By Layla Kalinen
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
READING, Vt. — Erika Fitzgibbons, owner of Kidding Around Farm, drives her four daughters, Claire, Nora, Sierra and Natalie, to the market once or twice a week to get fresh lemons for their lemonade stand, which raises money to help people in war-torn Ukraine.
Fitzgibbons said that when she lived in Windsor, they dreamed of having a small farm, where they could raise goats to produce milk and soap, grow vegetables and teach her daughters about subsistence farming and learning how to “do it yourself.”
“I’ve always wanted a farm and it’s something we’ve worked towards. We wanted to have a sustainable farm where we could live from our land,” Fitzgibbons explained.
Claire said they came up with the idea of selling lemonade in early summer. Since then, they have been open once or twice a week “to be announced,” mostly on the weekends.
“It was this summer, it was probably more like we started in May.” Claire said. “We do it at the top of our driveway.”
Sierra said she loves their goal of raising money to help impoverished and displaced Ukrainians.
“My favorite part is where I am raising money to donate to Ukraine,” she said. “We sell one cup of lemonade for a certain price or by donations and we sell brownies.”
Nora said patrons have been more than generous and that they have established a handful of regular customers.
“Our first sale was for a man who came over and I think he gave us like $5 or $6 and we were only charging $3 for the lemonade,” Nora said.
Claire said their business hours are semi-regular.
“Right now, it’s Saturdays and the first time we opened at three o’clock,” she said. “We sometimes do Wednesdays, Sundays and Saturdays and we typically open at noon and close by around three. We have raised $293 because we have a friend from Ukraine.”
Fitzgibbons explained that their idea came from a friend they met at the local greenhouse.
“They learned about the war on Ukraine from her and she did a little homeschooling lesson with them, and they did the Ukrainians painted eggs,” she said. “After having that experience and learning about it, they wanted to help somehow so, this is the idea that they came up with of how they could help.”
Nora said they decided to change their original goal of waiting until the end of summer to send in their donation, which they now send in smaller increments. She said time is of the essence.
“We’re gonna donate the money we have right now, as soon as we can, because we were going to wait until the end of the summer and try to raise $1,000. Then we realized that if we waited that long there might not be any more Ukraine,” Nora said.
Fitzgibbons said that they are going to be announcing their openings via Facebook for the Kidding Around Farm’s lemonade stand.
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