Live music, dancing and a special menu at ‘The Forager’s Fling at the Spring’

The Spring, in Lewisburg, wants to invite AMR listeners to a special event scheduled for next month, ‘The Foragers Fling at The Spring.’ On Friday, May 16, there’s going to be live music, square dancing and a special menu featuring locally foraged food.

The Spring is more than just a restaurant. Laura Bozzi is a program manager with Appalachian Mountain Advocates.

“We own The Spring,” says Bozzi. “Which is a non-profit, farm-to-table restaurant that’s part of a big park and an overall project that’s supporting local farmers and doing other kinds of sustainable economic development in the Greenbrier Valley.”

Bozzi said The Spring opened in January in the old Fort Savannah building. According to their website, The Spring supports sustainable local farming, environmental education, and the arts. The idea is to promote and sell local agricultural products, and they host workshops, talks and other events.

Bozzi said the top floor of the building is where the restaurant is situated, but there’s also a stage where they host live local music.

“And we also, on the days that we’re closed, we also have different kinds of community events happening there,” she says. “We just had something with the Historical Society, we’re having a young and beginning farmer mixer there next month. Then in the basement, the lower level, there is going to be a youth center that High Rocks is going to manage, and it’ll be open for all middle school and high school kids in Greenbrier County.”

Bozzi said The Spring sits on seven acres, and they have big plans for the future.

“We have plans for a Farmer’s Market pavilion and other kind of community workshop space,” Bozzi says. “And then we’ll landscape the whole area with native plants and walking paths and that kind of thing. So it’ll be a community park but also have some kind of environmental education components to it.”

The Black Twig Pickers will be performing the night of the Foragers Fling.

“They played up at the Marlinton Opera House,” she says. “They play in the area every so often. So, they’re teaming up with Mike Costello, who is a square dance caller. So there will be dancing and music.”

The Spring’s chef Al Pettijohn is already working on the line-up, but Bozzi said a lot of what’s going to be featured on the menu is going to be determined by what they can harvest before the event.

“The menu is going to be whatever we can get our hands on,” says Bozzi. “Al is a really great chef and he’s got some ideas concocted. And then actually I was at the Wild Edibles Festival over the weekend and that was inspiring. So the idea of it is just to have a fun night that’s celebrating Appalachian culture and food and music, all together. I would love it to be a yearly thing. We’ve linked up with The Mountain Music Trail and it would be kind of fun to think about ways to do this sort of food and music and culture together at different places along the trail.”

Dinner will start at 5 p.m., and the music should start around 7 p.m. It’ll cost you $7 at the door for the dancing and music, and Bozzi said the food is going to be priced separately.

Everyone is invited to The Foragers Fling at The Spring on Friday May 16, and anyone that might come across any wild mushrooms or other local foragables before then is encouraged to contact The Spring.

And AMR will keep you posted on other events later this summer at The Spring, like the young farmers mixer they have scheduled.

“The southeast West Virginia Farm Gathering that the Farmers Market Association is putting on. There’s going to be a bunch of different workshops and events on a Monday and a Tuesday in June, and then that Monday night we’re going to have beer and talk about what it’s like to start farming here.”

For more information visit The Spring’s website at www.thespringwv.org or call Laura Bozzi at 304 645 6482

Story By

Angelo Jiordano

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