Merry May at the Co-Op

Autumn greetings to all of you in the Flame Tree Community!

It's just the start of May and already the days are getting shorter, the chill is in the air and (allegedly) the Austi seal has started haunting the headlands. Fingers crossed for some whale sightings soon, to compensate for the shortening days.

On the topic of Autumn:

Harvest Festival
On Sunday May 15, Wollongong Council is hosting its Annual Harvest Festival. The festival will take place from 11am-3pm at Osborne Park on Cliff Road in Wollongong (opposite Belmore Basin).

This event is a community festival to celebrate local food production, backyard food growing and sustainable food production and consumption along with a range of market stalls to fit the theme. Your favourite food co-op - the FAMOUS FLAME TREE - will be hosting a stall. Come along and see us there, and bring your family and friends.

See more in the Events tab of our blog.

Volunteering at the Co-Op
In April we put out a call for volunteers to help out with running shifts at the co-op. We had a great response, and a huge THANK YOU to all of you who put up your hands to help out. Several new volunteers attended Lizzie's training session, and yet more teamed up to learn "on the job" with friends and family as mentors. Welcome everyone to the volunteer community, you are truly the heart and soul of our lovely enterprise!

Lots of people reading this blog may come along to the store, stock up on healthy local organic products, enjoy the ambiance, take advantage of the friendly laid-back atmosphere, (occasionally! wait patiently while the checkout operator fumbles through the idiosyncratic product list - D for Dark Chocolate Licorice OY!) and leave unawares that the whole well-oiled machine runs completely on 100% green volunteer power.

Our lovely co-op is a rare beast - many other co-ops rely on paid staff, but so far we've been able to keep this wonderful community enterprise going by the combined efforts of the marvelous local community. But we always need more help! Even with our new recruits, we still struggle at times to fill the monthly roster, so please put up your hand if you'd like to help.

Maybe you can't offer a regular shift at the co-op? No matter, there are myriad other tasks to be done, where your ideas, energy and contributions would be most welcome. In addition to the day-to-day shop volunteering, once per month we need people to help out with a deep clean, restock and re-organize of the store. Signs need to be made, gardens need weeding, our store co-ordinator Mariel has a HUGE to-do list for folks with DYI/maintenance/building skills and enthusiasm. Or maybe you're an events impresario? Last year's events committee are resting on their laurels, and this year find themselves traveling the Americas/ completing arts degrees/ wrangling 2 year-olds. Or maybe you can help out in some other way - accounting, insurance, ordering. Please let us know if there's anything anything you can do to offer to help our favorite store keep humming along.  Reply to us here at this email address if you can help out in any way, for any amount of time. It all adds up.

Veg Boxes
Members of the co-op can pre-order a mixed box of local, organically (not certified) vegetables via the co-op. Boxes are grown and provided by the Dapto Community Farm. For just $30, the boxes offer a mix of seasonal vegetables. As we head into a shorter growing season, the number of boxes we can offer may reduce, so be sure to avoid disappointment by pre-ordering your box. To order, call in to the co-op and pre-pay. The boxes are delivered to the co-op every Thursday, usually around 12:00 pm. Don't forget to bring your own container for the veges, the Dapto farm folk need to recoup their waxed boxes for the next delivery.

The contents always vary, one of the joys of eating seasonally. But for an example: the last few weeks they've included things like young cos and red oakleaf lettuce, spring onions, baby tomatoes, baby carrots, crunchy radishes, leeks, silverbeet, new pumpkin, rhubarb, and, last week, spectacularly! mine included a choko!.

Autumn Soups and Treats
So as we head into the cooler season, in my household we've been headed into the beans and pulses section of our pantry - in the last week, we've eaten dhal (featuring puy lentils): my Mum's veggie soup (featuring split peas, barley, red beans, lentils, various contents of the Dapto box including !!!choko!!!); lots of rain-fed rice, and, a recipe invented after chatting with a co-op shopper - "risotto" made with pearl barley instead of rice, and flavored with silver-beet and nutmeg, topped with parmesan cheese YUM.

The co-op stocks all of the ingredients you need, but even better still,  chances are you'll pick up a great recipe idea and / or get to share your favorite one too, all while you shop, save money, support your local community, catch up with friends, and just generally have a warm and fuzzy community experience instead of a BLEEP! at the self-checkout of a chain supermarket. (And a parking ticket from the council admins).

We HEART the co-op!

Happy Fall Y'all!