by Garrett Heaney
With spring upon us, Montpelier is starting to blossom back to life, and with the season comes the annual Community Earth Day Celebration at Hunger Mountain Coop. On Saturday, April 22, there will be a number of outdoor activities, a community swap meet, a whole slew of children’s activities under the kids’ tent and workshops inside, including native plant landscaping.
Robyn Joy from the community relations department was particularly excited about the book, clothing and media swap meet, saying “I am so pumped for the swap meet! We get to keep things from becoming trash in abandoned free boxes and get a new punch to our wardrobes and bookshelves! Yay!”
Folks from the community, owner-members and staff are all invited to bring in their “previously loved books and gently used, clean, spring and summer clothes, used DVDs, CDs, video games and VHS tapes,” and leave with whatever they can make use of.
Also, if you’re like me and have a bunch of broken, outdated or simply unwanted technology lying around, feel free to bring your old cell phones and batteries to the recycling station set up with Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District. They will be on site to answer any questions about proper disposal/recycling of your electronics. The District will also be showcasing their “Project Tote” project in which schools and people in the community have repurposed or upcycled their unusable compost totes. These will be spread throughout the Coop and a vote will be held for favorites. The winners from each group (Union Elementary School, Main Street Middle School and MHS) will each receive a $250 cash prize.
The real fun begins out in the kid’s tent, opening at 10 a.m. Shortly after, at 11 a.m. Shirley from Face Mania will be set up to paint her amazing animal faces by request until 1 p.m. This is always a favorite amongst kids, so make sure you get there before she has to go! There will also be a solar-powered bouncy house provided by SunCommon, weather permitting, but as of press time, all precipitation should be gone by Friday afternoon (not that Vermonters can actually count on weather forecasts).
The North Branch Center will be there to teach kids (and parents!) about animals and their natural habitats and Black Dirt Farms will be teaching about high potency worm castings. All children are invited to plant seedlings at the gardening table as well as sit in with Kellogg-Hubbard Library staff for nature poem writing, storytelling and other hands-on activities.
Inside, there will be workshops in the community room (upstairs) with Erin O’Hara of Turtle Hill Native Plant Nursery and John Snell of the Montpelier Tree Board. O’Hara will be talking about landscaping with native plants to “support wildlife, pollinators and people,” while Snell will be talking about how to successfully plant a tree. These workshops are RSVP, so call or sign up at the co-op ahead of time if you’re interested.
In the evening there will be a Poem City event from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. with Calais singer/songwriter Bob Hannan, mashed up with the poetry of his friend and neighbor Geof Hewitt, Vermont’s reigning Poetry Slam Champion.
When asked for comment about Hunger Mountain’s Earth Day celebration, General Manager Kari Bradley noted, “Our cooperation makes it possible for us, individually and collectively, to make a real difference for the environment. We should pause and take pride in that we have built a food cooperative that has helped us express and take action on these core values.”
