Photos | Headwaters Harvest Festival 2023
The Headwaters Foundation hosted its second annual Harvest Festival at Eldon Farms last Saturday as a celebration of Rappahannock County’s rural roots and commitment to education.
The festival boasted many activities for both children and adults, including a petting zoo, bounce house and live music, and several booths where local artisans sold their goods.
Steph Ridder, chair of the Headwaters Foundation board, said the festival is the foundation’s biggest fundraising push of the year, generating 15-20% of the organization’s yearly revenue. The festival was created to replace Taste of Rappahannock, a long-running event suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which featured a catered dinner and auction.
After rain put a damper on last year’s festival, Ridder said this year’s event will be the true determinant of the festival’s success.
“We decided we needed to reach more people, and that Headwaters is really about the kids and families in the county, and so we wanted to have an event that was for kids and families,” Ridder said.
This year, more than 1,000 people were in attendance throughout the day, according to Headwaters’ Executive Director Brittany Dwyer Gianoli.
Several businesses and organizations were represented at the festival, including Blue Elegance, a social enterprise that is part of ECHO, a nonprofit focused on empowering individuals with disabilities.
Headwaters’ Deputy Director of Programs Lacey Jenkins invited Howard French, general manager of Blue Elegance, to set up a table during Saturday’s event after the two met at another festival, he said. All of the items for sale, such as jewelry and soaps, were made by Blue Elegance artisans, who have a diverse range of abilities.
French said that although ECHO is based in Leesburg, it is important to foster community and relationships in other communities and spread awareness about their cause.
“Our whole organization is about lifelong support for adults with disabilities, and a big part of that’s about community integration,” French said.
Gail Crooks, the director of social services in Rappahannock County, volunteered at the festival, wearing a sandwich board sign and selling raffle tickets for a dinner at Three Blacksmiths. Crooks said the Department of Social Services and Headwaters have a strong working relationship, and that the community support they offer can oftentimes lessen the need for social service intervention.
“The work that they do, which strengthens the families, is just giving families a safe place, and kids a safe place, to build themselves and if they do need us, one, there’s already a good foundation to work with, and two, it just lessens the chance that we’re going to have negative interventions in the future,” Crooks said. “That’s really what we both want, is a strong, supportive community.”
Crooks said one of the keys to building strong families in a community is strong natural support networks. She said events like the Harvest Festival, where families get a chance to make connections with organizations and other families, foster these support networks and help people find their “fictive kin,” or those who are not relatives that one considers to be family.
According to Ridder, all of the funds raised from the festival go toward the overall funding of the nonprofit, allowing them to provide scholarships to students for college, trade school and other educational experiences such as field trips, teacher trainings and camps in an effort to make more opportunities available within public education.
“If there is something that a child or a teacher is really interested in and can’t find the money for it, we’ll find them money,” Ridder said.
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