Farm to Table Harvest Dinner & Auction

DINNER • AUCTION • MUSIC

Our Farm to Table Harvest Dinner & Auction on our beautiful campus is a festive evening for our families, friends, supporters, alums and employees. We share an extraordinary meal featuring produce from Hartsbrook and local farms and enjoy live music and entertainment. Exciting live and silent auction items can be bid on, even in advance. This event raises funds for two key initiatives – tuition support programs and Land Stewardship Programs.

Dear Community,

Our Farm-to-Table Harvest Dinner & Auction is held annually on The Hartsbrook School campus. This outdoor event rests up against the painted gold and orange Holyoke Range that makes up our backdrop.

Live music with views of the Holyoke Mountain Range aglow in autumn colors makes for an extraordinary evening. The live and silent auction portion of the event raises critical funds in support of The Hartsbrook School and our Land Stewardship Program and Sliding Scale Tuition Model.

We share and witness a sumptuous meal prepared onsite by Hartsbrook Alum and Chef, Nate Sustick, featuring produce grown by students from The Hartsbrook School and local farms.

This year, Hartsbrook corn will be weaved into every course! 

Our featured corn is a delightful blend of three heirloom varieties: Painted Mountain, Nothstine Dent, and Oaxacan Green. These open-pollinated treasures, grown together in our 3-Sisters Garden, represent generations of agricultural heritage. As dry corn (or flint corn) varieties, they mature and dry on the stalk, destined to be milled into flavorful cornmeal. The magic of wind pollination creates a stunning array of colors within each ear. For children, husking these ears reveals a hidden rainbow – each one a joyful surprise! This colorful medley connects us to time-honored farming traditions and the simple pleasures of harvest time.

We can’t wait to share our home-grown corn, weaved throughout the dishes at Farm to Table this year.

About Chef Nate Sustick

Chef Nate Sustick is a Hartsbrook Alum from the first graduating class of 1993 and is also Executive Chef of Paul & Elizabeth’s in Northampton. Over the years he’s generously donated tremendous amounts of time, ingredients, and resources to make this fundraising event so successful, allowing us to spend less on the event so that sponsorships and funds from the auction go toward the school instead of the cost of running the event.

If Paul & Elizabeth’s sounds familiar to you, that’s because Paul and Elizabeth Sustick were founding members of the The Hartsbrook School. They helped to create a thriving school at the same time that they were developing their restaurant, now an institution in downtown Northampton.

Elizabeth, also an Anthroposophic Nurse, served for many years on The Hartsbrook School’s Board and over the years has offered natural health classes to our community, including one coming up this fall.

Nate continues the tradition as Executive Chef, by managing Paul and Elizabeth’s and sending his children to The Hartsbrook School. His wife, Paule, is our Land Stewardship Assistant Director. Thank you to the Sustick family for so many gifts to our community!

About Our Farm-to-Table Harvest Dinner & Auction

Our Farm-to-Table Harvest Dinner & Auction is open to current family members and friends, alums, grandparents, faculty, staff, and supporters in the wider community to join our festive evening held outdoors. We believe that the shared experience of breaking bread together strengthens these important connections and creates a sense of belonging within our community.

Funds from Farm to Table ensure a Hartsbrook education remains affordable and accessible to all families by supporting tuition assistance through our Slide Scale Tuition Model, and sustains the needs of the Land Stewardship program, which integrates climate education, animal husbandry and care, beekeeping practices, biodynamic farming and sustainability into the life and body of the school community and curriculum.

With a limit of 200 attendees, we strive to create an intimate and meaningful experience for all who join us. We welcome and value all attendees, regardless of their background or affiliation with the school.

When you join us, you will have the opportunity to connect with a diverse group of people who share a passion for community, sustainability, local food, and accessible place-based and Waldorf education. Your support will help us to continue to create a memorable and enjoyable experience for all who attend.

We believe that by working together, we can build a stronger, more connected community. And while we do it, we’ll eat a scrumptious meal together on a beautiful fall evening, share laughs, drinks, and memories to carry us all year through.

Some of the very exciting auction items we have available from our generous supporters include:

• Stone Soup Farm Summer 2025 Veggie Farm Share
• Pinz Bowling Party for 6
• 1 Year Family Membership to MASS MoCA
• A Portrait Commission
• $500 Gift Certificate to Cheap Thrills Tattoo
• Fine Art High School Portrait Session by Isabella Dellolio Photography
• Aviation STEM Camp at Northampton Airport
• Stone Barns Center For Food & Agriculture: Tour + Blue Hill Lunch for 2
• Three months of strings rentals from Stammell’s Strings
• 1 Week of Hartsbrook Farm Camp + Goodies
• … and so much more!