Over three hundred people attended the fourth annual Earth Day Every Day Fair, held on Saturday April 26 at Middleton Community Church. This free family-friendly community event is an environmental sustainability fair and electric vehicle show. Bob’s Your Uncle provided live music, and the Henry Vilas Zoo gave two shows with live animals. The Middleton Library Bookmobile was there with environmental books, and Antsy Pants Face Paints decorated kids with animals and flowers. There were free drawings throughout the day; the grand prize was an EGO electric blower. (Gasoline-powered leaf blowers are exceptionally polluting.) Compadres Mexican Restaurant and Momma Meg’s Ice Cream provided food, and there was fresh-popped popcorn and a large youth bake sale to raise money for an upcoming mission trip.
There were lots of activities for children, including making their own solar-powered toy race cars, bubbles and sidewalk chalk, spin art with MG&E, a fish craft with the Madison Children’s Museum, wind turbine experiments with Wisconsin Energy Institute, solar experiments with Sauk Prairie Solar Schools, energy experiments with KEEP (Wisconsin’s K-12 Energy Education Program), a recycling sort with the University League, and more.
There were about a dozen owner-shown electric vehicles, electric yard equipment, and two dozen exhibitors. Besides those mentioned above, organizations and businesses who exhibited included Madison Natural Lawn, All Energy Solar, Solarshare Co-op, Middleton Sustainability Committee, RoundTrip, Madison Area Food Pantry Gardens, Pheasant Branch Conservancy, Aldo Leopold Center, Dane County Wildlife Center, RENEW Wisconsin, Focus on Energy, Sustain Dane, Dane County Office of Energy & Climate Change, Faiths Connect for Climate Action, 350 Wisconsin, Third Act, and Citizens Climate Lobby. The was also an induction cooking demo and eco-items sale.
We heard several great stories at the fair. One person told us that coming to our Earth Day Fair last year was what made her decide to join our church. Another women told us that seeing the cooking demo at our fair in a previous year inspired her to get an induction stove (which is better for one’s health and the environment than a gas stove).
This year we passed out booklets that one of our church members made covering frequently asked questions about electric cars, and those prompted a number of good conversations with fair-goers who are considering switching from polluting gasoline vehicles to clean transportation. Many people are surprised to learn that EV owners don’t take their cars out to chargers to “fill them up” like one does at gas stations – you can charge your own car at home just like you charge your cell phone or laptop.
If you’d like to come to Madison, we invite you to come to our next Earth Day Every Day Fair in late April 2026!