To celebrate Arbor Day, the City of Moorpark hosted the “Moorpark Earth Festival and Community Yard Sale”.
The festival consisted of many different booths selling new and used items, along with a variety of Earth-friendly materials.
City of Moorpark Event Coordinator Victoria Peterson explained the motivation for conducting this event.
“The Moorpark Earth Festival really came about because we had an event called the ‘Community Yard Sale’ and we had an event that the Parks Department did for an Arbor Day celebration,” Peterson explained. “We decided to combine them both and do an eco-friendly Earth based event to celebrate ‘reuse, reduce, recycle.’”
The festival was hosted at Arroyo Vista Community Park in the Lot B parking lot. It started at 9 a.m. and ended at 1 p.m.
Each person was required to wear a mask and there was hand sanitizer provided at the entrance.
Different types of items were sold throughout the lot; new and used books, toys, furniture and much more.
To celebrate Arbor Day, fertile soil was given out, as well as oil kits and plant giveaways.
Tiffany Gibson, resident of Moorpark, brought her family to generously help sell toys from a local store that had to close down due to COVID-19. They bought many different toys from the store, and then set up a booth to sell them all.
“We were fortunate enough to be able to keep our jobs during the pandemic, but other people weren’t as fortunate, so we wanted to help them out in this rough time,” Gibson shared.
Other attendees decided to sell at a booth just to pursue their hobbies.
Kathy Somers, from Newbury Park, shared how she started to make arranged moss decorations just for herself, but then realized she could sell them.
“I just made so many different pieces and didn’t have anywhere to put them, so I thought, ‘Well, guess I’m starting a business,’” Somers shared. “It wasn’t my intention at all to sell them to the public.”
After visitors browsed throughout the rows of booths, they could then cool off with some shaved ice at “Tikiz Shaved Ice and Ice Cream” truck.
The Earth Festival was a very inclusive event that allowed all kinds of different creations to be shown to the community; whether it was handmade, vintage, or repurposed. It truly captured the importance of the process of ‘reuse, reduce, and recycle.’
The City of Moorpark plans to host more events this summer. To keep up with their latest events, visit City of Moorpark.
