Dinner and a Show

The third annual Hootenanny featured a live performance by Lukas Nelson & POTR, presented by our close friend John Varvatos.  Our nearly 3,000 guests gathered once again beside Lake Copake for a multi-course dinner prepared jointly by Zakary Pelaccio and Jori Jayne Emde.  These two run the kitchen at Fish & Game in nearby Hudson, NY, where Zak won a James Beard Award in 2016.  As ever, we kept the fare hyper-local.

That’s what the Hootenanny is all about, after all: bringing chefs and diners together to celebrate our real rockstars — the talented and hardworking men and women who grow our food for us.  Case in point: one satisfied diner, unable to contain herself, exclaimed that the berries on her plate “were the best she’d ever had.”

“Thank you — I grew them,” responded a woman seated nearby.

In a world growing increasingly urbanized, opportunities like this are rarer and rarer.  We want to be part of the solution.

Dinner was followed by a double feature: The Vanishing of the Bees, presented by Whole Foods, followed by John Varvatos’s original film Willie Nelson & Sons.

We followed that up with a family-friendly festival the next day.  Potential future farmers enjoyed a wild goose chase, petting zoo, seed plantings, and other farm-fun events, while their parents made their way through our village of local vendors and food stalls.  Later, we were treated to a “barn-to-belly mixer QA” hosted by Cornell Cooperative Extension, Stone Barns Center, Wholesome Wave, and Hudson Valley Fresh.

All told, we were able to meet our goals and fully fund a third year of Camp FarmOn!, as well as a second year of the Milk Money program (which expanded to include three Hudson Valley school districts).