We’ve been hard at work envisioning and building the new Portal to the Future learning area for the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival, just a couple of weeks away, and we’re trying to get the word out as widely as we can about all the great things that you’ll be able to find there. Visit our full listing of presentations and mini-demonstrations here, or click here for a PDF poster with a schedule on the back.
You can learn about energy conservation and renewable sources of electricity, past, present, and future, from local DIY builders, a state-supported electric vehicle campaign, and presenters throughout both days.
There’s lots on the schedule about hand skills, gardening and food-growing and preserving tips, healthy and local living, and even urine diversion–the next frontier in sustainable use and reuse of resources!
In addition to learning all kinds of useful and fascinating things, you’ll be able to enjoy delicious locally-made (and largely locally-sourced) food from Kailash Kitchen (yum–momos!), Wheelhouse Farm Truck (back for a second great year), and Bart’s Homemade Ice Cream, including the world-famous (well, at least locally famous) garlic ice cream.
The real secret you’ll find out in the Portal is that the whole festival is really the “Portal to the Future”–that is, the kinds of knowledge that roots us all in place and community, with the skills to create and accomplish things for ourselves, are all around us at this great local event, helping us work toward the just and sustainable future we all hope for.
But that said, only the Portal has the garlic ice cream. If you’re coming to the festival, make sure look for us at the north end of the site, just beyond the main stage!