Website back up, phone line to be activated soon

The website is back up and on line!

To all of you who have been calling in on our message phone, thank you very much! You’ll be pleased to know that the phone for our volunteer center should be ready on Nov. 12, so you’ll be able to call in and talk to a real person (Evan Daigneault, most likely) after that.

Website issues

The word from our webmaster is that the website for the Fairbanks Community Cooperative Market is on a server that is undergoing attack; the site will be down until either the server can protect itself or we can find a new server. In the meantime, we will try to post the resources there to the blog, and upload a mirror site.

Addendum 11/4/09: This is our push month for raising $100,000 in membership equity, (a most awkward time to have website problems); so please bring your capital investment in to our volunteer center/office at 542 Fourth Avenue, Suite 100 B, in downtown Fairbanks. Call 457-1023 or e-mail info@fairbankscoop.org

Thank you!

Community sustainability meeting

Suzy Fenner of SCANFairbanks and Mike & Ritchie Musick are holding a meeting on community sustainability:

November 4th, 6:00 – 8:00 pm Wednesday evening at the Noel Library Auditorium

There will be a presentation by Ritchie and Mike Musick on The Natural Step for Communities, discussion afterwards, and a second presentation and discussion at 7:00 pm on food security and sustainable agriculture.

Contact: Suzy Fenner, SCANFairbanks
(Sustainable Community Action Network for Fairbanks — advocating for economic, environmental, and social sustainability) (907) 479-2345, polarsolar@gmail.com

Dessert Auction Updates!

2nd Annual Fairbanks Food Co-op Dessert Auction

Help us create our food co-op and get some great desserts for the holidays!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Morris Thompson Convention Center

6:15 to 6:45 – Dessert Drop Off

(More times to be announced)

$10 free will donation at the door

There will be membership and t-shirt tables.

 

Essay on Sustainable Agriculture

for SARE New Voices Contest
December, 2007

I didn’t grow up on a farm.  When I was young, I never learned how to fix a screen door let alone a tractor.   I didn’t know which end of a seed to plant in the ground.  If you had told me twenty years ago that I would own the farthest north certified organic farm in the country, I would have told you that you must be crazy.

I come from a long line of Jewish tailors who never ventured too far from the city.  My connections with agriculture were like many kids growing up in suburban America – with the pictures of fields of grain on cereal boxes or occasional trips to the “country” to visit an apple orchard or to see goats and rabbits at a petting zoo.   But my parents always had a garden we always liked to eat and we liked to eat good fresh food.  This is how I came to agriculture – through gardening.  Through getting back to that connection with where your food comes from and acting on it.  I wanted that feeling of looking down a row of crops and feeling that connection with the plants and soil and the thousands of years of farmers and gardeners before me – food growers.

It took me a while to get into farming.  It didn’t come until my mid-thirties, when after many years of having a garden, I quit my day job and followed the dream of many back-to-the land folks before me. I had no idea of what I was doing, but I expanded the garden, bought a rototiller and Elliot Coleman’s “The New Organic Grower”, and started to make a go of it as a market farmer.  It certainly hasn’t been easy, especially since we live in interior Alaska square in the middle of agricultural zone 1.  There is very little historical farmland where we live.  Our farm was literally carved out of the Alaska wilderness with a chainsaw and bulldozer – hardly a soft footprint on the land.  But we justified the destruction of 10 acres of our forest with the belief that having a farm and feeding people was, in the end, a good thing for the community.  After all, wasn’t that what all farmers had originally done?  Also by farming organically, we hoped we were insuring a healthy environment for any wildlife that used the farm, for ourselves and our workers, and for those who ate our produce.  The demand for quality local produce is high, and despite our growing pains as a farm, we are still able to stay afloat with a lot of hard work, and all of our savings.  After 10 years, we have a healthy farm and an increasingly successful business.

Since I come from this new movement of market gardeners turned farmer, my models for success and role models to seek advice from have been organic farmers many with similar experience as I but with more years under their belt.  We have learned the appropriate models for ecologically sound agriculture and the goals for our farm are the same as the goals for many farms like ours across the country – to minimize off-farm inputs while maintaining high soil fertility, to produce high quality and healthy produce, and maintain a profitable business.

