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Community Corner

Be nice to the environment, Purcellville style

Third annual Painting Purcellville Green showcases sustainability large and small

Getting (and staying) “green” has a lot of fans in the area, and a lot of them dropped in on the third annual Paint Purcellville Green day, April 30 at the Town Hall.

The 24 vendors – up from just seven participants at the first go-round three years ago –shared the parking lot with the weekly Farmers Market, and visitors could walk from solar power to geothermal heating and cooling to fair trade products and organic clothing, over to the fresh greens, local meats and flower and vegetable seedlings ready to go home and into the garden.

“When we Paint Purcellville Green,” according to the organizing committee’s Web site, “we are showing our fellow citizens a new way, a better way to be stewards of the environment, not just ideologically but practically with ways to manage our own individual environments at home, where we work and in our community.”

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It doesn’t have to be a multi-thousand dollar solar energy array (although that’s fine too and the government will give you a tax credit for buying it). How about putting a good window covering over that south facing glass double door to cut cooling bills in the summer? Go see Solar Shade and Power in Lovettsville (www.SolarShadeandPower.com). Hire Derek Archer’s Lightyear Cleaning (llightyearcleaning@gmail.com) in Lincoln to get the office or house in order without pouring toxic chemicals into the bay (or just buy one of his hi-tech microfiber cleaning cloths).

Mary Voskian, chair of the town's Committee on the Environment, circulated with a sign up sheet to find out how many local citizens would be interested in a community garden. "The Round Hill community garden, now in its third year, is helping a lot, Voskian said, as are the Master Gardeners (www.ext.vt.edu) – their booth was fielding gardening questions just feet away from Girl Scout Troop 3744’s recycling stand.

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The land for the community garden has been found, a five-acre town-owned lot on South Maple, Voskian said. She and the committee are working through the details—deer fence, ground hog barriers, insurance, getting the water hooked up.

The community garden plots, maybe 10 the first year in 2012, will be available to local green thumbs who don’t have arable land in the back yard, at a fee to offset maintenance costs, Voskian said. And, the organizers plan to encourage their gardeners to plant an extra row and donate the excess harvest to Plant A Row (www.feedloudoun.org) – that booth was just around the corner from Town Halls’ front door. That group’s volunteers will pick up the veggies and greens up and donate them to the Interfaith Relief pantry.

“We’re here today,” Voskian said, “to promote sustainability, shopping locally, living sustainable, and recycling. All those things.”

Anne Alba, vice chair of the environment committee and chair of the subcommittee that makes Painting Purcellville Green happen, was wearing two hats: keeping the day running smoothly, and manning her Solar Odyssey booth.

“We ask as many environmental sustainable vendors as we can,” Alba said, “and it’s all in conjunction with a farmers market that’s an environmentally friendly project as well – eat and buy local.”

This year, for the first time, Alba has fielded calls from potential vendors asking for room.

KoolEarth (www.koolearthusa.com) brought organic clothing, Plant A Row had seed packets to give away, PNC Bank (“super nice folks and the bank has a really great green program”) shared some of its secrets. Vendors included ADCO Geothermal (heating and cooling using environmentally friendly glycol in their tubes and cut heating/cooling bills by half or better, www.adcohvac.com/geo-faq.php), Derek Archer’s Lightyear Cleaning (clean with water only, using Norwex environmentally friendly products), Roberta Guralnik’s Solar Shade and Power  (window coverings and solar electric power, all qualified for tax credits), Mark Lenko’s Semper Technology (www.sempertech.com), Bike Loudoun (www.bikeloudoun.org), Fair Trade Winds (environmentally sustainable products for around the world, www.fairtradewinds.net),Loudoun County Public Schools, the Newton-Marasco Foundation for environmental education (www.newtonmarascofoundation.org), Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship (www.blueridgecenter.org),  and the Master Gardeners.

Wink FM radio came with its prize wheel, and Jeff Stern, at the Franklin Park Center for the performing Arts had non-stop music on the stage: Milt Herd on guitar, Jake and the Burtones string band with American heritage music, Just Left with Bluegrass.

And at the Girl Scout Troop 3744 booth, visitors could buy hand-assembled notebooks of many sizes, all made from note paper unused at the end of the school year and recycled. Proceeds will send the nine scouts to a Girl Scout world meeting in Switzerland this summer.

The day was, as promised, “the best four hours of spring.”

 

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