Fantastic turnout for the second Grow and Gather
Chris Abbott
Editor
Attendance was ‘off the charts’ for the second Grow and Gather event Saturday at the Norfolk County Fairgrounds in Simcoe.
“I think we had last year’s attendance within the first 30 minutes,” said Marc Wall of Sandy Shore Farms. “Our teams, and all the committees involved, did a great job advertising it.”
Calling it the ‘Second Bloom,’ the 2026 Grow and Gather on Sept. 19 was offered by many generous local farmers – at least 22 farms and a half-dozen monetary supporters - in partnership with Church Out Serving and Second Harvest, and it benefited thousands of people.
“Beautiful,” said Virginia Luca from Church Out Serving. “And the weather was nearly perfect.”
At one point, they reached capacity inside the fair building and they had to ‘hold the line’ for about 30 minutes.
“Things have quieted down now,” said Church Out Serving’s Eric Haverkamp at 12:30 p.m., although a large number of people continued to browse produce, both indoors and outdoors, as rain clouds gathered.
Organizers were pleased with the turnout, said Haverkamp. “Very pleased.”
“It was leveraging all of our networks, it was not just the Church Out Serving network. It’s the network of the farming community, it’s the network of different organizations that are involved. This is a real community effort today, so we were able to leverage a lot of networks. We had a great website, a LOT of social media coverage, wherever we could, including radio and newspapers.
“One of the things I’ve noticed today, the demographics are very varied – it’s a really wide spectrum. One of the things that struck me is that a lot of the people coming today are part of the community that are getting by, but barely, maybe living pay-cheque to pay-cheque. I’ve seen families with several kids, and I can only imagine how big their grocery bill is… it’s unbelievable. It’s very expensive nowadays, everything is. So to be able to offer a day for people to just come and get some free produce, have some laughs, feel the love, and give your budget a little bit of a break…”
For those able to do canning/freezing, the Grow and Gather impacted not just ‘next week’s grocery bill,’ but much more than that.
“Some people are going home with a good, good, good amount of whatever they are looking for,” said Haverkamp.
Setup began Friday afternoon, but most of the produce arrived by trucks Friday evening.
“We have some great, great farmer partners that really ‘caught the vision.’ This is farmers of Norfolk County giving back to their own community, and we are just privileged to be part of that. It’s really a story about our farmers. Farmers farming our land and being part of this Ontario Garden where we produce such an abundance of fresh produce in our region, now being given a chance to bless their own people in their own backyard. That is a beautiful picture of community. That is community at its best.
“Agriculture is our primary industry, turning around and saying ‘we want to look after our own.’ And we have some really, really incredible farmers.”
More than 200,000 pounds of produce was available Saturday. An unbelievable amount of free food – and a huge crowd coming to the fairgrounds to benefit from the food giveaway.
“Everyone involved is just incredible,” said Marc Wall from Sandy Shore Farms, noting this year they added crackers, cookies and snacks (non-perishables) to the produce giveaway, as well as frozen chicken donated by a local butcher.
“The whole idea was to replace maybe a week’s worth of groceries for a family,” said Wall. “All these partners that came together, it worked so well.”
The accessible venue at the Norfolk Fairgrounds allowed the event to experience phenomenal growth from the inaugural 2025 Grow and Gather in Delhi – they had room indoors (if it rained), and a huge parking lot, which did fill up early in the morning.
“This is a nice, large, centrally located venue that can accommodate an event like this safely,” said Lucas. “Great parking, a safe place to line up… the parking lot was full by 9 o’clock, it really was. And this facility has the ability to run rain or shine.
“By 9:30-10, I was overwhelmed by how beautiful the site was and how many people were in here. We had 1,100 people in the first hour.”
“We are very thankful for the fairgrounds… allowing us to use this space,” said Wall. “Again, it’s so many organizations coming together to create this really beautiful thing… a community thing.”
Available produce included peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, hot peppers, eggplant, sweet corn, pumpkins, carrots, apples… and more.
“Basically your entire vegetable section showed up,” Wall smiled.
Comments