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Article published Sep 4, 2007

Green living  

Fair raises awareness about global issues

By RUSS ZIMMER

Advocate Reporter

 

JOHNSTOWN -- More than 500 people, including Ohio First Lady Frances Strickland, filtered through a Johnstown organic farm Monday to learn and share knowledge about living in balance with the environment.

 

The Ohio Green Living Fayre featured about 40 vendors, selling fabrics and food and raising awareness about global issues, folk music and a straw-bale privy, constructed by event organizers and volunteers in the days before the event.

 

Frances Strickland, wife of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, was impressed with the gathering's inaugural year.

 

"It's a place where people who are conscientious about their health and their environment can come and get more ideas," she said outside the Flying J Farm on Van Fossen Road.

 

The first couple of Ohio always has been health-conscious and a recycling household, but Strickland said she learned about many new products and methods during the Labor Day festivities.

 

"I'm convinced we have to be thinking this way if we want our planet to be able to sustain the wear and tear," she said.

 

Annie Warmke, a business owner and farmer from Philo and one of the event's organizers, said the purpose of the event was to illustrate the truth about green living, a term that includes renewable energy, local and healthy foods, wellness and natural healing and alternative building methods.

 

Green living is not as difficult or uncomfortable as it has been portrayed, she said.

 

The effects of simply monitoring where your food and products come from can help avoid dangerous situations, such as the alarm over tainted spinach in 2006 or the pet food recall earlier this year.

 

"People are thinking about it more. ... We've had a lot of scares," Warmke said.

 

The presence of Strickland shows people in power are paying attention, but Warmke said she was more concerned about persuading the 500 to 1,000 people expected at the event to adopt some new personal policies.

 

"If we can get those people to go out and make one change and tell their neighbors, then there's some hope," she said.

 

She said whether the event will return will depend on the results of surveys given to attendees as well as the financial feasibility of a 2008 fair, spelled in the Old English fashion to symbolize the back-to-basics approach.

 

Admission was $5 per person for the event, and proceeds raised will go toward the Ohio Ecological Farm Association and other organizations that support green living.

 

The event attracted mostly like-minded people who were there to shop for organic foods or attend workshops on a number of topics, such as alternative energy sources, healthy eating and making organic cheese.

 

Alesha Lewers, from the Columbus area, said changing eating habits can begin simply by looking more closely at the ingredients and origin of what you are digesting.

 

"We've switched our whole diet to organic," she said of her family.

 

Her 14-month-old daughter, Ally, has been raised on homemade baby food, which comes from vegetables grown in their garden, Lewers said.

 

While Lewers was browsing the wares, others were trying to rally support for causes, such as fighting global warming.

 

Noelle Janka, the southeast Ohio organizer for National Environmental Trust, said she was having plenty of success recruiting attendees to pledge to contact an elected official and share their concerns about global warming.

 

"I'm getting the First Lady to write a letter for me," she said.

 

Janka said seeing someone as influential as Strickland mingling at a grassroots environmental function was another indication sentiment in the nation is turning toward addressing large-scale ecological problems.

 

"Three years ago, I think people would have just thrown tomatoes and laughed at me," she said about her organizing efforts.