Get your feet wet exploring Northumberland’s natural heritage. Visit the headwaters of Gage’s Creek to collect water samples, net creatures, and learn how erosion, farming and pollution impact the water we all use.

Instructor: Mark Rupke - naturalist, outdoor educator, land steward

Take part in the annual harvesting of our bee hives. Prepare to get sticky as you scrape, spin and bottle. Learn about the beneficial interaction of bees and pollination on our local ecosystems and taste the sweet success of a good year.

Instructor: Randy Krahn - resident beekeeper, Randy’s Bees

Join in on the fun in our lovely backyard kitchen garden. Pick and sample tasty veggies fresh off the vine and chop up ready-to-eat recipes like pico de gallo, passata tomato sauce and raw veggie salad.

Instructor: Members of Headwaters Cooperative Garden

It’s apple harvest time! Using old-fashioned people power, help us turn fresh local apples into refreshing pressed juice.  Macerate, press and filter using traditional equipment and teamwork.

Instructor: TJ Adams, member, Headwaters Community Garden

Learn the skills of living in the wild. Build a fire, construct a shelter, forage for edibles, make traps, carve spoons and more. See how human beings can work with nature, not against it, to survive.

Instructor: David Forster and Sebastian Bauermeister, Outdoor Educators, Wilderness Survival

What happens when farmland is left alone? How can we encourage certain plant species to dominate? Learn the basics of field ecology and help turn an abandoned pasture into a native wildflower meadow and future habitat for bees, butterflies, and birds.

Instructor: Josh Noiseux – farmer, ALUS and Evermeadow Farm

Want to learn how to keep fresh, healthy veggies over the winter? Try your hand at fermentation, freezing, dehydrating, and canning inside the Headwaters teaching kitchen.

Instructors: Megan Webster - Victory Canning, Chelsea Thompson-Stewart - local homesteader 

Visit our extensive herb gardens to craft herbal magic through the art of botanical distillation! Watch the process of making hydrosols and essential oils, while imbibing in refreshments as we make herbal mocktails with hydrosols, bitters, and oxymels.

Instructor: Marissa Baumeister – herbalist, Marissa’s Herb Garden

If you’ve ever tried Headwaters Montreal-style Bagels, now you can make them! Find your place in the assembly line to roll, seed, boil and bake in our wood-fired outdoor cob oven. Then sample!

Instructor: Tristan Smith – chef, baker, Headwaters Farm

Explore the lower pasture, beaver pond and old logging trail to learn how this old farm has a changing ecosystem that’s evolved over the years: old growth forest, expanding beaver wetland, and emerging pioneer species.

Leader: Doug McRae, Northumberland Land Trust

If you’re wondering why your apple tree isn’t blossoming or your sapling’s leaves are curling up and dying, now’s the chance to find out why.

Learn the do’s and don’ts of wholistic tree care for fruiting and other trees.

Leader: Reilly Huffman – natural arborist, The Tree Medic

Take a tour of a magic garden of healing herbs and wild native plants. Find out about their nutritional and healing properties and how to grow or forage for them around your own neighbourhood.

Leader: Marissa Baumeister – herbalist, Marissa’s Herb Garden

Growing a vegetable garden involves finding plants that grow well together as companions. Headwaters Cooperative Garden also builds camaraderie among its members. Tour our kitchen gardens to see how we work with both plants and people in a dynamic and ecological way to plan for the season, encourage strengths, and pause for reflection.

Leaders: Linda Armstrong and Megan Webster, Headwaters Cooperative Garden Group

Did you know that we have found artifacts on the land that are older than the pyramids? Learn the history of the geological features that have shaped this area and the legacy of peoples that were here before us.

Leader: Tony Armstrong, Headwaters Farm

Get up close to our all our animal friends – goats, chickens and a horse. Learn about their personalities, feeding and care and how they fit into a permaculture way of living. Children must be with an adult at all times.

Leader: Linda Armstrong, Headwaters Farm

Learn from the best! Go behind the scenes to see the work and expertise that makes Foragers Farms such a successful market garden business. Tour greenhouses, rows of flourishing vegetable beds, compost beds and equipment.

