Green Earth Fair 2006

Over 1,000 visitors came to the farm on May 7 for the third annual Green Earth Fair. Below is the description of the day's planned events.

What’s green, healthy, and sustainable all over? Why, it’s the Green Earth Fair 2006, being held at the Farm on Sunday, May 7, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm. We had so much fun last year (despite the blustery cold!); we just had to do it again! We fully expect this year to a lot warmer AND a lot “cooler” (we have really great stuff this year!).

This is our premier event where we provide presentations, exhibits, and activities to educate and promote nutritional health and ecological sustainability to you, your family, and friends. Using our organic farm as a backdrop, we want to provide you with practical, earth friendly approaches on how to care for your home, lawn, and garden.

Admission is FREE and Open to the Public – bring the kids! Refreshments and snacks will also be provided.

Presentations

We have a full slate of experts who will educate you on organic home gardening, organic lawn care, natural landscaping, home composting, nutrition, solar energy, and beekeeping. Presentation times are 1:15, 2:15, 3:15, and 4:15.

In the Barn

1:15 pm - Recipes for Non-Toxic Cleaners

2:15 pm - Concerns About Lawn Chemicals

3:15 pm - Organic Lawn Care, Presenter: Bill Scheffler
Bill has a degree in Horticulture from the University of Illinois and is the 3rd generation of his family in the greenhouse business. Twelve years ago he started Pure Prairie Organics, a natural lawn and tree care business. He considers himself a soil nutritionist and is enthusiastic about teaching people that you can have a beautiful healthy lawn without the use of harmful chemicals, pesticides and herbicide.

4:15 pm - Organic Home Gardening, Presenter: Vicki Nowicki
Vicki Nowicki is a garden designer, author and educator with degrees in Environmental Studies, Environmental Education, and Museum Studies. Vicki and her husband Ron own and operate The Land Office, a Landscape Design and Construction Company with an Ecological Conscience. The success of The Land Office depends to a large extent on Vicki's contagious enthusiasm and spiritual counsel. For 25 years, she and Ron have tried to help homeowners make stronger connections with the natural world by planting native and naturalistic landscapes.  She, along with Pat Armstrong, founded the first Illinois chapter of The Wild One in 1992. As her work with clients and students has expanded, it now includes vegetables as a necessary component of a resource and energy conserving sustainable organic garden.

In the Granary

1:15 pm - Solar Energy – Home Applications

2:15 pm - Nutrition and the Brain, Presenter: Philippa Norman, M.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Norman holds degrees in Medicine and Public Health and is the author of the book, “Feed Your Brain”. Her training and long-term experience in mind/body/energy therapies gives her an integrative approach to treating health issues. She has worked with nutrition as a healing modality to treat attention problems, hyperactivity, depression and anxiety. Dr Norman currently focuses on brain health working closely with the Learning Brain Institute. She gives presentations to educators about the impact of nutrition on school performance and works with students getting them excited about healthy living.

3:15 pm - Nutrition in the Schools

4:15 pm - Green Home Improvements – Why and How?

Outside Locations

1:15 pm - Home Composting

2:15 pm - Natural Landscaping, Presenter: Pat Armstrong
Pat has been working with native plants and animals for over 60 years. She worked in the Education Department of the Morton Arboretum for 16 years where she managed the Schulenburg Prairie. She currently teaches classes in Native Landscaping at the College of DuPage and is a consultant to the villages of Hoffman Estates, Western Springs and Westmont. Her latest project is the construction of a prairie roof garden at her home in Naperville.

3:15 pm - Home Energy Saving Strategies – Mobile Solar Power Station

4:15 pm - Beekeeping

ACTIVITIES

A nice Sunday afternoon in the springtime – where else but to be outside, enjoying the weather, but most of all, enjoying what nature provides to all of us. Please join us in this celebration!

There will be Kids’ Activities in the Children’s Garden area. Kids can explore the garden, do soil exploration, and plant seeds in small pots to take home with them. Kids can also join in on the Scavenger Hunt. But, get this: We’re going to have the children make musical instruments out of common household things and then we’re going to have a Green Earth Fair Parade! The parade will start at 3:00 PM, so be sure to come out before then. And, we’ll have Deshka, an American Bald Eagle from S.O.A.R (Save Our American Raptors)!

For those of you who have the urge for street performance, at 4:00 pm, we are having a Juggling Workshop.

Guided tours of the farm will be available, including the organic vegetable fields and the greenhouse. You can even learn how you can take home a share of the vegetable harvest this season!

EXHIBITS

One of our key mission values is to educate, educate, and educate some more! We want to provide you with as rich of a educational experience as possible, so in addition to the speaker presentations, we have assembled 36 (!) experts who will be exhibiting this year. This is an opportunity for you to become more aware of earth friendly topics and issues. Stop by each table, pick up literature, and spend some time chatting with these exhibitors.

• Angelic Organics CSA Learning Center
• BioDiesel
• Chef Supported Agriculture
• Chicago Wilderness
• Chicagoland Healthy Lawn Team
• Clean Air Counts
• Conservation @ Home - The Conservation Foundation
• DuPage Environmental Education/SCARCE
• Free Literature Table
• From the Ground Up
• Green Earth Institute
• Greenmaker
• Hartweck Honey
• Home Composting
• Illinois Prairie Path
• Illinois Solar Energy Association
• Midwest SOARRING Foundation
• Mobile Solar Power Station
• Naperville Cultural Center
• Naperville's Renewable Energy Option
• Nutrition in the Schools Network
• Organic Vegetables and Herbs
• Prairie Plants
• Pure Prairie Organics
• Rendezvous Farm
• Save Our American Raptors (SOAR)
• Seven Generations Ahead
• Taylor Creek Restoration Nurseries
• The Land Office
• Trader Joe's, Organic Valley, Popcorn
• Center for Sustainable Community
• Organic Food Network
• Neighboring Farms
• Buckley Honey Farm
• Center for Green Technology
• Safer Pest Control Project
• Video - 1) The Land Connection; 2) The True Cost of Food
• Video - 1) The Impact of Fresh, Healthy Foods on Learning and Behavior; 2) Healthy Farms, Healthy Foods
• West Chicago Prairie Stewardship
• Whole Foods
• Wild Oats
• Wild Ones - DuPage

PLANTS FOR SALE!

Organic vegetable seedlings and native prairie plants will be made available for purchase.

Want to volunteer to help at the Green Earth Fair? Contact Us.

Interested in more information? Contact Us.

See renewable energy in action! ComEd will show off its Mobile Solar Power Station at the Green Earth Fair. The Mobile Solar Power Station is a portable, self-contained photovoltaic power station that generates 1.8 kilowatts. It’s photovoltaic array consists of twenty-four, 75 W modules, along with ten maintenance-free 12-volt batteries. The power station is capable of providing approximately 500 watts of continuous power at 120V, 60 Hz. For inclement weather, the battery storage will allow for electrical loads up to 4000 watts for a total time of approximately 3 hours.

Representatives of the Illinois Solar Energy Association will also be on hand to describe solar power, particularly solar thermal installations, which are less expensive and more immediately practical for area residents. Information will be available about the state and federal programs which provide rebates to homeowners and businesses for renewable energy installations as a way to incentivize such development.