Big Bike Issue • May - June 2008 · Big Bike Issue • May - June 2008 EXPANSION-ASANA, A YOGIC...

Big Bike Issue • May - June 2008

EXPANSION-ASANA, A YOGIC APPROACH TOWHEATSVILLE’S RENOVATION PROJECT!by Dan Gillotte, General Manager

As I write this in mid-April, we are on the precipice of beginning our big and long awaited expansionproject! But, for you, dear reader, you have probably already seen some construction work on our site.

I’m so excited to be getting started, that I just have to let out a big Woo-hoo! Your patience andenthusiasm have been appreciated through our planning process. The project is expected to takeapproximately 14 months in total, which puts completion sometime in May of 2009. We’ll be workingwith the talented folks at TF Harper and Associates to help us realize our vision for the new store. Onegreat thing about this firm is their experience with grocery store remodels over the past 20 years or so.We expect that they will do a very good job for us on this project.

We’re going to be taking a yogi-like approach to the expansion: remembering to breathe, stayingflexible, etc. Look for Expansion-asana signs in the store to tell you what’s happening that week. We’llcommunicate with you in a variety of ways throughout the process to let you know what to expect inany given week or month. The best way to stay apprised of what’s happening at the co-op is to sign up

for my weekly emails. Just go towww.wheatsville.coop to get signed up.We’re also communicating on the websitein a special expansion section.

Through May and June, the main focusfor the construction will be on the retain-ing wall and parking to the east of thestore and on converting the InStep build-ing to our new office, break room andmeeting room. Details of how futurestages will affect you are still beingworked out, but in the earliest stages youwill notice less parking along the fence. Ifyou can’t find spots, you should be ableto find some in the back. Staff are goingto be parking off site, to help free up asmany spots as we can for you. It wouldbe a great time for more folks to bus,walk, or ride their bikes to Wheatsville.

The main store won’t be affected for awhile, probably until June or July. At thatpoint, it should get pretty interesting, sobe sure to stay in touch so you’re not sur-prised by the changes taking place. It’sour plan to stay open during the entireproject and to keep disruption as mini-mal as possible, but some disruption willbe inevitable. We’ll be very appreciativeof demonstrations of flexibility from ourowners and customers at times duringthe project for sure!

May is Bike Austin!

Month!Bike Stories on Pages 7-13

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Wheatsville owners and organic farmers, Katie Kraemer andDavid Pitre invite Wheatsville owners to visit their farm.

Tecolote Farm is a certified organic vegetable farm in oper-ation since 1994. Sundays are harvest days. They harvest forMonday basket deliveries in the morning, then clean, sort, andpack vegetables in the shady wash area after lunch.

Coop members are welcome to join the Wheatsville tourand should bring wide-brimmed hats, closed shoes, and water.Please leave your pups at home.

RSVP at www.wheatsville.coop. Directions and ride sharinginformation will be available on our website.

Tecolote Farm’s CSA (community supported agriculture) deliv-ery service started in 1995, and is Austin’s oldest CSA! Mostof the farm’s harvest is delivered straight to the homes oftheir members, but some of the delicious heirloom and rarevarieties also make their way to Wheatsville, Greenling, andlocal restaurants. Since the farm has a typical 1-2 year waitfor CSA delivery, folks are encouraged to come find theTecolote booth at either of the two big Saturday markets:Sunset Valley and Austin Farmers’ Market downtown. Justlook for the tecolote- “owl” in Spanish (Aztec origin)!

In This Issue:

How Local Can You Go 2

Views From the Board / Future Headlines 3

Maintain Your Cool/ Deli & Kitchen News 4

Bear Beers/ Cheese Bites/ Bulk News 5

Know Your Staff — Conti 5

Is $10 Milk Too Hard to Swallow? 6

Yellow Bike’s 11th Birthday Party 7

Staff Anniversaries / Community Action 7

City Bike Projects Update 8

Bike Safety Checklist / Near Death Story 8

Human Power - Elected Officials 9

Bike Austin Month Calendar 10-11How to Not to Get Hit By Carshttp://bicyclesafe.com/

