A “producer-only” farmers’ market where families can purchase many of their Thanksgiving provisions from the bounty of our “local” farmers, gardeners and artisan producers.

Seminars, Workshops and roundtables focused on our local food system. With Cooking demonstrations, DIY gardening and Urban Ag sessions, Meet the Farmers and much more.

A Farm-to-Table dinner consisting of locally-sourced foods prepared by some of Winter Park’s most talented chefs and, not to mention, countless artisan produced local food items available at the market.

A mobile community garden with Grow Boxes grown by area schools, churches, families and organizations.

Youth focused sessions, games, hands-on and “do-it-yourself” gardening and crafts activities.

Foot-stomping music from some of our area’s best bluegrass, folk and traditional musicians.

ChatChow TV and the Ravenous Pig

Posted on October 10, 2011 by johnrife

James Petrakis / The Ravenous Pig from Giovanny Gutierrez on Vimeo.

As some of you may be aware, due to seeing their logo on our site, ChatChow.tv recently became a media sponsor of the Harvest Festival and Eat Local Week.  This fresh and smart Florida based group produces mouth-watering video podcasts where they go behind the scenes with the chefs, restauranteurs and mixologists of Florida’s celebrated food industry. They will be rolling out several locally produced episodes in the month of October. Their first one is live and you can view it above or on their site.

In this video they caught up with our friend James Petrakis at the Ravenous Pig. James and Julie started the Pig to bring something new and unique to the citizens of Central Florida. One plate and one pint at a time they are educating the eating public about the ways great food can be serve as a galvanizing force in a local community. The Harvest Festival was founded in 2010 to champion this very thing, to create a venue showcasing the emerging local food culture that is making Central Florida and Winter Park, in particular, such a wonderful place to dine and call home.

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Eatonville’s Elementary School Community Garden

Posted on September 28, 2011 by johnrife

Over the last few months the Harvest Festival has been involved with the community garden behind Hungerford Elementary School in the historic town of Eatonville.(click link for map)

The garden is in a bit of disarray following the Summer and in need of some TLC in order to have it ready for the students to do their fall plantings.  The school’s garden program isn’t self-sustaining yet and without the generosity of green-thumb volunteers it would remain under utilized.

So….here is where we come in.  On Saturday October 8th from 9-noon we will be cleaning out the remnants of the garden’s Spring vegetables, doing some weeding and fluffing up the 14 garden beds with fresh compost.

“Many hands make for little work” and when you are working along side other passionate volunteers it doesn’t seem like work anyhow.  Help us keep this garden project thriving for these students and teachers.  In many cases this is the first time these students have seen vegetables in the “wild”.

If you would be gracious enough with your time to spend some of it with us then please RSVP to John@WPHarvest.com so we can get an accurate count of volunteers.  Please fill out the brief Orange County Public School’s volunteer application and designate Hungerford Elementary as your school,  “small groups” as your preferred grade level and “other” as type of work preferred.

I know several of you are already registered as Orange County Public School volunteers and if you could log-in and change your volunteer school for Hungerford prior to the workday that would be great.

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Urban Farm Update – Next “Work and Learn” is Monday Sept 26th at 5pm

Posted on September 25, 2011 by johnrife

A big thanks to everyone who came out to our Tuesday morning “work and learn” on the Winter Park Urban Farm.  It was a bit experimental choosing a mid-morning time but it is very exciting to be able to offer folks who work evenings, have kids in school at that hour or who feel like ditching the cubical for the day a chance to break ground with us.

Our next “Work and Learn” on the farm is tomorrow, Monday Sept 26th from 5pm-7pm.  Here is our weekly update from Tia:

At our second workday we got 6 more beds planted with beets, carrots, soybeans, sweet peas, broccoli. cabbage, and kale.  Many of the seeds from groundbreaking have already sprouted with our green beans and carrots and some of the cucumbers are starting to vine.  Join us at the Winter Park Urban Farm for our next workday on Monday Sept 26th from 5-7pm to help fluff up, add compost, and plant the next garden beds as we are growing food for the fall Winter Park Harvest Festival. Bring water, sunscreen, snacks, and vegetable and herb plants to
donate to our garden.

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2011 Vendor Registration is Now Open

Posted on September 22, 2011 by johnrife

To Our Neighbors,

Registration is now Open for our 2011 Harvest Festival Farmers and Vendors Market.

For Rates and To Register – Click HERE !

On Sunday November 20th we will be hosting a “producer” only farmers and vendors market in the West Meadow of Winter Park’s Central Park. The goal of the festival and market is to give our local local farmers, gardeners, entrepreneurs and non-profits a venue to showcase the valuable products and services that they provide to our community.

The event is being marketed through the the festival’s website, local and national blogs, local TV, radio and news outlets as well as through social networking sites and local social and community calendars. Not to mention, the more than 3,000 attendees of last year’s Festival spreading some great word of mouth advertising too.

The festival offers an opportunity for your business or organization to reach thousands of attendees ranging from the influential and affluent deep-roots of Central Florida to the passionate and progressive grass-roots of our local community. Attendees will range from those inquisitive about gardening to full blown green thumbs; health care specialists to those eager to make healthier choices for their families.

The Winter Park Harvest Festival is put on by a local non-profit called Our Whole Community a health initiative focused on producing inter-generational wholeness and healthy lifestyle outcomes in the Eatonville, Maitland and Winter Park communities. The Winter Park Health Foundation is the chief sponsor of the event and the focus of the seminars and roundtables are food, farm and health focused.

If you would like additional information, please contact our market coordinator Gabby at WPHarvest@Gmail.com

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Posted on September 21, 2011 by johnrife

At This Year’s Festival…

Day 1:  Saturday November 19th

Harvest Conference: A Local Food Conference & Food Enterprise Summit

9am – 5pm: Winter Park Garden Club (Mead Botanical Garden)

Keynote Speaker: Woody Tasch – Slow Money author and founder

We are cooking up an incredible line-up of programing for the conference and details will be available in our next newsletter. However, we can give you the scoop on our awesome keynote speaker, Woody Tasch.

“Woody Tasch is Founder and Chairman of Slow Money, a nonprofit formed in 2008 to catalyze the flow of investment capital to small food enterprises and to promote new principles of fiduciary responsibility to support sustainable agriculture and the emergence of a restorative local economies. Woody is author of the book “Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money.” You can hear a recent interview of Mr. Tasch by Festival Founder John Rife and Front Porch radio host Julie Norris HERE.

Farm to Table Dinner: Winter Park’s top chefs cooking Central Florida’s freshest local food.

7:00pm – 10pm: Mead Botanical Gardens

Day 2:  Sunday November 20th

Winter Park Harvest Festival: A day-long event focused on celebrating local food and the farmers, chefs, entrepreneurs and non-profits that bring the harvest of their fields to our tables.

9am – 5pm: West Meadow and Central Park North in Downtown Winter Park

We will be featuring each of these events in the coming weeks so that you can get the full dish on what to be anxiously waiting for (and it’s a lot)!
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