In 2008, Oryana created the Oryana Community Grant Program, a charitable giving program based on Cooperative Principle #7 which states: “While focusing on member needs, cooperatives work for the sustainable development of communities through policies and programs accepted by their members.” To this end, in each profitable year we have, Oryana has made a pledge to donate up to 10% of all end-of-year proceeds (pre-tax) to a non-profit organization in our community.

We are excited about this new program, which gives our members and us a chance to formalize our practice of giving to the community. We encourage our members to get involved in this program either by nominating their own organization, by encouraging an organization to directly apply and by voting on which organization is to receive the grant.

If you are affiliated with an organization that is interested, the following requirements must be met.

Requirements for Eligibility for Funding

1. Must be a non-profit registered with the IRS (reg. 501(c)3).

2. The organization must be local. Local, as defined by Oryana, includes the following nine counties: Antrim, Benzie, Charlevoix, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Manistee, Missaukee, and Wexford.

3. Special consideration will be given to those organizations that are in agreement with the Oryana Ends as defined by the Board in 2008. Ends are policies that broadly define the desired Oryana organizational vision. The five issues they cover are economy, locality, wellness, education and community. They specifically state:

Economy – Because of Oryana, our community has a vibrant and growing cooperative economy.

Locality – Because of Oryana, our community has a thriving marketplace for goods produced locally with a positive environmental and social impact.

Wellness – Because of Oryana, our community has direct access to solutions that contribute to health and wellness.

Education – Because of Oryana, our community is well educated on the interconnectivity between healthful foods, environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

Community – Because of Oryana, ecological regenerative and socially just community development efforts are nourished and supported.

4. Applicants are asked to write no more than 250 words that best describes the valuable work of the organization and no more than 250 words as to how funds would potentially be used.

All applications need to be received by November 1 for consideration. Once the applications are received, a committee consisting of members of the Oryana Board and staff will review the applications and narrow it down to 3 or 4 organizations.

Oryana members will then have the opportunity to vote (one member, one vote), via ballot box in the store for the organization of their choice. The grant recipient will be announced in the first quarter of 2010.

If you have any questions, contact Sandi or Joan at 947-0191 or you can email sandi@oryana.coop or joan@oryana.coop. Applications are available on our website at www.oryana.coop or at the Oryana Customer Service Desk.

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Little Artshram was the recipient of the 2009 grant. Founded by Penny Krebiehl, Little Artshram used the grant funds to retain and re-train selected artists, farmers, and permaculturists who helped formalize, ehhance, and expand the curriculum for the Art-Farm and Community Gardens program. The Beehive Summer Camps had record attendance this year with 75 children and youth attending 5 weeks of 5-day programming, ending with a family puppet show telling the stories of observation, food, water, shelter and community.

Children in the Beehive Camps used the Eco-Design Process, guided by the Permaculture principals and ethics to design and implement their own garden.

The Youth-Market Garden youth mentored the Beehive campers in planting, watering,harvesting, pest identifying, and weed management, as well as worked several shifts in the Beehive Program as teachers/apprentices, and contributed to the curriculum.

Penny and crew at the barns garden…

The produce department is looking particularly bountiful these days.  Chock full of local delights, the bins are overflowing with appealing and truly beautiful-to-look-at veggies. Take this cauliflower for instance:

Cheddar Cauliflower

It has an incredible butterscotchy color. The flavor is very similar to white cauliflower (no, it doesn’t taste like cheese!) and cooks up the same too. What fun to add some color and pizzazz to cooking with an unexpected ingredient like this.

And then there’s the purple kohlrabi.

Purple Kohlrabi

I remember when my aunt in Germany used to make creamed kohlrabi. She diced it and served it in a simple and light cream sauce. Yum. (BTW, the name comes from the German language: kohl = cabbage and rabi = turnip) And if you’re the type of person who wants the skinny on nutritional info on purple veggies, here it is:

The dark pigments responsible for the purplish tones are called anthocyanins, a type of phytonutrient, or plant compound, hailed for its potential disease-fighting benefits. Studies suggest anthocyanins might help reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer.

Patty Pan squash is not unusual but I love the shapes and how small they are. They are perfect for stuffing…

Patty Pan Squash from Land O Goshen farm

Here’s a nice little recipe for stuffed squash:

6 pattypan squash, stem and blossom removed

6 slices bacon

1/2 cup diced onion

1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs

1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Bring one inch of water to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add squash, cover, and cook for 10 minutes, or until a fork can pierce the stem with little resistance. Drain, and slice off the top stem of the squash. Use a melon baller to carefully scoop out the centers of the squash. Reserve all of the bits of squash.

Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Remove bacon to paper towels, and set aside. Saute onion in bacon drippings. Chop the reserved squash pieces, and saute them with the onion for one minute.

Remove the skillet from heat, and stir in the breadcrumbs. Crumble the bacon, and stir into the stuffing along with the Parmesan cheese. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stuff each squash to overflowing with the mixture, and place them in a baking dish. Cover the dish loosely with aluminum foil.

Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until squash are heated through.

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Here is one more cool fruit to be had in the produce department…RED apricots. They are from California.

Red Apricots

I had never seen red apricots before. I’ve never met an unusual fruit or veggie that I didn’t like and if you’re a fruit aficionado like I am, you will love these scarlet beauties.

I moved back to Traverse City from the metro-Detroit area about a year ago. While I was living downstate I purchased a cow share from a local farmer and was able to drink RAW milk. If you’ve never tried raw milk, it is absolutely delicious and in my opinion, tastes better than pasteurized milk. After having visited my sister in California and being able to purchase raw milk in stores there (raw milk can legally be sold in California but not in Michigan and many other states) and doing a bit of research on the benefits of unpasteurized milk, I discovered cow share programs, an ingenious method of circumventing the prohibition of retail sales of raw milk.

In a cow share or herd share agreement, consumers pay a farmer a fee for boarding their cow, (or share of a cow), caring for the cow and milking the cow. The cow share owner then obtains (but does not purchase) the milk from his or her own cow.

I recently learned of one farmer in our area who has a cow share program. Maple Ridge Farm in Marion sells grass-fed beef, free-range eggs, vegetables and other products, and for about a year now have had a share program in place. Elmer and Wilma Jean Miller currently make the milk available at the downtown Traverse City farmer’s market. As soon as they have enough people to make a trip worthwhile, they would like to find a site to distribute the milk throughout the year. Their information is available at this website:

http://www.localdifference.org/farmdetail.asp?id=282

So I was very happy to learn of Maple Ridge Farm. But according to http://www.realmilk.com/ there are 38 providers of raw milk and raw milk products in the state of Michigan, but none on this list are in northern Michigan. What a shame. There are so many local producers of incredibly good products, from coffee (Higher Grounds) to flavored peanut butter (Naturally Nutty) to jams (Food for Thought) to shiitake mushrooms (Moses Grigg). Why do we not have more than one local dairy farmer willing to set up a cow share program and provide northern Michiganders with such an important food?

There’s a conventional argument against raw milk and that is that it’s dangerous. According to a recent article in U.S. News and World Report, “There are serious risks of infection from listeria, salmonella, and E. coli. From 1998 to May 2005, raw milk or raw-milk products have been implicated in 45 foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, accounting for more than 1,000 cases of illness, according to the CDC…” Furthermore, the FDA’s director of,the Division of Dairy and Egg Safety states, “There are absolutely no health benefits from consuming raw milk.”

The above statement makes absolutely no sense to me. True, I’m not a nutritionist, dietician, or doctor, but common sense alone tells me that an unadulterated, natural, whole food like raw milk has got to have some good, healthy things going for it.

Stories abound of people who previously had allergy difficulties with pasteurized milk but not with raw milk. Raw milk is a complete food and contains a whole host of health-supportive stuff including all 8 essential amino acids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial bacteria. And according to Sally Fallon, founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a Washington, D.C..-based advocate for consumption of whole foods, 500,000 consumers regularly consume raw milk. Furthermore, she claims that the number “is growing exponentially.” Fallon wrote the excellent book “Nourishing Traditions,” a book I consider to be required reading for anyone interested in a whole foods diet.

Pasteurization started in the 1920s to combat diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods. But in these modern days, stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection. Pasteurization kills off all the beneficial enzymes, destroys vitamins, and demolishes friendly bacteria.

Also, drinking skim and low-fat milk is not all it’s hyped up to be; Butterfat contains vitamins A and D needed for assimilation of calcium and protein in the water fraction of the milk. Without them protein and calcium are more difficult to utilize and are possibly toxic. Butterfat is rich in short- and medium chain fatty acids, which protect against disease and stimulate the immune system.

The thought that also comes to my mind is, haven’t people been drinking raw milk from cows, camels, sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks, and thriving on this natural food for eons and eons? And haven’t our ancestors, for the most part, had no problems drinking milk that came straight from the udder?

So…my hope is that some day soon, more farmers in our fair region will be willing to set up shop and offer raw milk through a cow share program, like so many farmers farther downstate are already doing.

A note about Shetler’s milk…Shetler’s offers a terrific line of dairy products that they sell here in our store and all over the area. They use what they call “low pasteurization” where they heat the milk up to the minimum temperature required by law. I admire Shetler’s efforts to offer the healthiest product possible while still staying within legal parameters. They state on their website, “If we could, we would offer raw milk for sale. But we CANNOT, so don’t ask.  At least until there are new laws passed allowing it.” Thank you, Shetler’s, for acknowledging the desirability of raw milk and your willingness to offer it for sale if it were legal. And in the meantime, I love your chocolate milk!

Pam at the cafe with some of Shetler’s wonderful products…

I encourage everyone to look into this topic for themselves. Great information about raw milk is available at the following websites:

http://www.realmilk.com/

http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/index.html/

I’d love to hear your ideas about the whole raw milk debate…Feel free to post a comment…