Wheatsville Mid-Year Financial Report 12-13

Toward A Perfect Wheatsville 12-13

Membership Report / New Invested Owners 14

Paul Holman Blood Drive Thanks 14

Coffee Economics 15

Better Eating For Life —Fat 16-17Member Owned Business Directory http://wheatsville.coop/memberbusinessdirectory/mbdir.html

The Wheatsville staff had an early morning meeting at 7:30 April 10th. Although the day started out rainy, sunny attitudes prevailed. Photo by Aldia Bluewillow

The Wheatsville Breeze, May-June, 2008

Want to eat more local foods, but curious just how local you can go?Wheatsville is hosting an “Eat Local America” challenge through-

out this summer, inviting area individuals to try to consume 80 per-cent of their diets (or four out of every five meals) from food grown orproduced locally.

The challenge will begin June 15th and continue through July15th. It’s honor system-based; those wishing to participate will simplysign a large poster at Wheatsvilleand try their best.

At Wheatsville, we definelocal food as food grown orprocessed in Texas. During the EatLocal America Challenge andthroughout the year, we call atten-tion to local food on our shelves bythe bright green Locally Madesigns. We also have a handy list onour website(www.wheatsville.coop/local.html)with links to local producers andthe distance they are fromWheatsville.

Why Eat Local?There are many benefits to eatinglocal food. It’s good for the econo-my, because money from eachtransaction stays in the region. Itconnects community members tothe people who produce theirfood, while helping to supportendangered family farms.

Plus, since food doesn’t travelfar from where it’s produced, eat-ing local also helps protect theenvironment by reducing carbondioxide emissions. Local food ismore nutritious and simply tastesbetter, because it’s often harvestedor processed the same day itarrives at the co-op.

Although “local” is a buzz-word used by many retailers,Wheatsville has for years cultivat-ed truly reciprocal, long-term rela-tionships with local growers andproducers, offering its shoppers aconvenient connection to fresh anddelicious food of the highest quality. Eat Local America celebrates ourdedication and commitment to local food for consumers and our sup-pliers.

National Challenge UnderwayWheatsville is joining nearly 70 other natural food co-opscoast-to-coast in Eat Local America. All are members ofNational Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) – a busi-ness services cooperative representing nearly 110 retail foodco-ops nationwide.

Since peak harvest time varies throughoutthe nation, the challenge duration may varyfrom a one-week to one-month period,depending where people and stores reside.Most participating co-ops will conduct thechallenge based on their region as follows:June 15 – July 15 South, Southwest andCaliforniaJuly 15 – Aug 15 Plains, Midwest andNorthwestAugust 15 – Sept 15 Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley

and Upper MidwestBeginning June 1, food lovers can learn aboutall participating Eat Local America initiativesat www.eatlocalamerica.coopncga.coop/eatlocalamerica.

Eat Local America is not your typical chal-lenge. Because it is framed around eachregion’s peak harvest times, length and timingvaries for each co-op, as does the definition of“local.” The Eat Local America challenge cele-brates the uniqueness of our regional foodsupplies, as well as a collective and emergingpassion for eating more local, organic foods.

More About Eating LocalAlthough we’re holding this challenge duringpeak season for fresh produce, we hope toeducate our shoppers that it’s possible – andnot too difficult – to eat local food year-round.Fruit and vegetables can be preserved until thenext harvest season, via canning, freezing anddehydrating. But don’t think local is limited toproduce. Wheatsville is the go-to source forlocal dairy products, including milk and arti-san cheese, as well as eggs, meat, poultry,salsa, granola, and baked goods.

