Hopewell Harvest Fair Almanacs

Rev. 7/30/20 – Added 2009 & 2011 – Only 2003 missing

The Hopewell Harvest Fair has been cancelled for this year, but you still can enjoy the Harvest Fair feeling by browsing an almost-full set of 30 years of Harvest Fair almanacs (brochures) from 1987 to 2019 that we have scanned and posted in the Pamphlet Collection.

== Browse the Hopewell Harvest Fair Almanacs in the Pamphlet Collection (PDFs) ==

This collection now includes 32 of the 33 Harvest Fair almanacs. We are missing only 2003 – Does anyone have a copy? Plus we have only a couple pamphlets from the preceding Hopewell Community Day event (1981 & 1883). We’d also welcome additional Community Day brochures.

These are a total of over 1100 scanned pages (two-page spreads), saved to Acrobat (PDF) format, with text recognition run on them (OCR) so they are fully searchable.

The Hopewell Harvest Fair is a wonderful fall community event that provides a day of fun for kids and adults alike, brings together local businesses and community groups, and has raised over $200,000 donated to community organizations.

As a testament to local volunteerism, the Harvest Fair almanacs cover over three decades of devoted steadfast efforts, and have some 2200 printed pages listing local people, organizations, businesses, and activities. Common activities over the years include the children’s games, “Find Freddie,” Lego and photo contests, crafter / artists booths, homegrown plants, and the Bake-Off (often along with recipes from the previous year’s contest). Yes, the “How Many Hopewells?” contest (to count words in the almanac) is a bit easier now since you can search the text, but you’ll still need to look for some words in the images.

And for history buffs, these booklets are a wonderful look into the people and businesses of the times. Familiar names of volunteers and sponsors appear year after year as supporters of the event. If anyone is interested in extracting the lists of advertisers and sponsors, it would be a fun project to find the people and businesses that appear most often year after year. Certainly Vincenzo’s/Franco’s Pizza has a shot!

Thanks again to Bob Witkowski for providing these as part of his large cache of Hopewell brochures, with some missing brochures filled in from the Hopewell Public Library. And to Lois Grieves and Michelle Lechnou for providing the last missing almanacs.