Want a free GBCFC keyring shopping bag made from recycled plastic? Want to help our food hub DROPP get a new freezer? You know our member drive is going on right now right? Here's how it works: For the month of October, any member-owner that pays $50 or more into their equity will get one of these bags for free. They come in black, orange, red, and green.
OCTOBER 3 - OCTOBER 31st
TURKEY & UNTURKEY SIGN UPS BEGIN ON NOVEMBER 1st.
email
grocwell@greatbasinfood.coop for more info <3
Local pumpkins are now BUY ONE GET ONE FREE! We have orange and white jack-o-lantern pumkins in medium and JUMBO, from Reno's very own Avanzino Farms. Fresh bins of these beauties will be delivered a few times a week from now through the end of October. [Free pumpkin must be of equal or lesser mass.]
Just in from Custom Gardens - Organic Hawaiian Baby Ginger! Ray and Virginia Johnson grow this amazing root in a micro-climate smack dab where you'd least expect it - Silver Springs NV.
Baby ginger's main appeal is its tenderness and ease of use, as there is no tough skin to deal with. It also has a slightly milder taste than traditional ginger, so if you've never tried it, this might be your gateway into the world of ginger! Custom Gardens is our only local producer of this amazing crop, and we have it for a limited time. Look for it in our produce department as well as a seasonal local ingredient in our Juice Bar offerings.
We are also excited to be using these Organic Mixed Bell Peppers from Custom Gardens in the Foodshed Cafe's burrito veggie mix!
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Ever wonder why our cafe is called the FOODSHED? Its a word [more about it here] used to describe a geographic region from which a food supply flows. We define the bounds of our foodshed by our watershed - which of course is the geographic region fed by a certain natural water system - like the Truckee River, Carson River and Walker River - these waterways are the true lifeblood for any farm or ranch in the high desert. We thought FOODSHED was a great name for a cafe because it makes you think about where all that food is coming from, and that your choices in daily life have the power to directly affect the farmers, ranchers and products they provide. One of our local producers, Holley Family Farms in Dayton NV, has been supplying all the sausage used in our breakfast burritos as well as in the sausage & kale soup. We asked Rob Holley to tell us a bit about how their pigs are raised and he got back to us with the special details:
Diet: Nearly all of our feed consists of recycled or waste products, and the diet contains no soy, GMO or commercial pelleted feed. All year long, our pigs are fed brewers grain (primarily barley, but occasionally rye or wheat) from several local craft breweries. We also feed rejected fig bars (too long/short/dry/wet...) from Natures Bakery. During the summer, our pigs get all of the organic produce that's too ugly to sell or left over, the weeds that we pull in the garden, and surplus apples/pears from family trees. Occasionally, if breweries don't generate the needed grain, we supplement with non-GMO rolled corn. The pigs love it, and it completes the amino acids that are deficient in the brewers grains.
Breeding: Our butcher pigs are not true heritage breeds, but a cross of various heritage and some commercial breeds. We currently have a Berkshire boar and a Duroc-cross boar, and used a Hereford boar for years. Sows are Berkshire, Hereford, Mangalitsa, Large Black, and some commercial/heritage crosses. Generally, we look for a "type" - a pig that does well in the heat, is ok in the cold (no pigs really like the mid-winter cold), has good mothering instincts, and is gentle. Boars must be gentle with the sows. All pigs must be good around people - gentleness is critical. Grouchy, high-strung pigs are not only dangerous, but they require more feed and are not as tender as docile, content pigs. Our butcher once told us that our pigs are happy pigs and easy to work with! This is not generally the case with many of the other pigs that they see.
We are proud to be serving food raised with such love and attention in our cafe every day, not just from the Holleys but from a number of other operations like Albaugh Ranch and First Fruits in Fallon, and Palomino Valley and New Harvest in Reno. Nowhere else in town [yet] will you find this type of dedication to continuously featuring as many truly locally sourced, certified organic, and nutrient-dense menu items. Thanks to folks like the Holleys, the Foodshed Cafe is 'turning the dial' one delicious local sausage burrito at a time.
DROPP stands for Distributors of Regional & Organic Produce & Products. DROPP is a food hub and has it's own website located at www.dropp.coop - A food hub, as defined by the USDA, is “a centrally located facility with a business management structure facilitating the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products.”
DROPP is one example of how the CO-OP has adjusted to meet the changing customer needs in our area. As early as 2010, the CO-OP began developing and distributing lists of local and regional foods. This list was sent weekly to interested member-owners and chefs. Everyone went out of their way to come pick up right after the farmers delivered.
