Viroqua Food Co+op Blog

Do you ever wonder why it seems that we have no control over decisions that affect our quality of life in Vernon County? Come to a special 3 hour workshop with nationally recognized workshop leader and lecturer Paul Cienfuegos, and find out how Vernon County can take back local control through Community Rights Ordinances. 150 communities in eight states have passed or are in the process of passing Community Rights Ordinances that ban harmful but legal corporate activities such as factory farms/CAFOs, water withdrawal for bottling, fracking, mining, planting GMOs, and more. These communities are both conservative and liberal, rural and urban, small and large. Join us for this inspiring and timely talk about how other communities have stood up and stripped corporations of their so-called constitutional "rights", while ensuring the right of people to govern themselves locally.

As the new VFC Marketing Assistant, I wasn’t sure how to take full advantage of my one-day ticket to this year's 24th annual Organic Farming Conference (OFC). I struck it rich when attending a couple workshops based on Women in Farming and Agriculture. These knowledgeable presenters have actually written books on these subjects, so please see the resources listed at the end of this article.

You're invited! The VFC is celebrating the coming of spring and the arrival of local and organic seedlings in our greenhouse by putting on our Greenhouse Open House! Stop by the VFC on Saturday, April 27th from 11am-3pm to join in on the festivities!

Join us to cheer on your favorite local and cooperative producers!

The cooperatives represented were:

• Center Point Counseling Services Cooperative
  The first mental health cooperative in the Nation
• Fifth Season Cooperative
  Dedicated to building a local food system in the 7-Rivers Region
• Kickapoo Woods Cooperative
  Sustainable forestry services for Kickapoo Valley and surrounding watersheds
• Vernon Communications Cooperative
  Providing local telecommunications and promoting local economic development
• Wisconsin Grass-fed Beef Cooperative
  Committed to local production of high quality, sustainably raised beef for Wisconsin
• Threshold Care Circle Cooperative
  Educates individuals and families to care for their dead at home, empowering them to carry out a family-directed funeral, with or without the services of a funeral director.

This summer, the VFC and the McIntosh Memorial Library’s Adult Programming Committee are continuing their efforts to put on educational events about food and sustainable agriculture. In addition to the Farmstead Chef presentation on August 9th, there are a number of other educational events planned.

You don’t need to be a chef to be a great cook. Whether you’re an urban farmer, farmers’ market regular or savor the flavors of fresh, local, seasonal cuisine, join award-winning Wisconsin co-authors Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko on Thursday Aug 9th at the Rooted Spoon Kitchen Table as they share simple tips for homegrown and homemade cooking, from preserving the harvest to stocking the pantry to building local community around your kitchen table.

National Bike tour raising awareness about the benefits of cooperatives.

When a group of college students from Amherst, Massachusetts learned the United Nations was declaring 2012 The International Year of Cooperatives, it proved to have a galvanizing effect. The announcement prompted the students to create the Co-cycle Project, a youth-led, bike-powered tour linking cooperatives across the United States and designed to draw attention to cooperatives and how they contribute to making the world a better place.

Starting in San Francisco, California on June 2, and ending on Labor Day in Amherst, Massachusetts, members of the Co-cycle Project are making their way across the country, stopping in nine cities where two-day public events and workshops about cooperatives are being held. Through these events and workshops, Co-cycle is raising awareness about the economic, social and environmental benefits cooperatives offer. For more details on event locations and dates, or to join Co-cycle for all or a portion of their cross country trek, check out their website at www.co-cycle.coop to see their route. For details on how to join them for the local part of the ride (August 3-5), contact Bjorn Bergman at bjorn.bergman@viroquafood.coop

Co-cycle’s journey will live on beyond this summer. The journey and events will be chronicled by a student film crew in a documentary (sponsored by the National Cooperative Grocers Association) which will serve as a “Cooperatives 101” tutorial, a vehicle for introductory education about cooperatives. The film will highlight the importance of dedication, innovation, and teamwork in making sustainable change for the future and the value of cooperative action.

From the onset, Co-cycle has been a student-led idea motivated by a wide range of intersecting passions. As the youth of (mostly) America, members of Co-cycle face a world full of complex problems whose solutions, they assert, will require imaginative, creative, and social justice-oriented thinking. They are motivated to learn and teach others about why cooperatives have increasingly become recognized for their ability to address complicated and interconnected local and global issues. And they are driven by hope and inspiration towards a better world.

Find more info about Co-cycle, their project and to follow their journey, visit www.co-cycle.coop.

From August 3rd-5th, Co-Cycle will be in the Driftless Region! Join us for a Co-Cycle and area Co-ops meet and greet, free and open to the public.

Join in the music on July 7 at Eckhhardt Park

FourthStream.net, presenters of Driftless Jazz Festival, is pleased to bring you Driftless Music Festival 2012. Scheduled for July 7, 2012 in Eckhardt Park, next to the Vernon County Courthouse on Decker Streeet in Viroqua, this festival brings a wide variety of music and entertainment to your doorstep. And, once again, our goal is Community building: bringing together diverse music and musicians and creating interactions between various community segments in our region.