The Inuvik Community Greenhouse says it plans a special celebration for this year’s Harvest Festival that is set to take place on Saturday, September 7.
In a Tuesday announcement, the organization said it is partnering with the town for a full-day event that will start at 11am and end at 9pm.
“This new partnership will allow both groups to enhance their autumn celebrations: the Fall Fair and the Harvest Festival. Under one banner, we will be able to create a day full of fun, laughter, and celebrations as we celebrate the harvest season,” it wrote in the notice.
While the festival started a few years ago, the 2024 edition “is special to us,” said greenhouse manager Alissa Sallans.
“It is our 25th year of growing at the greenhouse. We’re hoping to make the event bigger than it had been in the past.”
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Sallans said the festival began as an opportunity to bring the community together and partly to celebrate “how much food we’re able to grow so far north, being in the Arctic.”
The goal this time is to have a full day of community programs, workshops, food and entertainment, and, Sallans said, “to have this really lovely festival that connects people to food and to new skills that they can learn about like harvesting and preparation and preservation.”
A detailed schedule will be unveiled next month.
Sallans said the event involves “a lot of volunteer hours” from different groups within the community. According to her, more than 100 community members participated last year.
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The greenhouse has roughly 150 members, most of whom volunteer during the season. Besides that, Town of Inuvik staff also invest time to support the festival.
The greenhouse opened its own café recently to encourage visitors to try locally produced food. Sallans said the garden-inspired menu has received great feedback.
“We’re getting a good number of tourists, which has been great. We do tours at 4pm so we find that people say, ‘Hey! What’s this?’ That’s how they learn about the café,” she said.
“It’s been great to see so many community members coming in and grabbing a coffee. Even right now as we are talking, there’s folks playing with some of the board games and puzzles in the café right now,
“I think this space has been really welcomed and we’re excited to keep it going all summer and see where we can go on from there.”
