By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

NEW CASTLE, Ky. — It started as a hope and a prayer and a new way for local farmers to survive.

Tobacco quotas were still around, but getting smaller with each growing season, and folks needed something to give them inspiration.

So, the Henry County Harvest Showcase was born – and recently celebrated its ninth birthday. The showcase is a collection of foods, crafts and events that all come from Henry County, from nearly every kind of produce, to meats to antique tractors.

The festival, if one wants to call it that, is a unique footprint of all that is the county from an agricultural standpoint.

The showcase began as an extension of an already present farmers’ market through the work of local Community Farm Alliance (CFA) members looking for a way to tell the surrounding world of the commodities available to them in their own backyard. The CFA touts local food economies, making for a healthier lifestyle and an economic boost to localized regions.

Bonnie Cecil, an award-winning educator and local farmer, was one of the original members who helped organize the event.
“The showcase officially started in 2000 as a way to get the word out about local food and a local food economy and to show what a great place Henry County is,” she said.
Ironically, that year would prove to be pivotal  in state agriculture. The CFA began its LIFE (local innovative food economies) initiative, which promoted creating a system where people grow and eat food closer to home. Also, the Kentucky General Assembly had passed House Bill 611 earlier that year, which gave 50 percent of tobacco settlement funds to farm diversification projects.

“The tobacco program was a really good program and it kept people on the farm,” Cecil said. “Imagine if the government put that kind of effort behind a local food economy. The piece that’s missing, to me, is the lack of planning and support from the government.

“Henry County still has plenty of tobacco, but today farmers have really diversified. Before the showcase started, farmers would grow just tobacco; now they have acres of hay, acres of vegetables or livestock. It’s like our grandparents said, never put your eggs in one basket. Once we do that, then we become a sustainable farm.”
One thing on the county’s side has been its location. It is situated in the north-central region of the state, placing it in the middle of what is referred to as the Golden Triangle, close to Louisville and within a 70-mile radius of  the greater Cincinnati, Ohio, area and Lexington.

That means more than 2 million people are within an hour or two of the small, village-like county seat.

The town of New Castle itself has fewer than 1,000 residents; yet despite its size, it is certified in both the Kentucky Renaissance on Main and Preserve America programs, which promote revitalization and preservation of a town‘s natural heritage.

Local participation has created a lasting effect on the showcase, causing incredible growth, especially over the last few years.

“It has lasted almost a decade and I think it will last another,” said Cecil. “It gets easier to plan it and we’ve learned from our mistakes. We‘ve always added to the number of visitors each year, but in the last four years it has really grown. For a one-day event it’s pretty awesome. I‘m really excited about going into the 10th year.”

Cecil also said as far as she can tell, all the vendors do well on showcase day, a testament to that fact is that they keep returning along with the visitors, who numbered approximately 5,000 this year.

If the Henry County Harvest Showcase has done anything over the last nine years, it has brought those in surrounding urban areas to the country for a better understanding of where their food originates.

“On the surface, the biggest impact of the showcase has to be the changing of how people think when it comes to their food and where it comes from,” said Cecil. “They have a clue now of how close their food is – and I don’t mean the grocery store.”

The impact goes beyond the buyers as well. For those close to the rural area, “it’s important to remember what we could lose. You can’t reclaim farmland once it’s paved over,” she added. “You can really make money farming. You won’t live high on the hog, but this is all about redefining success.”