Perhaps the city’s crown jewel event is the Healdsburg Future Farmers Country Fair and the accompanying Twilight Parade. It’s all happening this week for the 76th time, having started in 1949 in the wake of the discontinued Healdsburg Harvest Festival.
This time around the theme even has a rhyme—“Keeping Ag Alive in 2025.”
The whole thing kicked off back on April 19 with the annual Barn Dance and Dinner at Alexander Valley Hall, a fundraising event that raises expectations as well as money for the current year’s fair and related projects. But for months before that, the ag youth of Healdsburg and environs had focused on readying their livestock and preparing for the social event of the year.
By the time this is published, FFA and 4-H kids in kerchiefs will have begun showing up at Rec Park with their farm animals on Wednesday morning for check-in and weigh-in, a process which continues through Thursday morning. The rest of Thursday is given over to the showmanship and market classes, still exhibit judging, small animal showing—including rabbits and cavies, or guinea pigs—and an obedience and showmanship dog show about midday.
Here comes the parade
At 6pm that evening comes the main event: The Twilight Parade, as traditional and homey as a 76-year-old youth farmers community parade can be, normally filled with around 70-plus floats and groups that run the gamut from wild Oaxacan dancers to high-stepping horse riders to ornate flatbed wonderlands and beyond.
This year’s parade will be grand-marshalled by local couple Dane and Margaret Petersen, who are akin to royalty in the winemaking and firefighting communities of the Dry Creek and Alexander valleys and testament to the family’s deep impact in area agriculture over the years.
Here’s how city officials describe the map route, which remains little changed over the years: “The parade route starts near St. John’s Church on East and Matheson St., turning right onto Center St. and continuing to Piper St., then heading south on Fitch St., turning onto Matheson St. and ending on University.”
On Tuesday the city’s recreation supervisor, Matt Milde, issued a list of road closures which start at 3pm, three hours before the first horse high-steps onto the route. “As part of the parade, we anticipate a significant influx of participants and spectators, necessitating certain traffic arrangements to ensure a safe and successful event,” read his announcement.
As the last of the parade’s estimated 100 entries return up Matheson to University, many of the parade’s tightly packed sideline viewers will make their way to the city’s fairgrounds at Rec Park. The fair will stay open till 9:30pm that night, and will stay open Friday and Saturday from 9am to 9:30pm.
Fair foods usually include pozole, elote, hotdogs, corn dogs, tacos, barbeque, teriyaki, ice cream, funnel cake—and the pens full of bunnies and chickens. There is also a music stage with DJ Cousin Paul spinning tunes on Thursday and Friday nights, the Swan Brothers Circus tent, a rock-climbing tower, bouncy houses and garden exhibits, and for much of Friday and Saturday afternoon young ranchers-in-training lead their meticulously raised farm animals around a ring and auction them off in the Rec Park stands (making for many tear-stained and heart-wrenching handoffs).
Susia Garcia and Jess Ascoop of the HFFCF board of directors emphasized that the most important aspect is the foundation that encourages and allows local 4-H and FFA youth to showcase their hard work.
“This is why the vast quantity of projects are offered and showcased including cavies, rabbits, dogs, goats, hogs, lambs, cattle, arts and crafts, baking, industrial projects and floral just to name a few,” they said.
Healdsburg may be rapidly changing, but this is one tradition that hasn’t seen much change over three-quarters of a century. It’s a reminder that our agricultural roots run strong and deep even after all this time.
Full details about the HFFCF can be found at healdsburgfair.org
