The 10th annual Okrapoolza will be held Sept. 14-15. Proceeds benefit Promise of Peace Gardens programs.

Aug. 19, 2019

Get ready to get your okra on while helping a good cause.

Promise of Peace Gardens is once again hosting Okrapalooza, an end-of-summer shindig that has become a North Texas tradition.

Now in its tenth year, the fest has expanded to two days and will feature elegant dining, live music and family entertainment in a new rural venue.

Reeves Family FarmThis year's Okrapalooza will take place at the Reeves Famiy Farm in Princeton.

On Saturday, Sept. 14, the adults-only Seed To Table dining experience will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the middle of an okra field at the Reeves Family Farm located at 3577 Farm-to-Market Road 1377 in Princeton, Texas.

The evening will begin with cocktails and live entertainment followed by a meal prepared by local chefs Anastacia Quinones, Alex Astranti, Casey Nicole, Daniel Pittman, Mark Wootton, and Adam West. Tickets are $125 per guest, and for an additional $20, guests may board a shuttle bus that will pick them up from the White Rock Lake area and return them afterward. Seating is limited to 100 guests.

Okrapalooza spreadNearly 20 local chefs will be preparing dishes for the two-day fest.

Then on Sunday, Sept. 15, the family-oriented Okrapalooza okra festival takes place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. also at Reeves Family Farm. New this year, the fest begins with a Fun on the Farm children's hour with a variety of kid-friendly activities including races and farm crafts.

Afterward, the cook-off begins, with chefs Thomas Archer, Annie Greenslade, David Pena, Keith Cedotal, Mayra Garcia, Joey Dawkins, Josh Hammond, Andrea Shackleford, Adam West, Taylor Rause, and Baker Pamela Thibodeaux of Patina Green offering unique culinary creations.

The fest will also feature live entertainment, beer and wine. Admission for the fest is $45 for adults when tickets are bought in advance or $60 at the gate on the day of the event. Children 12 years old and younger are admitted free. The fest is limited to 400 attendees.

Okrapalooza features fun for all ages.

Promise of Peace Gardens founder Elizabeth Dry says she’s excited about the addition of the Seed To Table dinner this year. 

“It will be unique because it’s set in the middle of an okra field at Reeves Family Farm,” says Dry. “[Guests] will arrive and have Calamity Gin craft cocktails and appetizers. A silent auction will be held, and then the dinner will seat 100, with live music from Russ Hewitt, a Grammy-nominated flamenco Nuevo guitarist. It will be quite lovely.”

In the past, the festival has been held at a local restaurant, but Dry says this year she wanted to demonstrate how fundraising events can take place at family farms such as the Reeves’ farm while benefiting both the fundraising organization and the small-scale growers in the area.

“[We also wanted] to give people the experience of what it’s like to be on a farm and the simple pleasures that come with being surrounded by food being grown and the people who grow that food,” Dry says.

Soup It ForwardSOUP'S ON

Money raised through the two-day event will keep Promise of Peace Gardens afloat for the coming year. Dry says the funds will mainly be used for the non-profit organization’s Soup It Forward program which aids Dallas-area residents living in so-called food deserts, a USDA term that designates an area marked by a lack of access to wholesome foods and fresh fruits and vegetables. People who live in food deserts may face an hour-long round trip by foot or public transportation just to reach a grocery store.

“We launched a new food distribution program this year, and it’s taken off remarkably. We’ve won two awards and a couple of grants. And what we do is we supply our families that we work with in the garden a Soup It Forward kit once a month, with organic ingredients and broth made by Joanne Bondy, a recipe and a guide on meal cooking and eating together as a family,” Dry says. “So, we really want to increase our capacity to serve those to more people in East and West Dallas. And this money is very important to keep our ingredients at the highest quality and also to increase the cooking classes that we do with the families and the soup kits that we distribute.”

A soup dish made from one of the Soup it Forward kits.

The organization, which won a 2018 Green Source DFW Sustainable Leadership Award, operates several gardens throughout Dallas where participants and their families learn to how grow food themselves and how to turn what they harvest into delicious and nutritious meals. 