The Wheatsville Breezeis a publication of

WHEATSVILLEFOOD CO-OP

3101 GuadalupeAustin, Texas 78705

512-478-2667

email aldia(at)wheatsville.coopwebsite http://wheatsville.coopEditor & Production- Aldia Bluewillow

Contributors - Eric Anderson, Amy Babich,Aldia

Bluewillow, Annick Beaudet, Ellie Biegel,Michael Bluejay, Mary Saucier Choate,

Mike Crissey, Gabriel Gallegos,Dan Gillotte, Paul Holman & Susannah

Erler, Rose Marie Klee,Katie Kraemer, Merilee Kuchon,

Monica Leo, Russell Pickavance, JimmyRobertson, Allen Schroeder, MateoScoggins, $hane Shelton, Sara Smith,

Niyanta Spelman, Dana Tomlin Photos: by Aldia Bluewillow

except where otherwise noted or not known ,Better Eating for Life logo by Katie Cahill

The Wheatsville Board of Directors usuallymeets at 6pm the fourth Thursday of everymonth at 3105 Guadalupe (building North of store).Check http://wheatsville.coop/pop_bodagenda.html fordetails Members are encouraged to attend.Somethingthat you would like discussed at the meeting? ContactGeneral Manager Dan Gillotte at 478-2667 orgm(at)wheatsville.com_______________________________________Wheatsville 2008 Board of Directors

Rose Marie Klee,presidentJane Kurzawa Cravey Stephanie JohnsonBob Kinney David PeaseJimmy Robertson Tom WaldMike Crissey____________________________________

The purpose of Wheatsville is to create a self-reliant, self-empowering community of people that willgrow and promote a transformation of society towardcooperation, justice, and nonexploitation.The mission of Wheatsville is to serve a broadrange of people by providing them goods and services,and by using efficient methods which avoid exploitationof the producer and the environment.The focus of thismission is to supply high-quality food and nondoctri-naire information about food to people in Austin,Texas.

Use a WheatsvilleCredit Card!Many of you already use creditcards at Wheatsville. Now,there’s a really cool card, justfor Wheatsville owners whichwill benefit Wheatsville, in turnbenefiting you.

Every time you use yourUFCU Wheatsville VISA® card, whether it’s at

Wheatsville or any other store, a portion of the fees normally charged tothe retailer will go back to your friendly neighborhood grocery co-op. Inother words, the more often you use your VISA® card, the more oftenyou will be contributing back to the growth of Wheatsville.

It’s also pretty cool that this VISA® card is brought to you as a jointeffort of two local cooperatives, Wheatsville and University FederalCredit Union.

Please check the Wheatsville website (www.wheatsville.coop) for alink to the application or visit UFCU’s website (ufcu.org) for more info.

How Local Can You Go? Wheatsville Conducts Community-Wide Challenge to Eat Local June 15th-July 15thby Aldia Bluewillow, Breeze Editor

Sign up for the Wheatsville E-mail List!A few times a month, you’ll get an e-mail from us informing you of upcoming events,new products or changes in the store. So far most folks on the list have been happywith its frequency and informative nature.We will also begin offering e-mail onlydeals and other special opportunities. Go to

http://wheatsville.coop/list to sign up!We will not sell, lease, lend or otherwise disclose your email address to any other entity.

practice of agriculture(not to mention the end-less hard work! THANKYOU TO FARMERSEVERYWHERE!). It istruly wonderful to beseeing this movement of return to connection withour food, the farmers who provide for us, and to theprocess by which this all happens.

The board continues our work on the bylawsproject and we are also beginning to actively seekcandidates who may be interested in running for theboard during our fall election.

Perhaps you might start to ponder whatWheatsville means to you, and consider whether youmight like to become involved in representing all ofyour fellow-owners as a board director. There are cer-tainly many levels of participation in our organiza-tion, from shopping and reading the Breeze, to work-ing at the store; from being a proud owner whospreads the word about us to friends, to serving onthe board. We welcome your involvement in whatev-er way suits you best—after all, shopping at the storeis one of the most important ways for you to supportWheatsville! I do hope that as you start to experiencethe changes that our renovation project brings, youwill also perceive what makes us so special: that ourorganization was hatched from a community of peo-ple who came together to create a cooperative gro-cery store, one of the most essential of services. As weproceed through this work on our physical infra-structure I sincerely hope that we find renewedopportunity to connect with our true capital, and thefundamental thing that makes us great—YOU, ourcommunity of owners!

