ROCHESTER — Earth Day came a few days early this year.

On April 17 and 18, community members from all over Rochester took time out of their weekends to help clean the town’s streets.

The community cleanup event was put on by the Rochester Women’s Club, and club President Marsha Hartley said residents turned out this year “more than ever.”

“It really was a good year,” Hartley said. “We really had a lot of community help.”

Hartley said that beyond organizations like the Boy, Cub and Brownie Scouts, a large number of community members and families grabbed a trash bag and did their part.

“A neighborhood person would come up to me and say ‘I have 20 people who want to help clean up the neighborhood,’” Hartley said.

Hartley said she saw multiple groups of people on Sunday walking the streets with trash bags and helping clean up the roads.

One Rochester resident, Adam Cecil, was on a hike with his son last week, when they saw a tire in a river near the town’s police station.

He had no tools then to get the tire out of the water, but he and his family came back during the community cleanup and pulled the tire from the river with a rope and hook.

“It was heavy though, I’m telling you,” Cecil said.

Cecil said he’ll have to roll the tire up a hill to bring it near his car so it can be properly disposed of, but dragging the tire out of the water only took him about 15 minutes.

“I don’t get why Earth Day is just one day,” he said. “It should be every day.”

Hartley said that, after the cleanup, the roads in Rochester looked “so much nicer.”

“We just had so much help,” she said. “We’re all smiling about it.”