Come Visit my Online Store

Visit My Website

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Happy 40th Earth Day - April 22, 2010

Earth Day is an international celebration that began with the environmental movement of the 1970’s. Although Earth Day began as a day of protest during the 70’s it has now become a day of action. These actions come in many forms; such as planting trees and cleaning up litter. This year Earth Day was celebrating 40 years as an environmental movement.

Last weekend if you were out and about you would have seen people along Robert Angus Drive and in the area of Dickey Brook with clear garbage bags cleaning up the litter along the road and waterway. My hats off to these people and their actions at helping make Amherst a cleaner place to live.

For the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, the Amherst Community Garden Project and its volunteers decided to hold a social event to “get the conversation started” about the importance of good, healthy, nutritious food and the possibilities available for growing your own food.

We had a guest speaker, Jason Blanch who is our local environmentalist and member of the Green Party for this area. He spoke on the importance of food security. The local community garden is an important part of our food security. We know exactly where the food has come from and how it was grown.

Jeanne Sumbu who lives near the community garden produced a powerpoint presentation with some of the photos that were taken last year when the garden was just a field full of weeds that became a beautiful garden area with a lot of hard work and perseverance from all of the members.

There was a display of “green” cleaning products; such as, vinegar and baking soda with some examples of how these products can be used to clean anywhere in your home. This display was produced by the Poverty Action Committee who also present this information at the local food bank. They try to encourage the donation of vinegar and baking soda to the food bank as a cleaning product.

The event itself was held at Maggie’s Place, in Amherst. This centre is also a member of the community garden and last year they donated a shed to the community garden. The food for the Earth Day event was catered by the Cumberland Food Mentors, which is a group that is dedicated to making sure everyone has access to healthy and nutritious food.

The community garden is accessible for people of all ages and abilities. For those that have trouble bending or kneeling, there are raised beds for them to work on. This garden can also be seen as poverty action at the local level. It produces fresh food and provides food security for those that grow their own food and for those that grow food and then share it with the local food bank.

For more information on the community garden please feel free to contact me at the email address below.


Lisa Emery, B.A. is currently living in Amherst. Lisa invites comments to her column. You can contact Lisa at: emeryvine@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/emeryvine, or view her blog at http://emeryvinegrapevine.blogspot.com

No comments:

Post a Comment