Leader: Tyler Davis – Farmer, Head Gardener, Foragers Farms

It might look idyllic, but farm life has its share of ups and downs. Learn about the day-to-day challenges of running an organic farm while raising a young family, creating markets, navigating the weather and finding creative ways of earning additional on-farm income.

Leader: Erin Bodashefsky – Business Manager, Farmer, Foragers Farms

The Headwaters Farmhouse is a natural build, meaning it has been built using natural, sustainably- sourced materials such as straw, recycled Styrofoam and even shredded romance novels! Find out how it can be done.

Leader: Tony Armstrong, Headwaters Farm

Follow the signs and take your own path on our self-guided trails. Follow an old logging trail, enjoy a cool cedar forest and meander along with Gage’s Creek.

Join, Singing In Full Bloom, in a joyful gathering of voices where we sing together to remember, connect, and root in community. These circles are a space for shared song, connection, and the simple joy of being together. No experience needed! Just bring your heart and your voice.

Everyone is welcome to pull up a hay bale and rest into some soothing stretches midday! Let’s pause together while gently moving our bodies to the rhythms of nature and breeze. Drop into the sensations that guide us so wisely into a direction of self-care and healing.

Toast's first performance was for an outdoor wedding in 2009. Since then, our 5-piece band has performed at the Port Hope Fair, the local sailing and curling clubs, the Columbus Community Centre and at various other party events at venues around Northumberland Country. We perform mainly for our own enjoyment, but what brings us the most satisfaction is seeing our audiences up dancing.  We cover a wide range of popular rock music ranging from the 1950's to today with a broad enough repertoire to satisfy pretty much any crowd. 

Shannon Linton is an indie singer-songwriter with a powerful voice and stories to tell. Born and raised on a farm very near where we are gathered today, Shannon is passionate about climate activism and the power of community. After narrowly avoiding a career in opera, she began performing and recording her own songs inspired by artists like Ani Difranco, Sarah Harmer and Carsie Blanton who aren’t afraid to speak the truth. Shannon’s debut EP, In Spite of Everything, was released in 2022. She has played the Blue Skies Festival, Cultivate Festival, Hibernate Festival, and has opened for artists such as the Lemon Bucket Orkestra and the Angelique Francis Band. Her song At the End of the World has been played on CBC radio.

Author and musician Ted Staunton is a longtime favourite at Headwaters, sharing the stage during our Summer Concert Series with other local talent such as Saskia Tomkins, Jimmy Bowskill, Dave Mowat, Clayton Yates, Ian McKeown and Rob McLaren. His sense of irreverent humour is always part of the show. Join him for a lighthearted set of rootsy original tunes, vintage acoustic blues and old-timey "folk jazz" perfect for a summer afternoon.

Port Hope’s Abby Zotz is an award-winning singer songwriter with a penchant for hope, happiness and honesty in a world that seems to be rapidly diminishing in all three. Her influences include Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan and Sarah Harmer and she is thrilled to be taking to the Headwaters Stage again with members of her Local Honey Band . Herself a beekeeper and partner at eco-friendly Cedar Hedge Farm in Campbellcroft, Abby’s indie-folk album Local Honey has been called “natural sounding magic (The Music Reviews)” and “a piece of pure optimism (Neufutur Magazine)."
https://abbyzmusic.com/

Warkworth singer-songwriter, Darren Roy Clarke, writes and performs modern classic folk songs, with intimate vocals that pull you right into his compelling observations on life’s winding road. A near fatal work site accident while running his own contractor business put things in perspective for Clarke: Life is too short. I need to do what fuels me. Darren has gained recognition as a “musician’s musician,” sharing stages with Canadian performers Broken Social Scene, The Sadies, Kerri Ough (Good Lovelies), Tony Dekker (Great Lake Swimmers), and Craig Cardiff. His musical storytelling tackles everything from the worry of living up to a spouse’s expectations, to struggles with mental health, and humanity’s penchant for Wanderlust. It’s his search, humble and human, that makes him the perfect companion to life’s moments. We’re so lucky to have him grace our stage