BOARD MEETING: The June Board meeting is this evening. Everyone is welcome. You can check the posted notice on our website www.sanjuancoop.org “Forum” page for the time and address.
ANNUAL MEETING: Please mark your calendars for the June 23 Annual Meeting which will be held at 6 p.m. at the Earthbox Conference Center. Everyone should be informed ahead of time and be prepared to vote on the possible move to a larger space and on an incentive program for volunteers. Daniel Snyder is retiring from the Board so we are looking for someone to replace him. He has developed a membership data base, so we are also looking for another person, a “data jockey,” to assume responsibility for tracking memberships and keeping up-to-date information on our database; if you’d like to do this, please call him at 378-2090.
PLEASE READ! Your store is not staffed and therefore there’s no in-person communication with shoppers; it is imperative that all member/owners read emails, newsletters, website information, posted signs, updates, and notices. Otherwise, everything goes haywire, and finances, inventory, orders, and displays (not to mention milk bottles) go disastrously out of control. I know, I don’t read any better than anyone else; I’ve always managed to install my printer without instructions. But really….
NEW SYSTEMS IN PLACE:
1. In order to gain control of receipts and cash, Anna has established a system whereby both your cash and receipt are placed together in an envelope and deposited in the big new box. In spite of her big sign on a stick and a stack of envelopes, people who shopped on Saturday reached around all that and continued to place naked receipts in the basket and naked cash in the box. By now everyone has figured it out and people say, “Oh, that makes so much sense!”
2. And I, in order to try to gain control of the milk bottles, have established a new milk-and-bottle payment system for the Twin Brook Milk. (Please look up and notice the 33 empty crates on top of the coolers—representing 48 half gallon jugs and 225 quart and pint bottles not yet returned, most not even recorded as having been paid for!) This is my signage on the fridge:
_ NOTICE!_
Twin Brook bottle deposits will no longer be collected, recorded, and refunded. Deposits of record may be refunded as they have been on your purchase receipt only until June 15. Cross your name off the deposit signup sheets.
Starting May 29, new posted Twin Brook milk prices include the purchase of your bottle. Should you wish to sell the bottle back to the dairy, the co-op will pay $2.35 for half gallons, $1.65 for quarts, and $1.45 for pints. Transactions must be made through volunteers during open hours or at 4 p.m. Sundays when the bottles are collected to send back to the dairy. Note that when you subtract these prices, the price of your milk has actually gone down!
Heritage Farm deposits will continue to be transacted as before. Please record only your Heritage Farm deposits and refunds on the signup sheet on the side of the fridge. (I forgot to add that the plastic lid is $1 worth of your deposit, so please bring it back with your bottle.)
The first day people were scared and didn’t buy milk! But now they get it and it’s moving quickly.
Since I posted that sign on the fridge door I have created some homely funny money which I call “co-op cash”; the open hours volunteers will issue these store vouchers in exchange for your bottles which you can sell back during open hours (I believe now you can sell the bottles at any store that carries Twin Brook milk, like QFC in Ballard!). You can spend the funny money at the co-op like cash and deposit it with your receipt and check or currency in the payment envelope when you shop. Just like the old days, kids can collect bottles to sell to the co-op and spend their “funny money” on treats!
TAXED ITEMS: Starting June first, the state collects tax on candy. Fizzy beverages, pet food, personal care items, household items are also taxed. The tax is included in the posted price, but please remember to check the tax box in the right column of your receipt for those items so the bookkeeper can see them and pay the state.
MY CAR…is toast. Anna lent me her cute and frisky little old blue Hyundai so I’m not grounded; it doesn’t use much gas which is nice, but when I apply the brakes they make the back end of the car sound like it fell into a gravely ditch, and I just noticed when loading milk bottles that the license plates are—er—outdated, but folks tell me it doesn’t matter on the island ;P Luckily two new and very talented volunteers signed on Saturday and tell me they are willing to help with local pickups and deliveries while I figure out how to solve my problem. We are saved! Anna and I are headed out to Lynden tomorrow in her new inherited Subaru to see the cows who make your milk; stand by for a report! We hope to stop by Slough Food in Edison to pick up some Salumi “sticks” that I ordered for you on the way back, but because of the holiday the order may not have arrived. If that’s so, is there anyone going over that way soon who would be willing to pick up a load of amazing salami for the co-op? A load of Skagit Fresh in Mt. Vernon? A load of honey east of Big Lake? A load of pickles in LaConner? Maybe some locally grown tea in Burlington?
EMAIL CONTACT: It has come to my attention that several members are not receiving the emailed newsletters. I can’t see how an email notice here will do any good really, but if you know someone who is not getting this newsletter from your co-op, please instruct them to put a message to that effect with the correct contact information in the payment box and Anna will fish it out and direct it to the list. Or they could send a message to the co-op’s email which would be even better: sanjuancoop@gmail.com
CHEESE CLUB: Someone who has run out of Parmesan cheese asked about the “Cheese Club” which has been dormant for a few weeks. Here’s how it works: Since we don’t have a commercial kitchen to wrap things like bulk cheese, I’ve invented an imaginary entity, the “Cheese Club” as an alternative. Someone—anyone—buys a lump of cheese “wholesale”, typically a 5 pound quarter wheel of Parmesan, which last I knew sold for $32.17; with the bulk markup it’s $33.78. It always turns out to be more than 5 pounds; one that I bought was 7.15 pounds, which is a lot of cheese! Whoever buys the lump then posts the signup sheet on the fridge door; interested people put their names and phone numbers on the sheet, and when it’s got three to five names, the person who owns the cheese (it can be stored in our fridge for viewing) calls the others and they figure out way to cut and wrap at an off-site place (tailgate in the parking lot?) and an agreeable way to transfer the pieces (sometimes hidden back in our dairy fridge with a name, weight, and price on it). More questions? Me: 370-5430.
OHMYGOSH! I went in with a load of Sundstrom burger about 6 p.m. and someone had cleaned the desk; I nearly fainted it looks so good. (Turns out to have been Anna having a cleaning fit.) Not only that, but two different shoppers asked about volunteering for their co-op—the spirit has arrived!
SPILLS: When you sweep up seed, grain, and nut spills from under the bulk bins, please save them in the half-gallon Nancy’s yogurt container on the bottom shelf for Geneva’s chickens—”Spills for Chix!” Waste not, want not, everyone!
