Released

Doctor says everything looks good and I should go back to normal activity but pay attention to my body and not overdo. Make up your mind.

Our cat is dead.

I mentioned in passing on Facebook how much I was liking our co-op veggies and Dan R. commented that he didnt’ think there was a functioning co-op in Eugene. My response: Oops.

There wasn’t. There is now. We’re now co-oping about 1/3 of our food, and will be increasing to about 2/3 once we get into the swing of things. If I manage to do what I want to do, we will get about 80% of our food from co-op within a couple months. The food is better. It is more local. It is less toxic.

One company said, “We haven’t had a local co-op ask for our products since the 1970’s.” Which is about when my parents were co-op-ing, and for similar reasons (more time than money, high food prices, a desire to eat better than retail would afford.)

If I manage to get a good price on fancy cheese, I will feel like I have won.

For an idea of the popularity of this creature I created… our first produce order ended up involving $1200+ of produce at wholesale prices, more than 20 boxes and something like 30+ people involved. I would not be surprised if we hit 30 boxes + 20 extra people who do non-boxed co-op produce (my produce orders tend to be $80-100 worth, the box only has $25 worth) this week.

We did a half steer last month. I would not be surprised if it was a whole steer this month.

The community it is building is priceless. If we need something to get across town, we know who might be going that way and get it there with the least extra gas. The efficiency of working this way is mind blowing.

And yet, it is a lot of work. I’m trying to structure everything so that I am not essential, that if I stopped doing any of it tomorrow it would carry on of its own momentum. There are far more buys going right now in our co-op than I am responsible for.