Annual Harvest Supper Celebration

on the Greenfield Town Common

SATURDAY, August 26, 2023

4 PM to 7 PM

The Harvest Supper Celebration is an annual event celebrating local food, farms, and community!

The Free Harvest Supper was conceived and created when a group of passionate farmers, foodies, and community advocates were discussing how our neighbors should be able to access the amazing abundance of food in our happy valley.

Each August we come together to share that bountiful harvest with our community. Farmers, local producers of goods, and talented chefs all donate their time and products to create an amazing meal that is served on the Town Common in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

It takes a whole community to make a great community event. Hundreds of volunteers, over thirty farms, a dozen organizations, and countless home gardeners (along with over 1,000 hungry diners!) help make the Harvest Supper a success. Planning, donating food, volunteering the day of the event, and providing information for the display area, are just a few of the many ways to be involved in this great event.

Background and History

The Free Harvest Supper was started in 2005 by Juanita Nelson. She was an ardent pacifist, war tax resister, civil rights activist, and supporter of local, organic agriculture. She and her husband, Wally, helped found the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters, the Greenfield Farmers Market, and the Valley Community Land Trust. After Wally's death in 2002, she was instrumental in launching Greenfield’s Free Harvest Supper, which has become a tradition in the community ever since! Nelson, a lifelong activist who was arrested numerous times at tax resistance and civil rights protests during the 1960s and 1970s and beyond, moved to Deerfield with her husband, Wally, in 1974 to practice organic farming.

For the Nelsons, encouraging people to grow their own food and to support local farming as part of the local economy was another expression of their all-encompassing nonviolence, expressing their wills through their lives against agribusiness and an exploitative economic system. Juanita Nelson died in 2015 at the age of 91.

The Really, Really Free Market

The Really, Really Free Market is another way in which community members can contribute to the supper. Gardeners and farmers are welcome to bring the overflow of extra produce they have, and, in accordance with its name, all of the produce is free to take home. In past years, the produce offered has included peaches, apples, eggs, tomatoes, squash, greens, flowers, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, and more.

To donate to the Really, Really Free Market just bring your veggies to the town common from 4-5:30pm.

Support the Harvest Supper!

OR send checks made out to “The Stone Soup Café” to Kirsten Levitt, The Stone Soup Café, PO Box 542, Greenfield, MA 01302. Please note “Free Harvest Supper” on the check.