Harvest Times Oct

ober

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17Harvest Co-op’s

It has been a month of great member involvement with the Special Member Meeting and the September “Meet n’ Greet” dates. Thank you to all who came out and voted at the meeting and/or took the time to come to one of our humble Co-op stores to chat with me. I heard quite a bit of wonderful and diverse opinions about how we should proceed with decisions concerning the future of Harvest.

Originally, I was going to write this article about the sixth cooperative principle, cooperation among cooperatives. I would still like to give this topic a nod because I think it is important. It’s easy to cite how many cooperative businesses we deal with as vendors. Equal Exchange, Katalyst Kombucha, Organic Valley, Cabot, Frontier, Once Again, Alvarado Street Bakery, and Blue Diamond are just a few of the brands we proudly sell and support. We are now members of the Greater Boston Chamber of Cooperatives and deal with great local cooperatives such as Red Sun Press. These are all relationships we enjoy and believe in. But we don’t often speak about the cooperatives work to help us out. Equal Exchange has offered us a loan to help us through difficult times and National Co+op Grocers has lent us $50k as well. NCG is giving us aid through the use of one of their development advisors (at no charge) to help us. Co-ops around New England and the country have shared their experience and resources to help us develop our own policies and practices. Those are just small ways other co-ops have come to our aid.

This past month I attended the NCG Fall Meeting where general managers from co-ops around the country meet to network and learn about what each other are doing, share stories and best practices, and work to find ways to improve our co-ops. The meeting ended with a great discussion on how food co-ops can work together even more to strengthen our financial position and offer all our members the best possible prices in this very competitive market. Truly, we are stronger together. It may take some time to fully realize the potential but we are considering what it might take to combine our resources to lower the costs of basic systems that all food co-ops must duplicate in our stores such as financial systems, human resource systems, and marketing resources. There really isn’t much to report yet as this was a very high level discussion and we need to dig into the details of what it might look like and the viability of such proposals but I love to see us all working together to remain relevant in this quickly changing society.

While we all figure out the best ways to differentiate Harvest from other grocery shopping options available to our community the Co-op needs to increase its sales. Yes, we will always ask you to support the Co-op through your shopping, and we truly appreciate all you do to keep the Co-op open. Let us know what prevents you from doing more shopping at Harvest. Are there items you regularly buy elsewhere that we should consider carrying? Are you having good and positive experiences in our stores? One thing that would help more than just about anything is for you to bring your friends, coworkers, and family to shop at the Co-op. Help us bring in new members. Share the things you love about the Co-op with everyone.

One of the hot topics that was spoken about in great depth during my meet and greets is about product selection in our stores. Many people want us to continue carrying (and increase the amount of) conventional produce and foods to help keep the prices down for our shoppers, especially those having their own financial difficulties. Many more want to see the Co-op really set ourselves apart by making our product standards stricter and healthier by eliminating conventional food and specializing in local, organic, and natural foods. There are benefits to both and it isn’t easy to find ways to meet the needs and desires of both groups of members when we have such small stores compared to the big retailers. This is something we will need to determine soon and I would love to hear more opinions on this topic (feel free to email me your thoughts, bpeat@harvest.coop).

I was hired as the new general manager because of my passion for co-ops, my belief in the fact that our staff and members are our biggest assets, and that I strive for great communication and transparency. All things we need to be successful during these trying times. I truly believe that Boston and Cambridge represent some of the strongest communities in our country and that a cooperatively run food store is something that can be a shining light during a time that has such a contentious political and social climate. The Co-op represents a place where people of diverse opinions and views can come together and democratically run on organization that represents something we can all agree on. Good food. We are a community. We are the Co-op. We are stronger together.

I hope to see you at the Annual Meeting on the 25th!

– Brian Peat

A publication for members and shoppers at Harvest Co-op Markets

Vendors of the Month - Boston Honey Companyby Anna Yudin“Harvest coop was the first market we started selling wholesale honey to back in the late nineties.”I met Andy Reseska, the founder, owner, and chief apiarist of Boston Honey Company, several years ago when I wrote an article about his company for Boston Local Food Festival.“Anna, it has been several years since we last spoke and yes, things are always changing in the Bee world. Currently we are managing over 2700 colonies of bees. All our bees now spend the winter in Southeast Georgia with our employees where they pollinate blueberries, make honey as well as raising more colonies that we sell to other beekeepers in the Northeast. We are also running bees up along the Canadian border in upstate New York for the summer months. Our son Evan is managing our store at the Boston Public Market.”We had a great event in Harvest Co-op recently where our customers were able to try BHC products. I met Addie (or Adelaide), Andy’s wife, there – an amazing woman who works with Andy. So when I asked Andy why he thinks Boston Honey Company is so successful, his answer wasn’t a surprise to me: “My Wife!! Adelaide!!When I first stumbled into beekeeping in the mid 90’s, I told my wife that I wanted to go full time into bees. She supported my crazy Idea.Commercial Beekeeping is very intense both physically

