Well, summer is officially here!
First, we want to send a shout-out to RUPCO for inviting us to the Beacon Sloop Club’s Annual Strawberry Festival! We had a great time and met a lot of new people! Below is a picture of the solar-powered ferris wheel and windmill in front of our booth, provided by the Sloop Club. It drew a lot of faces over to our area!
A couple of weeks ago we attended an event put on by the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce. They are always sending out news of various members and hosting ribbon cuttings for new members, new businesses or anniversaries! This particular event was held at the Jewish Community Center of Dutchess County, on Grand Avenue in Poughkeepsie.
The ribbon cutting was honoring the first day of the Pri HaEmek Bounty of the Valley Harvest Share Program, a Hazon CSA. A Hazon is an organization dedicated to creating healthy and sustainable communities in the Jewish world. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, which is a cooperative agreement between a farmer and a group of people who agree to pre-purchase a share of the farmer’s produce for an entire season. The CSA gives members access to fresh, local, organic produce at competitive prices, while helping to preserve farmland and build community.
Our interest was piqued when we saw that a religious community was doing something “green.” The members of the Pri HaEmek were overwhelmingly friendly! Since the Sacred Earth Leadership Forum in February, a spiritual approach to environmentalism has been of particular interest to some of us at Vanguard. Now, on July 1st, the forum is culminating at The Sacred Earth Festival, to be held at the Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum in Poughkeepsie. It will be a great day for the family to enjoy being outside, next to the Hudson River. It is also in the same neighborhood as the Walkway Over the Hudson, Poughkeepsie’s Historic Train Station, Waryus Park and Little Little Italy.
Finally, we want to leave you with a little Q & A posted by the American Solar Energy Society called Why I Went Solar. This week featured a retired couple from Alexandria, Virginia: Bob and Anne Lewis. It seems their main goal was to reduce their expenses now that they are on fixed incomes. Like many of the people we meet, Bob had been interested in solar energy for awhile, possibly fascinated with the technology, but found that the cost was just not right: “I had been looking into solar for approximately seven years before everything fell into place. When the opportunity arose financially and realistically, I was ready to do it.”
That’s a story we hear often! Now that the technology is better, the prices are lower, and the incentives are high, more and more people are realizing the POWER of the SUN!
Happy Summer!
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