We think about sustainability a lot in Alaska, however most of the discussion focuses on natural fish and wildlife populations and their relation to subsistence versus commercial harvest.  There is little talk about sustainable agriculture, but there should be.  Although one’s vision of Alaska might be one of a hunter alone on the tundra, we get most of our food like the rest of America – from large supermarkets run by huge corporations.  If the average piece of food travels approximately 1500 miles from producer to consumer in the rest of the country, it travels much farther to us in Alaska.  For this reason, and many others, we should be concerned about sustainability on a local and community scale.

If our state seems extreme, it is but a microcosm of the country as a whole.  We need to look within our own communities for inputs to agriculture and other resources.  Our model for farming does follow a community approach.  Eating locally is not just a buzzword for marketing – although that is very effective – but it also should be the way we do business.  “Thinking globally and acting locally” is not only the right thing to do for the earth, it is the only economical thing to do.  With the cost of fuel rising ever higher coupled with high shipping costs, we have to think very carefully what it is we import.  Looking at ways to improve the soil, create energy, and market crops must be local in order for us to make a living and feel as though we’re living our lives for the betterment of our community.

Small-scale and locally marketed agriculture should not be just a fringe or niche economy. By showing that we can make a living while growing healthy crops by ecologically sound methods we will make ourselves assets in our local economies by encouraging both new farmers and intelligent agriculture.   It will continue to cost more for food, but we cannot keep going down the path of large scale commodity agriculture transported huge distances or we will be paying a higher and higher price for the wrong reasons.

I can now fix a screen door, sometimes fix my tractor and plant seeds right side up.  If the son of a long line of Jewish tailors can carve out a niche in small scale agriculture, then I’m optimistic that this growing movement of community-centered agriculture can keep gaining momentum.  We need to invest in community agriculture – it is at the core of sustainability.

Mike Emers
Rosie Creek Farm
Ester, Alaska

Health & Wellness meeting notes

First Health and Wellness Eduction Committee Meeting:

Thank you all who made it to this meeting in spite of the slippery roads!

Last Wednesday we held our first Health and Wellness Education Committee at our downtown volunteer center. We had a great turnout with 11 folks interested excited and enthusiastic about educating our community about getting and staying healthier.

We had a great group of folks with interests varying from natural child birth to cooking organic and vegan food to holistic health care and teas.

Many different ideas were shared including classes on healthy and economical cooking, a lecture series, finding good articles to share on our blog site, and starting a reference library for our co-op.

What we decided on as a start was to show a food and health related film. Several were suggested such as Food Inc. and Eating Alaska.

We will be meeting again next Wednesday at 6 pm (that’s Nov. 4) in our volunteer center with the goal of choosing a movie, a venue, and a date. In the meantime we will be checking out what films and venues are available and thinking about what we want to do next.

Health and Wellness Education Committee

Please come to the Health and Wellness Education Committee’s first meeting:

6 PM Wednesday October 28th

FCCM Volunteer Center
542-4th Suite 100B
(This is beneath the Veterans Affairs office. Go in the door to the right of the Vet office and down the stairs. The door will be unlocked until 6:45)

Join us for our first Health and Wellness Education Committee meeting. Even before our store is open we can begin to serve our members by providing health education and information to the community. We need your help in planning what sort of activities and things we can do to encourage and support a healthy and well Fairbanks.

For more information, please contact Sharon Alden.

Board Meeting Minutes October 6, 2009

Fairbanks Community Cooperative Market (FCCM)

Board Meeting Minutes

October 6, 2009, 5:30 pm

Before the business meeting  a question and answer session was held with Andy and John Bachner, owners of the “Foodland” property. This helped to nail down some of the monthly operational costs we can expect if we lease a portion of the property.

1. Meeting Called to Order by Hans Geier at 5:30 pm.  Present: Morgan Macchione, Sharon Alden, Mary Christensen, Mike Emers, Hans Geier, Evan Daigneault, Robert Leach

Quorum: Yes

2. Minutes from the last meeting were read and CHANGED. Sharon Alden moved to change the minutes to read that Board Seats “A” through “E” expire in 2011 and

Board Seats ”F” through “I” expire in 2010.  Morgan Macchione seconded the motion. The motion was approved and passed.

