the locally grown produce as they normally did. Instead, Stone Soup Cafe bought the produce from the farmers that year.
“We all lean on one another, and you never know which side you’re going to be on,” Thaw said. “[You never know] if you’re going to be on the giving or the taking side of things, it’s a balance.”
There wasn’t just food available either: local musicians played for attendees while they ate, a face painting station was available to younger Franklin County residents, numerous Hula-Hoops were strewn across the grass and a community art project where people could draw a self portrait stood right in the middle of the common.
“We always try to include an art activity … we’ll make something lasting that will help us show the community that they participated year after year,” Levitt said. “We actually have the mural from last year’s event as well.”
Levitt said that while the event has grown and changed over the years, the mission statement of Harvest Supper has remained the same through over two decades.
“It’s very important to know that yes, there are always some minor changes, but the reality is that at its best inception and intent, it is still all about the bounty of the county, community coming and sitting together and ensuring that people are fed,” Levitt said.