and mentally. There are good times when the bees are healthy, looking good and making honey and then there are

the bad times when colonies are dying and the sleepless nights worrying about the bees. Adelaide is always there to keep us on track.”Today BHC continues to grow.“Honesty, integrity, transparency these words describe how we as a family business conduct ourselves in producing, marketing and selling a product that our customers value.All Massachusetts “local honey” is not produced equally, we are seeing new honey brands and their producers marketing honey as being local when in fact it is not. I have been in this for 17 years commercially and I know from experience what it takes to produce a crop of Honey and what real Massachusetts honey tastes like. All our honey products are produced by us and our bees and are clearly labeled from Georgia, New York or Massachusetts.”Harvest Co-op has a long relationship with Boston Honey Company. “Harvest coop was the first market we started selling wholesale honey to back in the late nineties. Back then Local Honey was not readily available in the Cambridge area and the staff loved the fact that we actually kept Bees and were just not honey packers.”Andy shared the recipe with me many years ago – and I still use it: “The recipe for a honey sports drink that we have been making for our son who is a runner for years. The recipe was developed by a university researcher and is better than sports drinks.”

Honey/lemon sports drink:7 1/2 cups water1/4 cup fresh lemon juice1/2 cup BHC local honey1/2 t saltDissolve honey into 2 cups of warm water combine with remaining water, lemon juice and salt.”  

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SideHill Farm“We love working with Harvest Coop because we feel we have a shared mission in supporting the health of the community on many different levels.”SideHill Farm is located at 1830 feet (Mount Monadnock) - possibly the highest elevation working farm in the whole state. As they used to say: “This is our little piece of big sky country, where we are blessed to live and farm and make delicious yogurt.”Ivy Donovan has lived nearly his whole life on this farm. “My father came down out of Maine in the forties and bought this land. This is good potato land. Cool nights make good potatoes. It was 800 acres then. My father didn’t want neighbors. But I had five brothers and three sisters. We pretty much got rid of the big rocks. As a kid all we had was that Farmall. After we’d plant, we’d go through the fields with that old Farmall and a stone boat. Any of the real big rocks, we’d take a round pointed shovel and a chain and a crowbar. You know, a guy learned more from that than he realized! You look over a situation, you’ve got to find a corner to get the chain around, place the tractor just right… You could bust your head against that rock all day if you wanted, but if you do it right you can get it out!”Ivy and his wife Cinni took over from Ivy’s father in 1987, and beginning with 200 lbs of seed, gradually converted the entire farm to organic production.In 2012, only 4 acres were still in potatoes, and the vast majority of the acreage had been returned to grass, making it a perfect farm to convert to a grass-based dairy.As if Ivy could see the future, when interviewed in 2006 for an article in NOFA’s journal The Natural Farmer, he had this to say: “If I was a younger man I’d get into organic dairying. Milking 50 head is the right size operation. You can do well at that. Or selling raw milk. What you got to watch is not to take on too much, unless you are the kind of person who can manage people… It

isn’t the money, they have to want the lifestyle.”Today, SideHill Farm has grown into 225 acres of certified organic pastures and hayfields, with a herd of nearly 80 grass-fed Normande and Jersey cows that produce delicious raw milk.

“Our favorite kind of yogurt is one with live cultures, one made from milk from grass-fed cows fed on organic pastures, and one that comes from right here in Massachusetts! Fresh and local and happy grass-fed cows - that’s what we recommend looking for when buying yogurt.”

Farming on this small scale permits SideHill Farm to focus on health — not just of their customers and cows, but of soils, crops, the local working rural landscape, and the robust biological and human community within which we all thrive.“We love working with Harvest Coop because we feel we have a shared mission in supporting the health of the community on many different levels. We define our community as our cows, our crew, our customers, the landscape we live in - all the way down to the wild animals and soil microbes who support us. We try to do our part in supporting the health of all those community members as best we can. Harvest Coop has a similar holistic view - community is not just people who shop at the Coop, but the surrounding community, fairness for customers and producers, jobs and prosperity, and environmental responsibility. Harvest Coop is looking after the health of the community on a variety of levels too, and we love supporting businesses with such an inclusive, holistic view!”

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Harvest Co-op Markets www.harvest.coop

580 Mass Ave., Cambridge, MA617-661-1580

3815 Washington St., Jamaica Plain, MA617-405-5300

A Principal Sponsor

BVS thanks Harvest Co-op for 22 years of sponsorship of our Veg Festival!

Presented by

BostonVeg.org617-424-8846

■ Free food sampling ■ Speakers■ Free parking ■ Chefs■ Shopping specials ■ Kids’ center

1350 Tremont Street, Boston, MA(Roxbury Crossing/Orange Line T)

Saturday, Oct. 21 andSunday, Oct. 22, 2017

Boston Veg Food Fest22nd Annual