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

Grab your shovel and help plant tree saplings in one of our new shelterbelts. Experience the correct way to keep trees alive and thriving. Find out about the benefits of trees for both farmers and landowners alike.

Instructor: Josh Noiseaux – 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 Tony’s 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

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

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

Stop and smell the roses and find out what goes into creating a beautiful and productive flower business. Learn about choosing varieties that will make great bouquets and managing stressors like weeds, drought and pests.

Leader: Megan Webster, Megan’s Flowers

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

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

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

Take part in this nature walk with an Indigenous point of view. Learn about the role of the natural world in Indigenous traditions and enjoy stories and observations that bring meaning to our role in preserving the land.

Leader: TBD

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.

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.

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.