Kick up your heels for the 15th annual Harvest Hootenanny

Morphing from something resembling a small street fair a decade and a half ago to a ten-acre festival today, Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture’s annual Harvest Hootenanny is ready for its fifteenth edition. The community event is set for 4-8 p.m. Saturday, September 21, at Columbia’s Agriculture Park at 1769 W. Ash St. 

Admission to the event is free, but tickets are required to purchase food, drinks, carnival games, and raffles. Some of the Hootenanny lineup includes live music, a dance hall, kids’ activities, farm animals, and tours of the agriculture park. All ticket proceeds support Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture (CCUA) programs. 

The genesis of the annual Hootenanny — a word now synonymous with “fun” — was a focus on celebration and accomplishment, as CCUA Executive Director Billy Polansky recalled. 

“After the struggle of the first year of volunteering to build and farm the land at what has become the Mark and Carol Stevenson Veterans Urban Farm, we took a moment to look at what we had done and all that we had accomplished and said, ‘Wow. We should celebrate. We should throw a party,’” Polansky said, adding that they were pleasantly surprised when 400 people attended. 

“It was very down-home,” he said. “We were under tents and had the street closed down. These days, the popular event is a lot more expansive as it takes place over the ten acres of the agriculture park and resembles a field day or fair with a bounce house, dunk booth, raffles, and farm animals. Attendance has steadily grown to upwards of 4,000 locals. 

You can kick up your heels and partake of light-hearted, wholesome enjoyment with friends, family, and community as in days gone. The gathering features Missouri-grown food, maintaining a connection to the area’s roots and heritage. 

“People have different associations with gardening, agriculture and farming, so we are just trying to cultivate a good time and good feelings and experiences around food and agriculture,” Polansky explained. “The gathering also reinforces for our staff and volunteers that they are doing this work, and they’ve helped create this space that makes people happy. A lot of our staff don’t necessarily interact with the people of the community they are serving.”  

While the event is meant for fun and celebration, learning opportunities are always on the menu at Columbia’s Agriculture Park as attendees may explore its production fields, backyard demonstration gardens, food forest, schoolhouse, and youth garden space as well as native habitat gardens and water retention basin. 

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The word hootenanny has a variety of lively roots and meanings. Originally, the Scottish word was “hogmanay” and referred to a New Year’s celebration. Derivatives signified any type of festive get-together. As an Appalachian colloquialism, hootenanny was used as a placeholder for things whose names were forgotten or unknown, similar to “thingamajig” or “whatchmacallit.” A hootenanny is also an impromptu party or informal social event at which people play folk music, sing and sometimes dance. It’s one of those words that has become synonymous with fun.