From this early activity, the CO-OP initiated a more formal DROPP process in 2012 by launching its first website to conduct local listing and local purchasing. This initiative supports the GBCFC is an integral part of the purpose of the CO-OP: The mission/vision ofDROPP is “to promote our local food system and serve as a sustainable cooperative model for access to wholesome food. Our food hub offers transparency for our food and its environmental, social, and economic impacts in order to help build a strong local food system that aligns with the goals and needs of growers, producers, and customers.
Under the leadership of Nicole Sallaberry,DROPP, a department of the GBCFC, is working hard to consistently fulfill that mission despite the challenges of this business. These challenges include having access to sufficient quantities of high-quality LOCAL food that our customers want in sufficient quantity and quality. Growers need to know how to run a business, plant in succession, harvest, pack, and transport for “wholesale success”. Also challenging is keeping up with the changing buying habits of local chefs. With almost 50 repeat customers, DROPP has to remain flexible to meet the customer needs.
The largest customer forDROPP is the CO-OP itself. In 2017, DROPP brought in over $300,000 in local products to the store, which was then sold to member-owners and other customers who shop at the CO-OP. Each buyer from the GBCFC orders twice per week through DROPP. Our product buying priority pyramid requires that we buy local first and then source from non-local distributors.
To meet the growing needs of our customer base,DROPP opened a local warehouse to handle the increased amount of products we manage. DROPP also led an initiative to provide training, through partnership with Family Farmed, to over 100 growers teaching them how to provide profitable, safe, delicious nutrient dense food that works for the wholesale customers this past June.
A unique set of customers forDROPP are large camps from the Burning Man Festival. Several attendees to this summer event want the same high quality products we supply to our members/customers. The amount of products we supply for Burning Man customers increases every year. This year, for example, there was a 70% volume increase over 2017. It’s a huge scale jump for the DROPP team. It has helped DROPP learn and find the systems that we will need to adopt in order to serve more of our local population year round. The extra business is a blessing as its the height of our local growing season and our local producers move a significant volume of their products to the camps.
Dropp has been successful and is focused on meeting the changing needs of our customers to remain successful in the future.
Earstin Whitten – Board Chair
In support of the 2018 member drive, David Benke has written and co-produced a series about the co-op band. While practicing for our upcoming benefit show aimed to help raise enough equity for a freezer for our local food hub DROPP, tensions run high as our band leader tries to control the room.
We might work on some old tunes [maybe some new ones too]. But its been a while, the band is a bit rusty, and the band leader runs a tight ship! Stay tuned to see if this band stays together long enough for the fundraiser.
Meet 'DOWN TO EARTH' - Reno's bicycle composting company!
Sustainable food systems require that we make thoughtful decisions about not only what we consume and how it was produced, but also about what we discard and how it is handled.
Down To Earth Composting (formerly the Reno Rot Riders) is especially passionate about organic “waste”, because this portion of our “waste” stream has SO much more potential than just contributing to global warming while rotting in a landfill. Instead of contributing to a growing problem, sending food scraps and yard trimmings through the composting process is a step towards a solution. Community composting returns the vitamins, minerals, carbon, and other nutrients in our organic “waste” to the earth (where they came from to start with) and improves our local soil so that it can grow more (local!) food.
Since not everyone has a backyard compost pile (or a friend with chickens or pigs) the Down To Earth team offers weekly, bike-powered food-waste pickup for residents in central Reno. Members separate their organic scraps from the rest of their trash, put it in their Down To Earth bucket, and set their buckets out once a week. Down To Earth’s pedallers stop by, swap our your full bucket for a clean one, and make sure those organics end up in a compost pile, where they begin their journey back into our local soils (and contribute to a healthier community in the process).
Reno is growing and these guys are right behind them, working hard to pick up the “slack” (AKA food waste) and help our community grow in a greener, healthier direction.
Happy Composting!
Garrett Menghini
Owner / Director of Growth
Down To Earth Composting
Ducky Goes Up: Health & Happiness with Down Syndrome
A feature-length movie to be distributed among the Down syndrome community, focusing on food and exercise while having fun outdoors. Check out the kickstarter here to help: http://kck.st/2A3CI5B
EVERYONE IS WELCOME! Open every day from 8am-9pm
Our mailing address is:
240 Court St Reno, NV 89501
775.324.6133
info@greatbasinfood.coop
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