Marion church draws crowd for community yard sale
Aug 15, 2021
Shoppers peruse the yard sale wares. Photos by: Morgan Beard
A church volunteer grills up scallops, burgers and dogs
The sale drew a sizable crowd
Left to right: George and Jean Linzee, and Carol Anne Chan sell veggies from the Silvershell Inn garden
Get ‘em while they’re hot!
MARION — Out with the old and in with the new!
The First Congregational Church of Marion held a community yard sale on Sunday, Aug. 15 in the church parking lot.
Members of the church were there to sell baked goods, grilled scallops and barbecue, and donated items, while members of the community could rent a booth for $10 to sell things of their own. Penny Pinchers’, the church thrift store, was also open during the event.
“Everyone got a chance to clean out their garages,” said Janet Reinhart, President of the First Congregational Church of Marion.
The event takes the place of the Church’s usual Summer Fair, its biggest fundraiser of the year which has been cancelled the past two years because of the pandemic.
“It was great for everyone to be able to get out from under covid,” she said.
Some of the church booth’s quickest selling, big-ticket items included reproduction Chinese ceramic lamps and bowls, according to Reinhart.
George and Jean Linzee, who are members of the church and owners of the Silvershell Inn in Marion, sold corn, zucchini, summer squash and other vegetables from their garden. Linzee said it was the first time they had done their own farm stand.
“We started the garden with the purpose of growing food for the homeless,” he said. “We just felt with everything going on we should learn how to grow food.”
Linzee said they donated 900 tomatoes to House of Hope in New Bedford last year and were planning to give them any vegetables that didn’t sell at the farm stand.
Tri-Town Against Racism Co-Founder Tangi Thomas was also at the yard sale raising money for a charitable cause.
Thomas sold donated items for a dollar each with proceeds going towards Tangi’s Book Drive, which aims to fill local school libraries with diverse books.
Thomas said she was close to reaching her goal of collecting 25 new books for each Tri-Town school to start the new school year. After about an hour at the yard sale, she had already raised about $150 more for the drive.
“We’re very close, we’ve got a lot of books in hand,” she said, adding that “a lot of people gave a little bit extra” when they bought from her booth.
