About the Festival

We are the descendants of salmon fishers and cranberry farmers, of indigenous knowledge keepers and Norwegian bread bakers, of Chinese grandmothers who knew the secrets of fermentation and Mexican families who carried their traditions across borders. We are the inheritors of this abundant delta where the Columbia River meets the Pacific - a place that has sustained communities for thousands of years.

We are also the neighbors facing hard choices at the grocery store, the families stretching paychecks to cover both rent and food, the elders living on fixed incomes, the young adults learning to cook for themselves for the first time. We are the food bank volunteers and the restaurant owners, the backyard gardeners and the commercial fishers, the newcomers still learning this landscape and the longtime residents who remember different times.

We know what our ancestors knew: when everyone contributes what they can, there is enough for everyone. When we share not just our food but our knowledge - how to smoke salmon, how to preserve the harvest, how to make a dollar stretch, how to turn simple ingredients into nourishing meals - we create abundance that goes far beyond any individual table.

The Astoria Heritage Harvest Festival is our modern stone soup. We gather to pool our recipes and stories, our techniques and traditions, our struggles and solutions. Together we create something no one family could make alone: a celebration that feeds both body and spirit, that honors where we come from while addressing where we are today.

This is our festival because this is our community. We organize it, we fund it, we volunteer for it, we benefit from it. We are the farmers and the food assistance programs, the cultural preservationists and the working parents, the high school students documenting oral histories and the elders sharing traditional knowledge.

We believe that food security comes through community connection. That cultural heritage stays alive when we practice it, not just preserve it. That when neighbors know neighbors - when we understand who grows our food, who prepares it, who needs it, who shares it - we become resilient in ways that government programs and charity alone cannot create.

We are not waiting for someone else to solve our community's challenges. We are the solution. Every dish shared, every recipe exchanged, every story told, every connection made builds the kind of community where everyone can thrive.

Join us. Bring what you have - time, treasure, or talent. Together we'll prove once again that in this place of natural abundance, when we care for each other, there is always enough.