Hoes Down Harvest Festival
The 33rd Hoes Down Harvest Festival will be held on October 5 & 6, 2024
Registrations for the 2024 Hoes Down Harvest Festival will open August 2024. All registrations are through the EcoFarm website.
The Hoes Down Harvest Festival is dedicated to honoring and promoting the knowledge of agricultural arts and sustainable rural living through inspiration and education. Our goals extend beyond the weekend of fun and education.
For over 30 years, the Hoes Down has generated valuable resources for local and statewide organizations working on projects which benefit sustainable agriculture and rural communities.
**If you or your business are interested in sponsoring the Hoes Down Festival or making an in-kind donation, let us know! Contact hoesdown@fullbellyfarm.com.
A note from Dru about Hoes Down 2024:
Dear Friends,
This July marks an important anniversary here at the farm. 40 years ago this month we began our FIRST melon harvests from this amazing land that we call Full Belly Farm. We moved here in April of that auspicious year of 1984 and began working soil and planted our first seeds in the ground in very early May. By mid-July we were out in those first fields sampling our first sweet melons –some of the same varieties that we proudly still grow today. Enjoy the history in every tantalizing and aromatic bite this week – there is much cause to celebrate all the years of enriching soil, work and dedication that has added to the incredible sweetness you get to help sample today.
Another celebration is coming up right around the corner, the 33rd annual Hoes Down Harvest Festival to be held on Saturday, October 5th. This is no ordinary farm festival! Rather, the Hoes Down is a community partnership of hundreds of dedicated volunteers, a dozen or more non-profit organizations, and a team of Capay Valley farmers, children and grandchildren who want to weave together a remarkable and memorable farm weekend for all of you Hoes Down Festival goers. Together we have chosen a theme of “Peace, Love and Hoes Down” calling back to the roots of the movement from the 70’s that recognized the importance of love and peace in the then troubled world. Today those same words seem to ring even more true, so we are shouting them out in 2024.
The festival is loved by so many! Families continue to tell us how their world has been changed by the Hoes Down Weekend -camping under the stars in the autumn air, carving pumpkins and lighting a path of ghoulish fun, watermelon eating contests with squealing , laughing children, walks to the creek, workshops and weaving. And so much dancing by the light of the moon! All this and more happens during this glorious weekend.
The festival is an important fundraiser for our community and organizations around the state working in sustainable agriculture. Over its 33 years, the Hoes Down has proudly donated over a million dollars to our local volunteer fire department, Grange, and community health clinic; school scholarships to agriculture-bound students; farmworker organizations; and many more. Every dollar of proceeds goes to these groups that are often serving critically underfunded rural areas.
But mostly the Hoes Down is just plain fun. Come play with us on the farm for the weekend. Tickets are available now, so don’t wait to sign up! We hope to see you here on October 5th!
Dru Rivers
National Geographic Magazine called Hoes Down the “Best in the Nation”.
