Where we're at, March 2010

Well, well, it's been quite a year. So much to catch up on and to tell - but we'll stick to the basics!

FIG has just celebrated it's FIRST BIRTHDAY, Woohoo!!

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We began operating on 23rd February, 2009, and the first co-op day was held at the Cedar Valley Centre Hall at Jilliby. This was a bit too far for our delivery guy and many of our local families to drive however a venue was urgently needed and we're very grateful the hall was available. We were able to quickly organise another venue at Ourimbah, where we remain today, and began operating in our current format, dealing directly with local organic farmers and suppliers, at the beginning of June, 2009.

It's been an exciting time in which we've been involved with the Central Coast branch of the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance and the subseqent Food Forum in Wyong; were announced as the Community Environment Network's Environment Group of the Month; witnessed our local avocado supplier newly being certified for mushrooms as well (and they're beautiful!); commenced bulk ordering of organic meats and bulk fruit as an additional service; welcomed Antje turning up weekly with her yummy home made, hand-kneaded, bread; organised a community harvest event on a local kiwi fruit farm and subsequently included the produce in the weekly FIG boxes and a jam making session; held some workshops and information sessions, and steadily increased our numbers. The feedback from our members after using the produce from the FIG boxes in meals for their families has been positive and wonderful to hear. Some of our aims were to give local farmers a fair price for their produce and to also make it affordable to local families and we think we're doing that. Thank you, everyone, for your comments.

Special thanks must go to Michael Champion, local organic farmer, for not only supporting FIG but co-ordinating several farming families here on the Central Coast and Kirkconnell (west of Sydney and just within a radius of 160 kms from here) to bring a larger range of local, seasonal, fresh produce to us weekly.

Thanks also to the key management group for getting us this far so successfully and with very few glitches; to Andrew who continues to advise on all matters co-op, and to Lani who hosted us all in her loungeroom when we were getting together and chatting about how we could go about all this. And where would we be without our members who support the co-op week in, week out, supply us with their surplus herbs and eggs and vegetables, and regular volunteers who help set up, pack up, bag vegies, wipe benches, vacuum the floor, etc?!

THANK YOU TO EACH & EVERY ONE OF YOU!

Now to some details for anyone new reading this or wanting a refresher: FIG operates weekly from 3-5.30pm each Monday - except for when Monday is a public holiday and we move to Tuesday. Address, phone number and email address are to be found in the bar on the right.

Our first priority is to order from what is available locally and then, depending on the weather, rabbits, varieties and quantities planted and so forth, we have to supplement our order with produce from an organic supplier in Sydney. As our members also like to have carrots, potatoes and some fruits such as bananas in their boxes, we generally order these weekly from Sydney as well. One day more of these items may be grown organically on the coast, in which case most of our FIG boxes would be sourced locally.

More information to come shortly.

Bye for now from all of us at FIG!