It’s springtime and our renovation project hasjust started to hatch! By now you are seeing theinfant stages of the construction and metamor-phosis of our long-time home on Guadalupe,and I hope that you areexcited about all of thethings that this season ofchange will bring. It isinteresting for me to lookback on all of the discus-sions and careful deliber-ation that has gone intoour renovation project. Irecall conversations thatwe had with ownersthree years ago: there wascertainly support formaking a few upgrades,like a bigger produce sec-tion and better flow at theends of the aisles, butthere was really hugeenthusiasm for this proj-ect in anticipation of theimprovement forWheatsville employees.You, our owners,expressed a deep desireto see roomier workspaces, better storage, andthe removal of ramps and steps that workershave to navigate as they move product fromthe receiving area to storage locations andeventually onto our shelves.

This caring for others is emblematic ofwhat our organization is about, and it is so


View From the Board by Rose Marie Klee, President of the Board of Directors

sweet to be a part of this lovely and amazing community!We sincerely appreciate your patience and support duringthis time of big change, and encourage you to communicatewith staff if ever you feel lost or disoriented—you are not

alone, and I know thatwe will manage to findall of the love andhumor we need duringwhatever challengesthis transition maybring.

And while thesemajor physical changesare afoot, the board alsocontinues to keep aneye on ‘the big ball.’During our Februaryboard meeting, weinvited Max Elliott fromUrban Roots to speakwith us and help uslearn a few things abouthow their group bene-fits community andhelps to transform soci-ety. We held our SpringOwner Gathering at theAlamo Drafthouse,

where we had some fun thinking of things that Wheatsvillemight be doing 20 years from now. At the gathering wewatched “The Real Dirt on Farmer John,” which was waymore complex than I had imagined from seeing the movietrailer. One thing that hit me again is just how challenging itis to be a farmer, in terms of the many skills required andthe incredible adaptability needed to reshape the modern

Go Green Racer, Go! Co-op’s Solar Panels Charge 20,000 Electric Cars

Wheatsville, Yellow Bike Donate 10,000 Bicycles For Carbon-Free Weekend

We see our co-op becoming more of an environmental leaderwith a smaller impact on our environment. Several people sawWheatsville becoming the first carbon-neutral co-op. One sawthe highway replaced with wheat grass. Bicycling for othersremained an integral part of the culture of the co-op. Oneowner predicted cyclists clad in Wheatsville green would winthe Tour de France.

John Coltrane Quartet To Play Wheatsville’s “Jazz On The Roof”

Gluten, Dairy And Soy Got You Down? Don’t Worry, You’ve Got Wheatsville

Wheatsville Donates Record 20% Of Profits To Local Groups

For all the focus on the future, there were some reminders forus. We own more than just a grocery store. We have the alter-native to one-size-fits-all retailers where your diet is dictatedby someone’s balance sheet. We strive to share the success ofour co-op with our community. We shouldn’t forget our enter-prise has grand goals, nothing less than the transformation ofsociety.

I’m sorry. I should have warned you— but for therecord, I’m sure those coffee stains will liven up thecarpet, drapes and that drab, old thing your partnerplanned on wearing today— this isn’t exactly true. Ican’t say it’s a lie either. It’s what one of our ownerssaw while dreaming about Wheatsville in 2028.

At our most recent owner gathering, we boardmembers asked attendees to write a headline for astory they’d like to see about our co-op 20 years fromnow. We gave them some things to think about:• We are 10,000 owners strong after 30 years; howmany owners will we have in 20 years? What wouldit mean if all of us did something together? Whatkind of voice would we have?• How many stores will the co-op have? • Will we own anything else? A farm like Weaver’sWay in Philadelphia or The Wedge in Minnesota? Agas (or biofuel) station like Hanover Consumer Co-op in New Hampshire? A green mercantile store likeco-ops in Minnesota? A warehouse like The Wedge orLa Montanita in New Mexico? Our own tofu andtempeh production like Oryana Natural FoodsMarket in Traverse City, Michigan?• How much money will the co-op make? What willthat mean for our food shed and the marketplace?What could it mean for your rebate check? Whatcould the co-op do with our profit to further our mis-sion? Would we give grants like the Wedge? Wouldwe have a Texas co-op start-up fund?

