ELKINS — Not many events bring the Elkins community together so dramatically as the annual Community Table offered each spring outdoors on Davis Avenue.

This year’s event is scheduled for Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and is free to the public. It will feature a host of local businesses that will provide food and drinks for those attending.

Community Table coordinator Desire Kniffen Watson said the Community Table is a very important event that many in the community look forward to attending.

“It is such a wholesome, unique experience because of us being a small town and how much people care, and how much the businesses give back to the community,” she said. “Especially in a world that is politically divided as we are, those moments when we sit down with our neighbors, just be neighbors, and break bread together, are crucial for reminding us how beautiful the world is.”

Local small businesses will provide soup and bread for those attending. A portion of Davis Avenue in front of Beander’s Restaurant and Tavern will be closed to traffic and the street will be lined with tables for the public to sit and enjoy their meal at.

“Every year when I do this there is no hesitation from the small business owners to say yes,” Kniffen Watson said. “They always tell me that they love the event and want to be a part of it every year. We always have really good turnouts and the event is a lot of fun for families and kids. It’s a free meal and you get to sample some of the local restaurants’ great creations.”

Businesses taking part in the event include: Beander’s Restaurant and Tavern, The Charm Farm, A’la Board Plates and Platters, Delmonte Market, El Gran Sabor, Clementine’s Cantina, Smoke on the Water, Bambino’s, Davis & Elkins College, Graceland, Alpine Lodge, Smoked BBQ, Jimbo’s, Oxley House, El Toro, Mona’s Eggrolls, Sarah’s Backyard Kitchen, The Lunch Box, and Gingsrollsandpancit.

Casey’s Soothing Sweets and Eats, Shop n Save, and Performance Foods will provide the bread for the dinner. Legacy Insurance, Northern Eagle, and Big Timber will be serving drinks at the event, while U.S. Food Service will provide bowls, spoons, and napkins. Masterpiece Rentals will be providing tables, chairs, and table covers.

Kniffen Watson, who is the manager at Beander’s Restaurant and Tavern, said the event is based on the book “Stone Soup.”

“In the book, soldiers were literally just cooking water because they had nothing to eat,” Kniffen Watson explained. “Each person from the town gave them a carrot, a potato and a stalk of celery to add to the pot. As each person donated a little it became this huge part of soup. In return the soldiers fed the town out of that pot of soup because they now had a big pot. It’s based on the idea that if everyone gives a little, it turns into a lot.”

Kniffen Watson added that her mother gave Beander’s Restaurant and Tavern the idea to do the Community Table.

“The reason Beander’s started doing it was because it was something a small town in up-state New York, where my mother’s from, was doing,” Kniffen Watson said. “She thought it was such a beautiful thing in the community and wanted to do it here in Elkins. So she asked me to plan it and we started doing it.”

This will be the Community Table’s seventh year. It started pre-COVID and was cancelled one year because of the pandemic.