Earth Day in Mt. Lebanon draws crowds during farmers’ market
A change of venue seems to have worked well for Earth Day in Mt. Lebanon.
“I’m pretty happy with the turnout,” Abby Lawler-Morycz, Mt. Lebanon Environmental Team chairwoman, said while surveying the crowd of people who braved a relatively chilly Saturday morning to check out the festivities.
The Earth Day celebration took place amid the April 23 opening day for the Uptown Mt. Lebanon Farmers’ Market, with the Clearview Common area filled with booths featuring environmentally friendly products and information. The location represented a move from previous years in Mt. Lebanon Park.
“I think it worked out well,” Lawler-Morycz said. “I’ve always wanted to do some sort of change to the event, and a lot of people walk up here on Saturdays. So I think it gets a lot more of that foot traffic.”
Plenty of folks showed up to check out the variety of vendors set up along Washington Road for the farmers’ market, which is from 9 a.m. to noon each Saturday through Nov. 19.
“We’re able to pair two very sustainable events,” environmental team member Kathy Hrabovsky said while tending to the organization’s booth near the Clearview Common fountain. Lebo Green, as the team also is known, was encouraging local residents to sign up the Mt. Lebanon Energy and Water Camel Project.
In 2013, the Mt. Lebanon Environmental Sustainability Board – Hrabovsky was serving as president at the time – finished third in Pennsylvania American Water’s Community Investment Challenge for the concept, receiving a grant to implement it.
“The idea is that we have a difficult time reaching 35,000 residents in Mt. Lebanon, so this is more or less a marketing campaign to bring energy, water and waste conservation to as many Mt. Lebanon residents as possible,” Hrabovsky said.
The project is similar to a popular fundraising activity in which groups place plastic flamingos in yards to celebrate special occasions.
“If a family will agree to save energy, water or waste in some way, we will place a herd of camels in their yard,” Hrabovsky explained. Photos of the yards, sans addresses, appear on the Energy Camels Facebook page, and the hope is that neighbors ask about the cardboard display, which in turn can start dialogue about conservation and lead to more families hosting camels.
Meanwhile, the Earth Day celebration hosted chickens.
Mark Mortimer, a Mt. Lebanon resident whose family has a dozen of the birds – they’re all egg-laying hens – at home, brought five of them to Saturday’s event.
“We see this as an opportunity to educate people about raising chickens,” he said. “You would be surprised at the questions that we get: ‘How are the eggs produced? I thought you needed to have a rooster to get eggs,’ and things like that. You have to go back to high school Biology 101.
“It’s not like I knew, getting into this whole thing,” he admitted.
His family used to live in a community to the south that wasn’t all that accommodating for the avocation.
“You could not have chickens in Peters Township unless you had 10 acres or more,” Mortimer said. “We moved to Mt. Lebanon three years ago. There were no ordinances at the time. That’s when we decided.”
Also helping the cause was a relative who raised smaller breeds of chickens known as bantams.
“He sent us some,” Mortimer explained, “and that got us into the chicken game.”
The birds are prolific.
“Bantams lay about a hundred eggs a year, and the others lay about 200 to 250,” he said, noting an advantage for people who live near him: “We supply the neighborhood.”