Guests at the third annual Harvest to Home Dinner gather ‘round the cheese table at the North Alabama Agriplex in 2017. The dinner and accompanying silent auction serve as the Agriplex’s key fundraiser each year, and feature locally-sourced food and big-ticket auction items donated by local volunteers. Pictured, from left, are Stevie and Michael Douglas, Rebecca Peinhardt, Gloria Williams and Teresa Goodwin.

The North Alabama Agriplex is watching its attendance numbers pace back to levels not seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic, even as the educational nonprofit forges ahead with plans to expand its physical footprint.

Ahead of its annual Harvest to Home fundraising dinner, slated this year for Sept. 29, the Agriplex is sharing early details about an estimated $2 million project to construct a new facility adjacent to its current property in west Cullman. This year’s dinner will mark the start of the earnest fundraising effort to generate capital for the project, which aims to erect a new building that will house a teaching kitchen, a new outdoor classroom and a community hub with expanded office space for both Agriplex programs and outside agricultural support services.

“The expansion will mean additional office space for us, including our Beginning Farmer and Rancher program, which currently is overseen by former county extension agent Tony Glover,” said Agriplex director Rachel Dawsey. “There will also be office space for additional agricultural support programs. The teaching kitchen will give us a great new educational area that will free up existing space, allowing us to hold simultaneous activities by accommodating more people at once.”

Through the first half of this year, the Agriplex has tallied 11,905 participants across all of its programs, including 3,527 attendees of onsite events at its main building on Tally Ho Street, according to data supplied to The Times by the Agriplex. If that pace continues, the nonprofit would finish 2022 with attendance numbers comparable to those of 2019, when 23,096 people participated in its programs and events — including 6,331 who took part in onsite activities.

Attendance plunged precipitously in 2020 and 2021, due to ongoing measures to limit public gatherings through the pandemic. Although both years saw similar numbers, 2021 marked the low point, when 14,762 people participated in all of the nonprofit’s programs (including 4,455 onsite). Onsite numbers dipped to their lowest point during the pandemic’s first year, when only 2,372 people showed up for Agriplex events — many of which occurred before the first wave of distancing measures took effect in March.

The pandemic interrupted what was shaping up to be a steady, decade-long trend of year-on-year increasing interest in Agriplex programs and outreach. Even the two-year pandemic dip saw attendance numbers that dwarf those from ten years ago: In 2012, the Agriplex welcomed 2,359 program participants in total.

“It’s been a long time coming,” says Dawsey of the Agriplex’s building plans. “Things kind of got interrupted, but we were already looking at expanding. The Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries had given us appropriations, a couple of years ago, that allowed us to purchase the additional property where the new teaching kitchen and community hub will go. We’ve got big plans, so we’re excited to kick off our fundraising at this year’s Harvest to Home dinner to get things started.”

This year’s Harvest to Home Dinner & Silent Auction will take place starting at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, featuring a locally sourced menu of food raised by Cullman farmers, and curated by chef Aaron Nichols, the department chair of the Wallace State Culinary Arts Program. As in the dinner’s pre-pandemic years, the event will be held at the Dr. William F. Peinhardt Conference Center inside the School of Nursing and Center for Science building on the Wallace State campus.