Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. – Aldo Leopold
SEEDLING SALE SAVE THE DATE
Despite the sudden two-month-late onset of winter, spring is actually just around the corner! And that means it's getting close to our favorite event of the year - our 11th Annual Spring Seedling Sale!
Mark your calendars for Saturday, May 19th to come by the co-op to pick up all the seedlings you need to start your growing season right.
Meet your farmers and get some locally grown organic seedlings specific for the unique growing climate of the Nevada high desert around Reno.
Along with everyone's favorite garden starters, we will have local non-profits, arts and crafts, maybe a few ruminants to pet, and a crowd of the best people in and around Reno!
We're starting a little earlier this year - at 7:30AM, to coincide with our new opening hours, and we will be finishing at noon.
And get ready for the official grand opening of the Food Shed, our new cafe on the second floor of the co-op! We know, it's already been open for a couple weeks and we've been filling your bellies with delicious organic fresh food already, but this will be the big event, where we have the cafe fully built, vetted out, and with a complete and final menu to blow your mind and short circuit some taste buds!
ESTILL RANCH
One of the regional direct ranches we work with made on the front page of NPR!
Bare Ranch supplies us with amazing certified organic pastured eggs and have quickly become our best selling eggs, thanks to the rotational pastureland the chickens live on year round.
But this feature is actually about their work changing the way clothing is made. They are a large ranch with a big focus on sheep, both for food and for fiber. The clothing industry is only just starting to move the dial on what it means to be sustainable, and even local, and this is where the change begins.
CAFE NEW HOURS
Thank you all for showing us such wonderful support as we opened our long-awaited upstairs cafe! As many of you already know, we have been closing at 2:30 PM every day, but that is soon to change!
Beginning March 6th, we will be keeping the cafe open the whole time the store is open! That's right, from 7:30AM to 9:00PM, you can come upstairs, relax, grab a croissant or a made to order sandwich and enjoy the late winter snowstorms out the window :)
CHLORPYRIFOS
Many people in the natural and organic food movement know and are actively fighting against the company Monsanto and their ubiquitous use of glyphosate in what seems to be an attempt to cover all the food we eat with a thin layer of herbicides.
But Monsanto is not the only player in the game, and glyphosate is actually far from the worst chemical we put on our food and ingest on a daily basis. While there are many contenders for "worst poison we choose to spray on our food," (what kind of world do we live in?) chlorpyrifos has to be near the top of the list.
This lesser known chemical is an organophosphate (like sarin gas), which Wikipedia describes in three increasingly terrifying sentences: "The United States Environmental Protection Agency lists organophosphates as very highly acutely toxic to bees, wildlife, and humans. Recent studies suggest a possible link to adverse effects in the neurobehavioral development of fetuses and children, even at very low levels of exposure. Organophosphates are widely used as solvents, plasticizers, and EP additives."
In other words, they're poisonous to animals. They're especially poisonous to children. And we use them a lot.
Chlorpyrifos had already been banned for residential use in the USA for more than a decade when in 2015 the EPA proposed a ban on this insecticide, citing again the highly documented research on toxicity at small doses in children, fetuses, and pregnant women. Seems like a no brainer, right?
Well, things work slowly in the federal government and by the time the EPA was ready to ban chlorpyrifos, it was 2017 and there was a new administrator (Scott Pruitt) who suddenly declared that no, the EPA would not ban this toxic chemical because agribusiness needs it. He was asked if this decision had anything to do with Dow, the maker of chlorpyrifos, and his office responded: "We have had no meetings with Dow on this topic."
Of course, you all know how this ends - there was a Freedom of Information Request (actually, a few of them), and he was forced to disclose that yes, he met privately with the CEO of Dow just two days before he struck down the ban.
But, as always, there's good news. Doing the right thing might take longer than it seems like it should, and there are always roadblocks, but it's hard to defend a chemical that disables children for very long. The state of Hawaii is already considering a permanent ban on this chemical, a lawsuit against the EPA is trying to force the agency to acknowledge research and implement the ban, and research shows that switching to organic food for just five days can reduce the level of detectable organophosphates in your body!
FOLK KOMBUCHA
Kombucha has become the most popular drink in our store (and many others) despite being a relatively little known drink. It's a simple brew, made from tea, water, and sugar fermented with a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) to create a bubbly, slightly vinegar-y palate pleaser full of probiotics.
We get two questions all the time around this effervescent fermented drink. "What is kombucha?" from people who haven't yet tried it, and "Where can I get some more?" from people who have. A close third is this: "Which one is your best kombucha?"
Luckily, that's a question with an easy answer: FOLK KOMBUCHA. They're brewed locally up at Lake Tahoe using organic tea, organic sugar, and slow brewed for the best flavor.
Because sustainability matters, and single use glass containers are wasteful to create and ship (even if they're recycled), FOLK offers their kombucha on tap. That's right, you can bring your own bottle and refill it as many times as you'd like without wasting any packaging!
They have flavors on constant rotation so you can always try something new - check out their flagship brews here. We've relocated their kombucha taps a few times while we get our cafe situated, and we're happy to say they have a great home right up in our new cafe so you can enjoy a delicious drink with breakfast or lunch anytime, or bring some home for later!
HDFI FARM INCUBATOR
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
Please share this with your community or sign up here to stay in the loop!
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can or
