Party at the Source, in the Hudson Valley Chelsea Handler (center) shares a laugh with the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Who needs the East End? On Saturday night, a high-profile gathering formed alongside a vegetable patch in Staatsburg, N.Y., not far from Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, where a wall was covered in photographs recently taken by Annie Leibovitz. The occasion was the annual gala of Scenic Hudson, an upstate organization devoted to preserving the Hudson River Valley and protecting it from becoming the Hamptons, which would list many of the attendees as defectors. There to the right was the performance artist Marina Abramovic, examining a photograph of herself atop a tractor. "We wanted it to look like a centerfold," she said. And there to the left was Jann Wenner, who had also posed for pictures at his nearby residence, with his partner Matt Nye and their young children. "Annie introduced me to the Hudson," said Mr. Wenner, who previously spent most of his time in Amagansett on Long Island. It's so quiet. It's so nice. I think there are more people tonight than I've ever seen up here. Toward an old barn, where dinner was to be served, Kevin Huvane, a partner at Creative Artists Agency, was milling with Peter Berg (who directed "Friday Night Lights" and "Hancock") and the comedian Chelsea Handler. Ms. Handler is also the girlfriend of André Balazs, who was being honored that night and whose 76-acre farm, Locusts-on-Hudson, was the site of the gala. "We met on Craigslist," Ms. Handler said jokingly about Mr. Balazs, who owns a string of boutique hotels including the Standard. "He had a listing: "Scenic Hudson looking for hot scene." Now, we bike, we hike and we kayak. It's a great respite from Los Angeles. Around 7 p.m., guests began to make their way to their tables. Everything, including the salad and the lamb shoulder, had been locally harvested. One of Ms. Handler's tablemates was taking a self-portrait with a cicada, a larger-than-large insect with beady red eyes that turns upevery 17 years. "Our dogs have been eating them all day," another guest said with uncharacteristic good cheer. Ms. Handler took a pass on handling a cicada when it was offered to her for a meet-and-greet. "I've met many," she said. Soon after, Ned Sullivan, the head of Scenic Hudson, gave a speech about the importance of preserving the area's character and agricultural economy. And Mr. Balazs, who bought the rambling estate in 2004, restored it and began farming on it, won an award made from tree branches. As he told it, organic farming has become all the rage - to the point where his young daughters would rather talk about that than the latest happenings at his hotels. This resonated with Ms. Leibovitz, whose own children had left that morning for a farming camp. "They all want to be farmers," she said, as guests ate locally-made gelato served off the back of a pickup truck. "Well," said Kathryn MacLeod, who produces Ms. Leibovitz's elaborate photo shoots for Vanity Fair, "better that than Kim Kardashian."