By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
Celebrating the Earth on its special day, the Crawford Park District had a whole fair of activities to help visitors gain insightful knowledge on the planet that we call home.
Taking place at Lowe-Volk Park, the Earth Day Fair brought in not only volunteers from the Crawford Park District, but other agencies as well. With an emphasis on recycle, reduce, reuse, the Earth Day Fair featured recycling from the Crawford County Recycling Center, a living stream display from the ODNR Scenic Rivers, a compost demonstration from the Earth, Wind and Flowers Club, crafts for the kids to make, and a parade of animals on display that are used in educational programs by the park district.
Teresa Troiano brought her daughter Adylina Troiano to the event to help learn about making the earth a greener place to live.
“We support the Lowe-Volk Park a lot, and the Earth Day celebration is just so good to let them know what the various things are about like the worms and the compost, and the recycling out there, and letting her know about the watershed animals,” Troiano said. “She absolutely loves learning about the plants and animals, and just trying to get her to learn about that and the plants, and just trying to get the kids to learn what Earth Day is about so it will still be here for us.”
Adylina spoke about her favorite part of the Earth Day Fair.
“I liked seeing the snakes because I got to hold them,” Adylina said.
Mary Lee Minor with the Earth, Wind and Flowers Garden Club gave a demonstration on how to make a worm bin to produce rich dark soil for gardening by using red worms, shredded paper, a handful of dirt, and recycling some leftover vegetative waste.
“To make the bin you start with a handful of garden soil. The bin can be any size, then you take your red wiggly worms and you put them in there, then you take your shredded paper and put it in there, and then the next thing you do is you contribute all of the vitamins and minerals that are in our peelings, put a lid on it with holes for some air,” Minor explained. “What these guys do is they don’t eat it like you think of eating dinner, they process it by crawling through and sucking it through their body and then they excrement it or as the kids like to call it poop.”
After learning about the worm bin at the Earth Day Fair with her son Weston, Chelsea Gottfried spoke about what brought them out to the event.
“We just came to see what kind of activities they had to do. We like to come here a lot because it is very educational and fun. The boys like it, they learn a lot.” Chelesea said.
Weston spoke about his favorite activity at the fair.
“I got to make a penguin out of bottle caps. It is my favorite animal,” Weston said.
PHOTO GALLERY: 2017 Earth Day Fair