(Written by Syd)
This weekend, Olivia, Abigail and I headed down to Brattleboro, VT for the Strolling of the Heifers, the city’s annual cow parade and festival. On Friday evening the town hosted a gallery walk–all the shops stayed open late and there was music and dancing in the street. We set up a table and attracted passers-by with our gigantic green banner and shouts of “DO YOU CARE ABOUT CLEAN ENERGY?” As it turns out, a lot of people do care. We took some great pictures of Vermonters with our sign (see video below!). We hope this will let the gubernatorial candidates see just how important clean energy is in this election.
The next day was the main event–the Strolling of the Heifers. Area farmers brought their young cows into town to parade through the street, showing off flower garlands and fancy tags with names like “Mabel” and “Greg.”
Not all the cows were into the whole strolling thing. This little guy needed some encouragement.
The parade wasn’t just cows. There were antique tractors, girl scout troops and cheese-makers galore. We even got a free tomato plant from one float. A big improvement over Tootsie-pops, at least in my opinion. After the parade, we followed the crowd to the green expo–here we talked to some folks about sustainability projects across the region and considered entering a raffle for a free set of solar panels (and then we remembered that we are poor college students trying to eke out a living talking about clean energy.) Entergy, the company that owns and operates Vermont Yankee, had set up a tent and being the crazy rebels that we are, we snapped this photo:
Abigail infiltrates Entergy!
After the green expo, we wandered around the festival sampling Cabot cheese, petting cows, talking to Vermonters and generally scrounging for free stuff. It was a great way to kick off our summer campaign. Bunches of thanks to the great folks who signed up to be on our e-mail list or posed with our sign. You guys kick ass!
More coming sooooon!
Much love,
Syd
