Common Ground Country Fair

May 25, 2008

The Maine Organic Farming and Gardeners Association website has a lot of

informative articles on its webpage. http://www.mofga.org Also, they are

sponsors of the Common Ground Country Fair that has been operating for 31 years.

celebrates its 32nd Common Ground Country Fair on September 19, 20 & 21, 2008,

in Unity, Maine. The Fair allows fairgoers to make connections with a rapidly

expanding base of organic farms in the state of Maine. Hundreds of vendors,

exhibitors and demonstrators, more than 1,000 volunteers, and roughly 50,000

fairgoers will gather to: share knowledge about sustainable living; eat

delicious, organic, Maine-grown food; buy and sell beautiful Maine crafts and

useful agricultural products; compete in various activities; dance; sing and

have a great time. "

Since I grew up in New England, I've always wanted to visit this awesome fair,

but I moved away in 1972, first to California, then to Minnesota. I now dream

of how wonderful it would be to organize such a fair in Minnesota. We certainly

have the vendors, exhibitors, and demonstrators in our state and in Wisconsin.

It could be a joint Minnesota/Wisconsin fair with organic, sustainable farmers,

vendors, and organizations. It could grow naturally beyond our trad foods

Swap & Shop events (but not instead of) and become an annual event to celebrate

local and regional organic, sustainable agriculture and the arts that are an

outgrowth of healthy community life in tune with nature. It's like a state or

county fair, except it's only organic, sustainable (meaning no big Ag). It's

like a Living Green Expo only it's a back-to-the-land celebration of natural

agriculture and not businesses that are in the " green-washing " business. It

also has some elements of a Weston A. Price conference only for our local

region, or the MREA annual energy fair in WI only for organic farming. See the

link above and learn more about the Common Ground Country Fair to see what I

mean.

So I'm throwing out this idea to those who know how to organize such an event in

the hopes that the seed will sprout.

R.

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