Maybe Mother Nature forgot it was festival day.

When the GreenToppers’ Earth Day festival started Friday morning at DUC South Lawn, gray clouds took up the sky. Attendees perused from booth to booth, walking over mushy grass to see flowers for sale or sample organic cookies.

GreenTopper Jim Coby, a junior from Guntersville, Ala., pitched the idea for the festival in February as a means to promote the GreenToppers. GreenToppers is a new campus organization promoting sustainability, or environmental responsibility. Speakers offered alternative environmentally friendly lifestyle changes and call for action. Those with booths promoted alternative energy or foods.

The official Earth Day was created in 1970 and is observed on April 22. The GreenToppers moved their event back because of a sustainability conference at Eastern Kentucky University that several GreenToppers were attending.

Chances of rain weren’t high according to Coby’s check of weather services, but showers would have been a hassle, requiring organizers to move booths against the Preston Center and push the stage, which would support bands, poets and other speakers, including Provost Barbara Burch. Then there was an issue of attendance, with the wind’s chilliness and field’s squishiness possibly discouraging passers-by to join the fun.

But no worries were necessary.

“Is it going to make me hate the Earth that it was cloudy on this festival day?” Coby said. “No, things went darn good.”

After few gloomy hours, the sun popped out, causing chills to give way to playing Hacky Sack and dancing.

On the lawn, Lexington freshman Taylor Weatherford displayed his Mercedes, which he rigged to run on vegetable oil.

“I’m not doing this to save the world specifically, but anything little difference I can make doesn’t hurt anything,” Weatherford said, adding that he thought the festival was great for raising environmental awareness.

On stage, Assistant English Professor Wes Berry read a speech highlighting environmental issues of global warming, desertification and pollution, and the need for environmental education.

Burch echoed Berry’s call, and said she would like to make sustainability part of general education requirements.

“Every student needs some understanding,” she said.

The GreenToppers’ signs facing Tate Page drew Elizabeth Bolger, a senior from Hendersonville, Tenn., to the activities.

She doesn’t usually celebrate Earth Day, though she makes efforts to conserve water and recycle.

But the education major could possibly use conservation information to teach her future pupils, Bolger said. She might be able to decorate her classroom with plants from the Horticulture Club booth.

The festival was different from other pro-environment events Bolger had seen.

“A lot of the time when people say, ‘Save the Earth,’ it seems like a cry, but this seems happy,” Bolger said. “These are reasonable alternatives to things we do in everyday life.”

Reach Corey Paul at features@wkuherald.com.