Category: Outdoors

Celebrating creations of all types at MakeIt Fest Nashua

MakeIt Labs is a makers’ space in downtown Nashua. On Saturday, June, 13, it will host MakeIt Fest, a celebration of maker culture. For many people, the terms “maker” or “maker space” bring a mental image of a group of young inventors with soldering irons building custom electronics in a basement somewhere. Brad Goodman thinks that is just a starting point; Making (with a capital M) is about getting drawn into learning skills that might not seem to have anything to do with each other at first glance.

Goodman, a member and director of MakeIt Labs and a coordinator for MakeIt Fest, said Making is about learning to imagine something that doesn’t exist, and then learning how to bring it into reality. “MakeitLab is a community makerspace,” he said. “We’re an all-volunteer organization, and we are basically a collective of artists, engineers, hobbyists, crafters, self-proclaimed mad scientists, and people who just like to learn things, create things and teach each other. We are a community first. We’re a building full of a lot of very cool toys, second, and we have everything from pottery studios to woodworking places to machine shops to robotics and electronics labs and a million other things. We do jewelry making, woodworking, and conventional arts and crafts.”

This weekend’s MakeIt event is about demonstrating a thirst for curiosity with a wider audience, Goodman said.

“What makes MakeIt Fest unlike most craft shows that you go to where the idea is that you come and you look at stuff that other people have done with the hope that you’ll buy something, is it’s just really more of a gathering of our members and other people in the community who are also makers and crafters and doers and it’s a chance for us to show off the kinds of stuff that we do. Really, the goal isn’t about, ‘Look at what I did; buy my stuff,” but, ‘Hey, this is the kind of stuff that we’re into and we’re just learning this too. Come join this movement. Are you interested in blacksmithing? Are you interested in woodworking? Do you not know how to weld? Do you want to learn these things? Well, this is the kind of stuff that we’re into doing and learning.’ It’s not just about inspiring people, but really giving them more of a tangible way to get started in this kind of stuff.”

MakeIt Fest will be more hands-on than many craft fairs or hobby shows, Goodman said.

“At last count, there will be about 46 different areas set up. There will be booths for makers — our members and even non-members who have their own side businesses — who do a lot of weird and creative things. A lot of [the spaces] are different things that MakeIt Labs does — showing off our woodworking, showing off pottery, showing off in general. People will be able to have a picture taken with our robot mascot and we will use a dye sublimation process to give you a mug with your picture with a robot on it. Or one of our lasers can take your name and a design and we’ll engrave your name on a key tag for you. So there’s like a lot of giveaway type things like that. Showing off our resource areas. Like I said, blacksmithing, woodworking. One guy, he bought an old school bus, turned it into a conversion van for his band to tour in. So that’ll be set up for people to come in and look at and explore.”

“We’ll have tours of our Lab and our machine shop,” Goodman said, “and drive around on our remote control couch. We’ll have our man-made kinetic sculptures, which are things like a four-wheeled bicycle that goes through roads, mud and water on display there. It’s a kind of a showcase for all the weird, wacky stuff that we do and the kind of stuff that is really attainable if you want to come to an organization like ours and learn about some of this stuff.”

“Our hope is that people come in and go, ‘Oh, wow, here’s a neat machine. If I only knew how to do that, there’s this cool thing that I really want to do.’ And then we’ll help them do that.”

MakeIt Fest 2026
When: Saturday, June 13, from noon to 4 p.m.
Where: MakeIt Labs, 25 Crown St., Nashua, 487-6218, makeitlabs.com.
More: There will be contests and raffles open to all attendees. Visit makeitfest.com

NH Audubon expands plant sale with Pollinator Festival

For most non-specialists, knowledge of pollinators begins and ends with honeybees. Honeybees are certainly important, said Diane DeLuca of New Hampshire Audubon.

“They do a lot of the pollinating of our agricultural crops and fruit trees and things like that. But the native pollinators include hundreds of species of native bees in New Hampshire. We’re still learning about the native bees in New Hampshire. … We have over 100 species of butterflies in New Hampshire and we’re still learning about those as well. So in terms of pollinators we’re talking about native bees, butterflies, flies, beetles and ants. The hummingbird is really the only bird that would probably be considered a pollinator in New Hampshire.”

For many years one of the missions of NH Audubon has been to educate the public about the importance of native species. Pollinators — species of animals that carry pollen from one plant to another, fertilizing them to produce the next generation of plants — are some of the most important of those native species, DeLuca said.

“For years we’ve been having a native plant sale,” she said, “where we’ve invited native plant nurseries to come and share their plants at New Hampshire Audubon. And in the last couple of years we’ve joined that with a spring craft fair. And so up until now there’s been the native plant sale outside, and the craft fair has been inside the building. But this year we’re expanding and having what we’re calling a Pollinator Fest. It will include native plant vendors and our spring crafters and a number of pollinator conservation organizations. New Hampshire Audubon will also give garden tours and have informational tables about pollinators and gardeners. The whole thing is going to take place outside in the fields near [NH Audubon’s] McClane Center. This will be our first Pollinator Festival, and we’re pretty excited.”

“There will be activities for families,” DeLuca said, “for children. There’s going to be a story hour with crafting for children, and the nature lab’s going to be open, and there will be an hour or two of an educational staff person sharing out the animals that we have. There will also be food trucks and live music as well.”

Different species of plant blossom throughout the year, DeLuca said, so it’s possible to see many different species of pollinators at different times of the year, but June is a particularly good time to pay attention to them.

“Our spring ephemerals — our early bloomers — many of the trees are blooming or even past bloom at this point, so it’s an important time of year for blooming. It’s also an important time of year for many of the pollinators. For instance, the bees are out and about right now because the queen bees are actually gathering food so they can lay eggs and raise young, and they’re going to be doing that underground for the most part. Some of them nest in like pithy stems or woody areas and stuff, but a lot of them are just nesting underground. So it is a really important time for many of the native pollinators.” This will provide an excellent opportunity for visitors to learn about some of the hundreds of area pollinators first-hand, she said.

NH Audubon Pollinator Festival
What: There will be native plants for sale, as well as a wide variety of handmade crafts by local artisans. Experts will be on hand to discuss pollination and native pollinator species.
When: Saturday, June 6, with a rain date of Sunday, June 7, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: NH Audubon McClane Center, 84 Silk Farm Road, Concord, 224-9909
Admission: free
More: nhaudubon.org/event/pollinator-fest-2026