Bringing Home The Bison— Co-op’s Ranch, Burgers Best In State

Why the fortune telling? We intended the exercise tohelp us as individual owners realize what we wantfrom our co-op in the future. There is a saying, “if youdon’t know where you are going, any path will getyou there.” As your board of directors, we’re trying tobroaden our focus beyond the day-to-day operationsof the store. We want to think about where we areheading over the next five, 10 or 20 years and devel-op strategies to get there.

The headlines will influence us as a board as weplot the course for the co-op. Trust me, we’re excited.And we’re going to talk about them and study them.The board’s focus on these ideas will in turn influence

Co-op Plans New Home in Capitol — Organic Farmers to Sell Produce in Rotundaby Mike Crissey, Board member

the GM as he determines how to accom-plish our goals. In short, you give us theideas and the GM makes them happen.We also hope this will give our futureboards a framework to constantly andconsistently improve our cooperative yearafter year.

What did we learn besides at least oneowner’s faith that we will outlive our stategovernment?

Wheatsville GM Tells Legislature: No Space Veggies!

We see the co-op bolstering our relation-ship to our food from governmental poli-cies to where and how our food is pro-duced. Owners predicted the co-op wouldboycott genetically engineered futuristicfoods, our general manager would testifybefore governmental agencies, and wewould all lead a successful nationwideban on pesticides. Others saw that wewould have our own farm (with a bumpertomato crop) or a bison ranch. Manyhoped we could one day exclusively selllocal and organic products.

Sixth Industry Invaded By Co-ops Under Wheatsville’s

LeadershipTexas Governor Becomes

Wheatsville’s 50,000th OwnerWe see Wheatsville and co-oper-atives not only growing butbecoming the preferred businessmodel. We envision our cooper-ative and the cooperative princi-ples spreading. Some seeWheatsville stretching acrossthe state from El Paso to Dallasto Houston to Brownsville andhemming in our larger competi-tors. Others envisionedWheatsville leading anotherwave of cooperative start-ups.

YES! UPDATE ME!

Member Number

Name

Address

City State Zip

Phone

EmailMail to Wheatsville Address Update, Attn. Gabriel, 3101Guadalupe, Austin TX

78705 or drop in the box at the Member Center or email changes tomembership(at)wheatsville.coop

DOGGONE IT! WHERE DID YOU GO?Members- if you’ve moved and you’re not getting the Breeze in themail, please take a minute to update your address.

Calling all BoardCandidates!!

This next election will have 6 seats up for election(2 of them staff reps) and we need candidates!

We want people who would be excited toserve on the board during this dynamic andthrilling time of expansion/renovation and growth.Your commitment to the co-op would be deepenedby serving on the board, especially since we havesome lofty goals we want to achieve – such as thetransformation of society!

Being a board member will take an 8-15 houra month time commitment, the term is currently fortwo years, and you would receive formal and infor-mal training on how to be a co-op board member.

If you are interested, please contact the boardat boardemail(at)wheatsville.coop to find out fur-ther details and receive an orientation packet.

Invest in insulation. If it takes more than 20 minutes to getfrom the grocery store to your house,consider some kind of insulation, totrap cold air in and keep hot air out. Anice chest is probably ideal, but youcould also buy an insulated blanket orthermal bag. Even a corrugated card-board box – ideally waxed or otherwisewaterproofed – will work (look at yourinsulating coffee sleeve or the inside ofan old light socket sometime). Theflutes in the middle of the cardboardlimit convection (think of hot air risingand cold air falling) and the air trappedinside the flute limits conduction (heatmoving from particle to particle.)Styrofoam is an even better insulatorthan cardboard for the same reasons.

Chill out before you shop. Your groceries will stay colder if youchill your container and the air insidebefore your start filling it with gro-ceries. Why spend time and money ona chest or bag if you’re going to useyour groceries to cool it down? Justputting your backpack in the refrigera-tor will help a bit. A bag of ice or an icepack or two in the bottom of your boxor bag will also help.

