ORANGE — School is back in session, and people who attend the 19th North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival in Orange this weekend can expect to learn something from eight presentations prepared by experts.
The presentations, slated for both days of the festival (Saturday and Sunday), will take place in the “Portal to the Future” area behind the main performance stage. The festival will be held at Forster’s Farm at 60 Chestnut Hill Road and the presentations will range in topic from backyard gardening and solar-powered transportation to the latest ideas in recycling.
Sunday’s noon presentation is “100 percent Renewable Energy in New England” by Benjamin S. Weil, an extension assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Weil plans to explain the possibilities of creating a grid with variable sources of power such as wind, solar, and small hydropower. He said it will be a future-oriented talk.
“In New England, our biggest demand is still heating. We’re going to have to switch to electricity if we want to be renewable,” he said. “The big take-away is we’re going to make our houses much more thermally energy efficient to drop the heating demand to something smaller so the electric grid can handle it.
“Even with climate change, it’s not like the cold goes away,” Weil, a building scientist, added.
He also said the Legislature is considering a bill that aims to require Massachusetts to get 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.
Saturday’s presentations are scheduled to begin at noon with Peter Niemi of Niemi’s Apiary in Athol, who will explain the lifecycle of the honeybee. At 1 p.m., John and Magda Gates of Gates HVACR in South Deerfield will talk about the “mini-split,” or air-source heat pump that offers energy-efficiency heating and cooling. The 2 p.m. presentation by Hughes Pack will highlight electric-assist bicycles and, at 3 p.m., gardener Kris Walter will share her expertise at building a home rainwater collection system that holds more than 400 gallons of water.
At 1 p.m., on Sunday, Kirby Lecy from J&K’s Good Thyme Farm in Ashburnham will talk about basics of backyard poultry keeping. Caro Roszell, of New Wendell Farm, practices “carbon farming” — growing food in a way that pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and deposits it into the soil to create more fertile land — and will deliver a 2 p.m. presentation.
The final presentation, at 3 p.m., is “Urine Diversion and Use as Fertilizer” by Kim Nace and Abe Noe-Hays from the Rich Earth Institute, an examination of converting human waste into fertilizer for farms.
A large-scale “urine diversion project” set up with the help of the Rich Earth Institute of Brattleboro, Vt. is part of the presentation. Attendees’ urine will be collected in specially retrofitted portable toilets for its use as a fertilizer. Between 1,000 to 1,200 gallons of urine are expected to be collected for what is called “peecycling.”
The presentations are organized by North Quabbin Energy, a community group focused on education about the social and environmental costs of current energy consumption patterns.