cooperatives

Out and About with Fermentation Fest

News flash!

Fermentation Fest event guides are hot off the press and heading out to exciting venues throughout Wisconsin. This 24-pg, can’t-miss guide is bubbling with interesting articles, art, class listings and city map—all the ingredients necessary for two weekends of culture convergence at Fermentation Fest. You don’t want to miss the Fest or the guide!

I’ve got to say helping promote Fermentation Fest is one of my favorite projects of the year. It’s a melding of interests, from food and art, to agriculture and travel. This means artists, chefs, poets, foodies, farmers, cheesemakers, brewers, musicians, performers, and so many more people all come together for an autumnal celebration of good life. I’m very proud to design for it, very honored to be part of it.

In the weeks ahead I’ll be delivering guides to various venues (I love promoting my clients!). Check back to this page often for an updated listing of where you can find them. And don’t forget my social media because I’m also big on featuring interesting venues.

Here’s where I’ve been so far. Yep, all the way to northern Wisconsin!

#GetYourFermFestGuide2019Here

Listed in order of cities are venues where you can find Fermentation Fest guides. If you’re not in these areas, check out the Fermentation Fest website or join the mailing list.

Stevens Point Area Co-op, Stevens Point
Cafe Coco, Washburn
South Shore Brewery, Washburn
Downtown Grocery, Wausau

See you at Fermentation Fest in October!

Transitioning from Summer to Autumn

Eat Local Month and Fermentation FestIt’s two weeks into September and my mind is finally beginning to let go of summer. It’s been a slow transition but as autumn reveals its golden glories I can’t help getting excited. And here are two happenings that make autumn great!

September is Eat Local Month

Harvests everywhere are at their peak and whether you glean from gardens, food co-ops, farmers markets or CSAs, the abundance of local food is a celebration in itself. These days, while elbow-deep in canning tomatoes, I’ve been listing to podcasts of Deep Roots Radio, with host Sylvia Burgos Toftness. Sylvia makes a great point when she says “every single food dollar we spend either protects or degrades the environment, produces foods with high nutrition or empty calories, and either helps pay a fair wage or keeps farm workers among the working poor.”

So yes, this September eat local. Hey, eat local all year long!

Fermentation Fest is in October

On that note, if you’re interested in learning to preserve this local food, plan ahead for next month’s Fermentation Fest. The Fermentation Fest team and I recently put out a beautiful event guide and you can now find it in Madison and Milwaukee area coffee shops and food co-ops. It details more than 60 classes and the great food and art events happening in Reedsburg.

Happy autumn everyone!

October is Co-op Month!

Willy Street Co-op, Madison, WI

My favorite grocery store is Willy Street Co-op in Madison. At first I liked it because of its hip, earthy scene and ever-smiling faces. Then, as my food consciousness grew, I appreciated it for its quality products and local providers. Now, after years of membership, I proudly continue being part of an owner-operated, community-minded organization that positively impacts Wisconsin, both economically and environmentally.

That’s a co-op for you.

October is National Cooperative Month and this year’s theme is “Cooperatives Build.” A cooperative is a business or organization that is owned and operated jointly by its members, all of whom share the profits and have a voice in how the organization is run. You can find co-ops in every industry and throughout the world. In Wisconsin alone, there are more than 700 cooperatives serving three million member-owners.

What makes cooperatives so special?

Seven principles, actually. These were established by the International Cooperative Alliance and are considered standards for the cooperative movement:

  1. Voluntary and Open Membership
  2. Democratic Member Control
  3. Member Economic Participation
  4. Autonomy and Independence
  5. Education, Training and Information
  6. Co-operation among Co-operatives
  7. Concern for Community

Simply put, cooperatives are a bringing together of people for the good of all—an economic democracy, if you will. Cooperatives create a buying and selling power that often isn’t available to people individually. Cooperatives sustain family businesses, fair trade, communities and natural resources.

National Co-op Month is a nod to the thousands of cooperatives across the U.S., from food stores, to credit unions, to insurance mutuals, and everything in between.

Thanks, co-ops. You’ve got my nod as well!

 

How You Can Preserve the Good Food Movement

Garlic cloves hanging in old barnI just can’t tell you how good our Fachwerk barn smells right now! Last week we harvested garlic and now one of the hand-hewn beams of our barn is fully lined with this earthy delight. If former lives were such a thing, I’m sure I was an Italian maiden and this brick barn of mine presided over an old-world villa.

Don’tcha think?

Like everything else from our garden, this garlic is so-o-o-o much more flavorful than anything you buy in the grocery store. If there’s a disadvantage to raising your own food, it’s that you become acutely aware of just how tasteless and removed from its natural state our retail food has become. Call me a snob (or an empty-nester who can now afford to spend more), but more times than not I’ll go out of my way to shop at Willy Street Cooperative in Madison, and other such stores, simply because its food is organic and/or locally-grown. Think fresh, flavorful and healthy. (Unfortunately, I know I’m using more time and fuel — it’s not easy being green.)

Have you ever read Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé? I first ran into this book while working for the Youth Conservation Corp in the late 1970s. Such ecological food practices were revolutionary back then and even though some of her theories have since been refuted, Lappé is still credited to introducing the active food movement we know today. What I find interesting is that 40 years later, her forewarnings of an unsustainable food system are now here to haunt us. And she was right. Today we have declining health, depleted soils, and a problem of affordably producing quality food, simply because the good food movement is not as much of American life as it should be.

In his article Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers, Bren Smith, a farmer himself, offers suggestions for preserving the good food movement. He writes of political agendas, like supporting affordable health care and shifting subsidies from factory farms to family farms. But guess what, there are things we can do at the grassroots level that are equally important for supporting good food—simple things that not only benefit ourselves but society as a whole.

Here are some ideas:

  • Be willing to spend more for better food, and ultimately better health.
  • Support small farms instead of factory farms—research the farm you support, maybe even take a drive to the country to see it.
  • Buy a CSA share from a farm near you.
  • Support food cooperatives, become an owner for greater discounts.
  • If you don’t have access to grocery stores that carry local and organic food, ask your grocer to do so. Do the same with the restaurants you patronize.
  • Become a farmer yourself, grow a garden.
  • Speak up! Write about it. Talk about it on social media. Make people aware of what you and others are doing with good food.