“We take about 20 families for a session for a series of six months. And we grow and we cook and we distribute the soup kits with them. So, in each family, there's about four to eight people. But then each of those families soup it forward and they start sharing the recipes - they not only share the soup that they cook, but they start sharing the ingredients that we have from the farm,” Dry says. “So, the food leaves our farm and goes to tables. [It’s] over about 200 people that it impacts significantly because there's knowledge attached to the food. So, there's the sharing of the knowledge - where the food came from, how you can prepare it, how you can integrate it into traditional recipes of their family. These families will be getting more nutrition-dense ingredients because it's grown in their community and it's grown without chemicals.”

SEEDS OF A FESTIVAL

Promise of Peace Gardens launched in 2009, and the first Okrapalooza fundraising event began soon afterward with the simple purpose of earning enough to pay the rent for the vacant lot where the organization started its first community garden. At the time, Dry says the garden had a huge harvest just waiting to be enjoyed, so it only made sense when faced with bills to try to turn that crop into cash.

“I was looking around wondering how to raise some money for that month and we had an abundance of okra. I went home and Googled okra festivals, and there were none in Texas. Thus was born Okrapalooza,” Dry says with a chuckle.

Promise of Peace Garden founder Elizabeth DryPromise of Peace Gardens founder Elizabeth Dry held the first Okrapalooza 10 years ago to pay the rent on the organization’s first garden.

Since then, the organization has expanded, moved to new locations and overall increased the square footage of its crops and the number of its participants. Coming up in 2020, participants in the organization’s programs will sell their produce and soup kits at St. Michael’s Farmers Market in North Dallas.

“It’s a way for our kids that we work with to go to the market - they present the ingredients, and they're gaining entrepreneurial skills by pricing and interacting with the people at the market - it’s a good experience for them,” Dry says.

Additionally, the organization is installing a garden behind the parking lot of Oak Cliff’s Belmont Hotel, which is anticipated to open in December of 2019. The garden will supply fresh produce to the hotel’s restaurant and serve the surrounding community.

“We're also going to also offer Soup It Forward kits to the people that live in the homes over there. That'll be another way for people to access the soup kits and also have educational programming,” Dry says.

For Promise of Peace Gardens, Okrapalooza remains the main source of revenue that sustains the organization’s programs, so Dry says she’s hoping for all the tickets to the event to sell out.

Each ticket sold to the seed to table dinner will provide six months of Soup It Forward education and soup kits to one family of six, said Dry. Each ticket sold to the cook off will feed two families of six. 

“If we sell all of the tickets - we will directly impact the lives of 40 families by providing access to locally grown food security and sustain two urban farms and contribute a significant donation to one farm.” 

OkrapaloozaOkrapalooza

About: 10th annual fundraiser for the Dallas-based Promise of Peace Gardens, a 10-year-old nonprofit that brings community gardens, fresh food and nutritional education to underserved neighborhoods and food deserts.

When: Sept. 14-15, 2019

Saturday: The adults-only Seed To Table dining experience will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the Reeves Family Farm located at 3577 Farm-to-Market Road 1377 in Princeton, Texas. Evening features cocktails and live entertainment followed by a meal prepared by local chefs Anastacia Quinones, Alex Astranti, Casey Nicole, Daniel Pittman, Mark Wootton, and Adam West. Tickets are $125 per guest, and for an additional $20, guests may board a shuttle bus that will pick them up from the White Rock Lake area and return them afterward. Seating is limited to 100 guests. Details.

Sunday: The family-oriented Okrapalooza okra festival takes place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. also at Reeves Family Farm. New this year, the fest begins with a Fun on the Farm children's hour with a variety of kid-friendly activities including races and farm crafts.

Afterward, the cook-off begins, with chefs Thomas Archer, Annie Greenslade, David Pena, Keith Cedotal, Mayra Garcia, Joey Dawkins, Josh Hammond, Andrea Shackleford, Adam West, Taylor Rause, and Baker Pamela Thibodeaux of Patina Green offering unique culinary creations.

The fest will also feature live entertainment, beer and wine. Admission for the fest is $45 for adults when tickets are bought in advance or $60 at the gate on the day of the event. Children 12 years old and younger are admitted free. The fest is limited to 400 attendees. Details.

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