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2011 - the Year in Review
by Deana Dahl
Seasons Greetings from Gorge Winds Community Grocery! We (the steering committee) wish all of you a very happy and healthy New Year.
2011 has been an exciting year for us.
Our biggest news lately is the huge vote of support we received from the recent Gorge Soup event sponsored by Celilo restaurant. Laila Payne did an awesome job presenting our co-op project and we received $1,547.00 to support our efforts.
Our second annual Food Forum was a big success thanks to Margie Fickett’s planning efforts, especially with the indoor farmer’s market. We had a great turnout, including vendors from all over the gorge. Thank you to Petra Hanley for making and donating those beautiful floral center pieces, and to all the helping hands for a great event.
Other summertime events included the co-op garage sale at North Bonneville Gorge Days in July, and a very yummy member potluck at the North Bonneville park. We handed out brochures and talked with our neighbors at the Skamania Fair - thank you to those who helped staff our table.
Last spring we put on a Food Film Series and we plan to continue the tradition. If there are movies about food you would love to see, please let us know.
In May, Johanna Wyers and Deana Dahl presented information about the co-op at the Gorge Grown Food Forum in White Salmon. We also enjoyed another successful Seed Swap in April.
The steering committee has been busy over the last year working on our business plan with help from Diane Gasaway and Jan Boldt at NW Co-op Development. Lori Loranger has been networking with other co-ops, finishing up our bylaws and working on feasibility study. Johanna Wyers has provided invaluable technical support and assistance in designing our brochures and fliers for events. Caren Guldenzopf has given us a huge boost with her bookkeeping experience. Margie Fickett gave a presentation on the co-op to our local seniors, and promoted us relentlessly at area farmers markets. We continue to meet monthly and had the opportunity, thanks to Deana Dahl, to meet this month with Tom Wilde from Equal Exchange to learn more about what makes a co-op successful and how to raise capital.
A big thank you goes to Gorge Grown Food Network for giving us the tools to get the process started, NWCDC for their business planning support, WSU extension, especially Todd Murray for all his support for our annual food forum events. Also a special thanks to the Skamania
County Chamber of Commerce and City of North Bonneville for their support.
We want to thank all of our members for supporting us and all of you who have offered your support with your interest.
We are especially grateful to our generous volunteers – we have received thousands of dollars worth of professional design services, legal services, and web services.
We are very excited for 2012. Our goal is to offer online shopping and delivery options to help support a storefront. We are now at 45 members and getting closer to our goal of 100 members to open a store.
Please check out our website for updates at www.gorgewindscoop.org. While you're there, fill out the volunteer application - it's easy to do online and obligation free – we want to match volunteers to the tasks they enjoy, and have many hands to make the work light and fun.
What we truly need now are more members to join us in our efforts to make this dream a reality. Anything you can help with - data processing,
newsletter, networking, marketing, studies, research, event planning and support - is greatly appreciated.
Of course, the most important thing you can do is join us as an Owner of Gorge Winds Community Grocery! The price of a share is $150, payable in increments as low as $5 with 3 years to pay.
Co-op grocery stores are truly owned by the people – Owner shares are how we get the money to open a store; volunteer power keeps us going! Go Co-op!!
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Comfort Food for Winter Days
Thanks to Deana Dahl for these recipes:
Thai pumpkin soup
Mix:
32 oz broth
30 oz pumpkin, fresh cooked is best (smash so it is smooth ) I used hubbard and butternut
12 oz mango nectar (can substitute other juice)
Bring to a boil, cover and simmer 10 minutes.
Combine 1 cup of above pumpkin mixture with:
2/3 cup smooth peanut butter or almond butter
2 T. grated ginger
6 cloves minced garlic
and blend 'til smooth.
Return this peanut butter mixture to pot of pumpkin mixture, and add:
6 T. seasoned rice wine vinegar
8 T. chopped green onions
3/4 t. red pepper flakes
4 t. grated orange rind ( I never seem to have this)
Heat 3 minutes and garnish with cilantro.
Hearty Honey Wheat Bread
for bread machine
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp honey
1 cup water
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup all purpose white flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oats
2 tsp yeast
x^x^x^x^x^x^x^x^x^x^x^x^x
North Bonneville Community Gardens Move Forward
Margie Fickett, Gorge Winds Com-munity Grocery's representative for the North Bonneville garden project has been working with the North Bonneville community to help design and implement their one-acre community garden.
The city donated the land for the gardens earlier this year. Darlene Mills, a volunteer for the garden project and a GWCG co-op member, held an
ongoing indoor garage sale which brought in over $3,000 for the gardens.
This paid for the deer fencing, which has already been installed, and will pay for the raised beds and water lines. The raised beds will be ready for planting this spring.
Contact Jennifer McDonald at North Bonneville City Hall to sign up for a plot:
509-427-8182.
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When Will We Open?
By Lori Loranger
There is one obvious question which everyone asks about the co-op grocery: When will the store open? This is certainly a reasonable question, and seems like a straight forward one – for most businesses, it would be. But cooperatives are not like most businesses.
A regular business incorporates (perhaps as a single proprietor, partnership, or limited liability corporation), puts together a business plan, and takes it to the bank to seek funding. If the bank gives them the funding, they set about doing business, making a profit, and paying back the bank.
I support local, for-profit small businesses, and appreciate their contribution to our communities. But this is not what a co-op is.
Gorge Winds Community Grocery is incorporated as a not for profit consumer cooperative. This is not a charitable non-profit (like a 501-c3), but a business organized to serve its customers in a specific way.
Of course a business must “make money” to stay in business. But with a co-op, the goal is not to make a profit, but to use any money we make in supporting the co-op's goals – in this case, to make healthy local food available to our community at the lowest price possible.
Cooperatives are “capitalized” - that is, funded, by community members buying shares in the co-op. Throughout organizing and operating, co-ops depend on worker-owners giving volunteer hours. Many established co-ops, like Vancouver Food Co-op and Alberta Grocery Co-op in Portland, have worker-owner programs offering extra
benefits to owners who give their time working in the store.
The bottom line is that a grocery cooperative is dependent on
owners and volunteers, both to organize and to operate. Without community involvement, neither of those things happen. In order to leverage enough funds to open, we need 100 Owners. We have 45.
And so I ask you, our cooperative community – When will we open?
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Website: http://gorgewindscoop.org/ Contact us at: 509- 427-3664 or
info@gorgewindscoop.org
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