Newsletter: July 2021

Come Grow With Us   KCG Quarterly Newsletter: July 2021 We’re overjoyed to share with you the second installment of the Kennett Community Grocer Quarterly Newsletter! Keep an eye out in your inbox for this bushel of features and information in April, July, October, and January. We’ll be featuring some favorite farms, locals, volunteers, Member-Owners, and share exciting news about KCG. FARM SPOTLIGHT   How did a little girl from the Philly Main Line become an expert chicken farmer? For Elizabeth Hopkins, the key motivators were a love of embracing challenges and being energized by a professional career where every day is different. Elizabeth will tell you she loves her job, the chickens, the soil upon which they stand and peck, and the farm cycle where every season brings new opportunities, new obstacles to overcome, and new successes to cherish. Every day is different on her farm and her love of the work and self-driven expertise shows. Elizabeth and her husband, Gary Hopkins Jr., a fourth-generation mushroom farmer, provide the local community with Medina Mushrooms and Honeymoon Farm chickens.  Starting their farm careers with Medina Mushrooms sold at local farmers markets since 2016, they expanded to include chicken meat in 2020. Elizabeth and Gary married in 2020 and looked into an Alaskan honeymoon cruise. But it was an expensive trip to take. Gary suggested that they spend that money instead on their forever honeymoon, their “honeymoon farm.” And just like that, they found the name of their new farm venture. Visiting Honeymoon Farm, we found three portable chicken coops, each housing chickens at different stages of maturity. Elizabeth moves the coops with the chickens inside, around the fertile grass and clover-bearing fields every 24 hours. Elizabeth explained what the chickens eat and how their diet consisting of grains, “grit,” or ground-up stone to strengthen the gizzards, grass, bugs, and worms all combine to produce the good chicken protein we will eat. As we learned when we read the “Chicken” book and “The Jungle Effect Book” in KCG Book Club, the health of our bodies depends upon the health of the animals, what they eat, the soil producing their food, and how they are cared for. When you eat Medina Mushrooms and Honeymoon Farm Chicken, you can be confident that they are produced with expertise, care, a passion for the farming life, and concern for you, the consumer. We cannot wait until the day that they are both offered at The Kennett Community Grocer. Visit the Medina Mushrooms and Honeymoon Farm websites to check out all the Farmer’s Markets where their products are sold. You can find both at the Kennett Square Farmer’s Market on Fridays from 3 to 6 PM.

VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT KCG shouts out a heartfelt thanks to all the volunteers who are presently making our dream come true. The many activities are being conducted by the members of our Board and our MOVE committee. We know with our momentum increasing that many more volunteers are needed to open the doors to our co-op. Our region is home to many talented and creative individuals, and you, dear reader, are one of those individuals! If you have an interest and time to lend, KCG will be very appreciative of your efforts. Food cooperatives are built upon the strength of member-owners who volunteer their time and skill. Once we open the doors, the member-owners -that's us - will decide how to reward our volunteers (like special discounts, for example). Currently, we need volunteers who enjoy social media engagement and would like to help support our Facebook and Instagram platforms. The MOVE Committee will provide the ideas and basic content - we just need your creative energy!  If you enjoy event planning, such as our Salsa Night and Member-Owner Campaigns, we have the job for you! These activities occur about twice per year and require preplanning and execution of the event. It's a lot of fun work and the perfect way to meet other community members. Last but not least, we need volunteers to staff information tables. Currently, we are at the Kennett Square Farmers Market and the New Garden Farmers Market every other week. We will have one or two all-day tabling events later this year. We will provide you with talking points for the information table and partner you with an experienced tabling volunteer until you feel comfortable going solo. This is a great way to meet our community and get the word out about who we are. Contact our Volunteer Coordinator to sign up at eburkey@comcast.net.   COMMUNITY GARDEN SPOTLIGHT   Our region is home to hundreds of flourishing backyard garden plots, and we plan to devote newsletter segments to highlight as many as we can. Today, we are honored to feature the wonderful bounty of the garden built and tended by Laura Florence, the Collections Development Coordinator at the Kennett Library. Though she has a beautiful garden at her home and a plot at the community garden in Anson B Nixon Park, we want to highlight the great space she has planted at the library. As an avid gardener and believer in sustainable living, Laura is the creator of the Seed Library that you can access inside the library.  Laura harvests the library produce, washes it, and puts it in bags that are then put out on a table for you to take at no charge. This is a beautiful example of community sharing and a model for future activity at KCG. If you have a garden and would like to share your garden story with us, please send along a few comments at @info.kennettcommunitygrocer.coop. Our newsletter writers will be in touch with you for an interview and photo. KCG BOOK CLUB On July 17, the KCG Book Club had the opportunity to talk with the author of Grocery Story, Jon Steinman, who talked with us about the variety of food cooperatives in the United States and Canada. He specifically addressed the issues that we are facing in our start-up. Jon has recently published a beautiful photo album of Food Cooperatives. We will have a copy at our table events. In the meantime, if you would like to view the album, you can download it here.  The next book club discussion will be in October. Books and information on the Zoom link will be available in mid to late August at the Kennett Library. We will discuss 2 books. The first book is Food Fix by Mark Hyman, MD. In this book, he explores the hidden politics, vested corporate interests, and broken government regulations around how food is grown, sold, and consumed. He suggests that one bite at a time, we can save our health, our economy, our community, and our planet.  The second book is Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown. Gabe shares with us his personal story of desperation and hope as a food producer and offers solutions for growing soil, making a profit, and saving the family farm. WHAT’S POSSIBLE FOR YOU, KCG MEMBER-OWNER:   Please continue to show us some co-op love and support! Give us a like, a share, and keep talking about KCG! We are 177 Member-Owners strong and growing every month. Every Member-Owner gets us closer to opening the doors to KCG. You are all ambassadors for KCG and the simple act of reading this newsletter is a volunteer activity. The seeds you plant will grow into Member-Owners and together, our community will produce Kennett Community Grocer. If you would like to submit information for publication in the newsletter or have any questions, please email us at info@kennettcommunitygrocer.coop

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