Mother Nature dropped a bit of rain on the fourth annual Ramona Earth Day Festival, but that didn’t stop participants from ing sustainability and environmental protection.
Hosted by Sustainable Ramona on Saturday, April 26 at Begent Ranch, the event covered a range of informational booths, speakers, dancers, musicians and artists who all had some ties to protecting the Earth as well as the well-being of humans and animals.
Mt. Woodson resident Sharon Callahan, who attended the festival with her husband, Dan Smothers, said they appreciated learning about plastics recycling and wildlife protection.
“It’s inspiring to me how many people attended and how many organizations are represented here,” Callahan said. “It’s a beautiful event. It’s nice to be with other people who care and are trying to protect our environment. Ramona is a beautiful place and we want it to stay that way.”
Even the musicians performing at the event — the Garden Variety Band, Time Bandits and Haywire Band — represented environmentalism and activism, she said. Other performers included the Ramona del Sol Folklorico Dancers, and art was displayed by 2Create Gallery, The Art Center of Ramona and artist Lyn Feudner.
One of the many organizations that shared information at the event was Solana Center for Environmental Innovation based in Encinitas.
Solana Center Environmental Educator Deanna Milton said the nonprofit offers education at schools, workshops and community events throughout San Diego County. Topics include composting, watershed protection and waste diversion from the landfill.
“We teach about composting food scraps and manure to keep organic resources out of the landfills and for watershed protection so manure doesn’t wash into rivers and cause algae blooms,” Milton said.
Milton and volunteers Glenn Younger and Master Composter Tammy Churchill brought a tub of soil filled with worms to demonstrate worm composting.
Composting by feeding scraps of food to worms is a great way to add organic matter to the soil, said Younger, who helped attendees sign up for the Solana Center’s newsletter with information about sustainable practices and events.
More information is available online at SolanaCenter.org.
Representatives of The Climate Reality Project San Diego Chapter encouraged attendees to sign postcards with information about legislative bills related to environmental protection. The organization was offering to mail postcards signed by local residents to California Assembly Member Carl DeMaio and state Sen. Brian Jones.
One postcard topic was on proposed state legislation – Senate Bill 684 and Assembly Bill 1243.
Cherry Robinson, a chapter chair for The Climate Reality Project, said both bills are being considered in the state Senate and Assembly right now.
These bills advocate for “charging the worst polluters for the damages caused by their pollution, … and primarily oil and gas industries would pay,” according to The Climate Reality Project representatives.
Robinson said the organization also teaches people about recycling and composting and educates city, county and state officials about local environmental issues.
For more information, go to CRPSD.org.
Diana Dapcevich, education and outreach coordinator for Avian Behavior International, brought Aldo the great horned owl to the Earth Day Festival to demonstrate the organization’s mission to promote bird conservation through education.
“Part of that is offering intimate encounters and experiences with a variety of birds,” Dapcevich said, while describing falconry experiences offered at its Escondido facility that has 40 birds. “People can come to meet these birds and fly them while they learn about them. They learn about the different ways birds fly, their adaptations and the importance they hold in their own habitats in the wild.”
The nonprofit also gives presentations at schools, libraries and senior living facilities to teach people about wild birds in their area, Dapcevich said.
“Our mission overall is connecting people to birds,” she said. “People can get involved by volunteering with us and being part of our conservation efforts.”
More information is available online at Avian-Behavior.org.
Oakes brought an activity for children so they could sort pictures of different types of food that chickens can and can’t eat.
“People can feed chickens with chicken feed but they can supplement that with food scraps,” Oakes said. “We made this activity for kids so they know chickens are nature’s recyclers. They can recycle up to 150 pounds of food waste per year.”
The Grange representatives also invited festival attendees to its monthly meetings held at 7 p.m. the first Tuesday each month at the Ramona Grange building, 215 Seventh St. More information is available online at RamonaGrange.org.
Ramona resident Rose Evans led a group of festival attendees in a Tai Chi exercise on the Begent Ranch lawn.
Tai Chi is connected to “energy medicine,” which is the flow of a person’s own energy to their health, Evans said.
The concept is related to meridians, which are pathways or channels through which vital energy, known as Qi, flows within the body, she said.
“Acupuncturists work with meridians, which are a pathway within the body that connects to your organs,” Evans said. “With energy medicine, practitioners work with acupressure along the same meridian lines as acupuncturists.”
Ramona resident Charlene Penner was at the festival to share information about edible wild plants. Her table was filled with plants such as horehound, which can be used as a cough suppressant; chickweed, used to reduce fevers and hot flashes; and sow thistle, which feeds the heart. Other plant varieties displayed included mustard, wood sorrel, stinging nettle, mallow and filaree.
Penner said she often adds fresh wild plants to salads, sandwiches and teas.
“I forage for plants that are edible just for my own food,” said Penner, who sources the plants from dense brush growing around 1 acre of her 4-acre property on Mt. Woodson. “I don’t buy tea and I don’t buy greens, but my diet is full of them.”
Penner said she only eats what she knows is safe and not poisonous by studying edible plants in books.
Animal welfare information was shared at the festival by Katie Quint, research director and eagle specialist at Wildlife Research Institute.
Quint advocated for natural solutions to rodent abatement such as mint balls and peppermint oils instead of rat poison. Raptors and other wildlife such as opossums are harmed when they eat mice and other rodents that have consumed rat poison, Quint said.
Since 1994, 300 cases of wildlife poisoning have been confirmed in the state by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife investigations lab, she said.
“All things are connected,” Quint said. “We have to make a cognizant decision on how we interact with this Earth.”
