Harvey Harvest Festival 2025 ambassador Vince Garreffa looks forward sharing good food with new friends

Harvey Harvest Festival’s 2025 ambassador Vince Garreffa is looking forward to making new friends, sharing good food and getting involved in the community at this weekend’s massive event.

The foodie, philanthropist and advocate for Australian agricultural industries said he was excited to celebrate all the wonderful things the Harvey region had to offer.

Mr Garreffa said Harvey played an important part in his 60-year career, having an association with Harvey Beef as a butcher since he was 14 years old.

He also served as the previous ambassador of the Harvey Italian Sausage Sagra at the 2018 Harvest Festival and loved the experience.

Talking about the joys found in regional communities, Mr Garreffa said events like the Harvest Festival were at the heart of communities.

“It’s not just a community, it’s a family,” he said.

“We need to do things together, we need to have fun, we need to celebrate and it’s just so important to us — as individuals, as families and as communities.”

Mr Garreffa said community events brought people together and did wonders for people’s mental health, something he was particularly passionate about through his decades of charity work with Lifeline WA.

“You sleep better at night when you help others — you sleep better when you don’t look for anything in return,” he said.

“Sometimes (it’s) something as little as a hello, and other times it’s what we do together, how we react in human situations.

“The Harvest Festival is three days of human situations, in the beautiful town of Harvey — it really is special.”

Mr Garreffa said while there would be many standout experiences across the weekend event, he admitted to looking forward to one special moment the most.

“You won’t believe it, but I have never seen a grape stomping competition,” he said.

“My wife is a connoisseur of fine wine, so we’ve visited wineries all over the world over the years making wine the professional way, which is quite interesting, but we’re going back to a fun thing.

“Nobody makes wine by stomping on grapes anymore, this is definitely just 100 per cent fun.”

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