More than 130 people gathered at White Chateau Saturday night to enjoy the sixth-annual Farm to Table dinner. The event allows attendees to truly eat local, dining among the hills where everything was grown.
Cecil Farms and Hillview Farms started holding the event as a way to connect people with their farms.
“It was just a matter of us wanting to give people the opportunity to come to the farm and get to know us as farmers and families,” Suzanne Cecil White of Cecil Farms said. “We wanted to create an opportunity for people to meet the people behind the food.”
“It’s really the cherry on top of the year,” Jim Gilles of Hillview Farms said about the event. “It’s great to see everyone come out and have a good time.”
The partnership between the farms has been growing for years.
“Our families have been great friends our whole life,” said Cecil White. “Jim and I came back to Owensboro around the same time. We both took our farming operations and added a retail part with farmers markets.”
That similar track has allowed them to team up in many ways.
“We’re constantly talking to each other to join together and do things,” Cecil White said. “He contributes to my CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] so my people who get their fruits and vegetables delivered can have the option to get his meat, cheese and milk.”
Gilles said they also carry Cecil Farms produce in their shop.
“We just mesh well and work well together,” Cecil White said. “We have similar values.”
Those values shine through on nights like the Farm to Table dinner, when the families show genuine hospitality to guests, taking on the role of servers and delighting attendees with a one-of-a-kind experience.
When the event started, it was open to 50 attendees. And although they’ve sold as many as 200 tickets in the past, they keep the number small so the event is intimate. This year’s tickets sold out five weeks before the event – faster than ever before.
“We’re excited that people look forward to it every year,” she said.