The loud, one-of-a-kind St. Patrick's Day celebration rolling through Vermont's Chittenden County was hard to miss.
Friday was the 30th annual St. Patrick's Day mixer parade from S.D. Ireland.
Because the construction contractor has Ireland in its name, the company puts shamrocks on its big concrete mixers, making them a colorful way to celebrate March 17.
More than 20 of those vehicles drove through Chittenden County Friday afternoon, including up the famous Church Street Marketplace in Burlington.
The spectacle always draws cheers and waves from spectators, and the company uses the event to raise money for a good cause.
Corporate sponsorships for the trucks, which tend to stay on the mixers for several months, raise money to support the work of breast cancer researchers at the University of Vermont medical center.
"If people like myself and other people that fundraise are passionate about it, they're 10 times as passionate about what they do," Kim Ireland of the S.D. Ireland Cancer Research Fund said in reference to the UVM researchers. "So I really am confident that ultimately there will be a cure, and along the way, much better treatments."
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Ireland said this year’s mixer parade brought in $125,000 for research, bringing the total the foundation has raised to more than $4.2-million.