3. Committee Reports:

Communications/Outreach – Chair: Mary Christensen reported that the Pancake Breakfast was a success with $2800 raised, a VISTA volunteer, Evan Daigneault,  has been hired and is currently training to assist with the membership drive, the volunteer office has been established, newspaper ads contracted, as well as Facebook and TV.

Operations/Store Design Committees – Mary Christensen reported that operations cost analysis are underway, a book on how to write a business plan for grocery stores has been ordered, and communication with the Co-op Development Center in Minnesota established with the intent of possibly contracting a store design consultant. A joint meeting with the two committees is being planned to work out and assign tasks.

Finance Committee – Hans Geier reported that he has begun the application process for Coop500’s “sprout” loan program. The business plan is necessary to begin the loan application process. Hans also reported that he has acquired grant funding to assist with our co-op development process through his work with the University.

4. Mary Christensen and Sharon Alden led the board in sharing our individual visions for our food co-op. They are summarized as follows:

Robert Leach – Focus on the store central with the objective of providing a market for local producers in the long term, but a focus on the function of our grocery store in the short term.

Mike Emers – to be a focal point for good healthy food in Fairbanks, a catalyst, a meeting place for long term thinking, soil, earth, more producers, a lot more people making a living in farming, organic is incredibly important, when we source outside of Alaska we should know exactly were it is coming from – all kinds of good food for the community.

Evan Daigneault feels that we should focus on meat and vegetables, access to all types of local meat, coffee stand and most importantly – a salad bar

Hans Geier envisions opening a store and operating a successful retail outlet for local goods as well as other healthy products. He envisions a consumer friendly business that takes care of its members.

Mary Christensen described a 6000 square feet facility with 1500 in storage and 1000 for a coffee and sandwich bar – with a plan for expansion in two to three years with food our members want to buy that includes: organic, natural, bulk, local veges, nonlocal veges, meat from our own neighborhood, a cheese island, ethnic foods, white bread and pilot bread and REAL bread, macaroni and other staples, vegan, junk and gourmet food. In other words – Yummy food

Morgan Macchione spoke of the importance of staples to her busy family life and feels that dairy is important plus a coffee shop and deli that has convenience foods.

Sharon Alden would like to see as much local food as possible, lots of staples and good variety.

5. The Board then worked out a time line with the goal of opening between April and June of 2010.

Week of October 11 – 16 – Appointments to be set with environmental, structural and mechanical engineers.

Saturday, October 24^th – Board retreat – Possible trip to Delta before that.

October – begin cost analysis for business plan starting with a joint meeting of the Operations and Store Design Committees, continue membership drive,

Completion of Business Plan by November 15.

Applications for Financing sent to financial institutions no later than December 1

January – begin renovations if financing acquired.

January – open the store general manager position for applicants

February – hire general manager and begin process of readying the store for business

6. Sharon Alden offered to organize a committee structure

7. Next Meeting was set for Monday, October 12^th from 5:30 to 7 pm

8. Robert Leach Moved to adjourn the meeting and Mary Christensen seconded. The motion was passed.

Sustainable Community Movements

Richard Seifert, an energy and housing specialist with the Cooperative Extension Service, will be giving a talk on sustainable community movements (“Connecting University Research to Communities”), Wednesday, Oct. 21, from 6:30 to 8 pm at Noel Wien Library (1215 Cowles in Fairbanks). This talk is part of the Community Energy Forum, sponsored by the Alaska Center for Energy & Power, the Renewable Energy Alaska Project, and the Extension Service.

Seifert will discuss community gardens, home weatherization, renewable energy, education, and local organizations that are working to build sustainable communities.

Seifert is a member of the Alaska Energy Network. See also his website, Sustain Alaska.

Meeting Calendar – October 21 – 27

Wednesday, October 21 Store Design Committee Let’s Talk Layout! 6 pm 542 4th Ave. Suite 100 B Board Retreat Thursday, October 22 4 to 9 pm 542 4th Ave. Suite 100 B Tuesday, October 27 Communications/Outreach Committee 5:30 pm 542 rth Ave. Suite 100 B