You don’t have to burn money tokeep groceries cool. For people whohave plenty of time but no money, hereare some DIY ways to beat the heat.

Homemade Ice PacksYou can use empty plastic and glassbottles and plastic freezer bags to makeyour own blocks of ice. Fill them about3/4 full of water and throw them inyour freezer. I also think these methodscould work with paperboard milk orsoymilk containers, which are coatedwith polyethylene inside and out. Youcan make them even colder if you addsalt to the water. The salt lowers thefreezing point of water, which means itwill turn to ice at a colder temperature.

O for a lodge in a garden of cucumbers!O for an iceberg or two at control!O for a vale that at midday the dew cumbers!

O for a pleasure trip up to the pole!Rossiter Johnson, Ninety-Nine in the Shade

Spring has barely sprung and we’ve alreadytopped 90º. But don’t cry over spilt ice creamsoup yet. Here’s some tips from the coolestdepartment at Wheatsville to keep your per-ishables from perishing on your way home.

If you can’t beat the heat, avoid it. It seems we Texans have no problem with100° temperatures, but ice cream, yogurt andfrozen vegetables aren’t as tough. Dairy willspoil in two hours at room temperature (70°F). Ratchet that up to 90° and they’re badwithin an hour. Ice cream and frozen foodsbegin to thaw and melt as soon as they’retaken out of the freezer. Try to scheduleshopping trips for mornings and eveningswhen temperatures are more moderate.

Plan for your perishables.If you’re running errands, make the grocerystore your last stop. If you’re miserable andsticking to your seat, just imagine what’shappening to your chilled foods. The Texassun can quickly convert your car into anoven. Don’t bake those potatoes until you’reready. When shopping, cold items should bethe last into your cart and the first out ofyour cart. It also helps to group them togeth-er. They’ll help keep each other cool in yourcart and let you know which groceriesshould be your priority while bagging andunloading at home.

“Wrap, then bag it in a tight, littlepackage and there you have it.” Properly packing your cold items is the mostimportant step. Although you may betempted to forgo a paper or plastic bag,they’re better than nothing. Besides keepingyour temperature sensitive items groupedtogether, bags will act as a barrier againstheat by blocking out light and trapping coldair.

Here’s How to Maintain Your Cool by Mike Crissey, Perishables Buyer


It’s hot. I know that it’s an understatement this time ofyear. I always find that I’m not motivated to cook athome; the kitchen gets hot and I have to clean up. Theonly plus is that when I clean up, I get to play in water.

The deli on the other hand is always acookin’, making all of our deli goodness— keepin’ your kitchen (and mine) from overheating!!!

Wheatsville is also in the beginning of our expansion. I am very excitedabout this, also a little nervous, but happy, and looking forward to serving ourowners in expanded ways. The transition time will be interesting, definitelykeeping us all on our toes. I am going in with the attitude of flexibility–willingto do whatever it takes to make it all happen and choosing to keep my attitudesupportive. To me, this is a great opportunity for the staff to work together asan entire store— lending a hand in departments we don’t usually work in. Iam excited to meet the crew of people that will be working ON our NewWheatsville, plus the new crew of people that will be working IN our NewWheatsville. And the end product— so worth it. There may be times whenour selection is a little tighter than pre-renovation time; we will do our best tokeep your favorites in stock. When we are full force again, we will be bringingback your faves and then some.

Outdoor Grilling…in the Shade, right? Check out our meat department for some of your favorite cuts, like theColeman rib eyes. Coleman is a great company, no hormones, no antibiotics,all vegetable grain diet and the best thing of all, Certified Humane Handling.

I recommend grilling fresh veggies. Last weekend, I grilled up someasparagus tossed with olive oil and some sea salt. I left them on the grill justuntil they turned bright green, still crunchy with freshness, but tender.Squeeze some fresh lemon on them after they’re done— delish!

Hey, and if you just can’t face grilling in the heat, the deli does somemighty yummy grilled portabellas that we marinate in balsamic vinaigrette.Highly delectable.

Deli Times!by Dana Tomlin, Deli Manager

Kuchon In the Kitchenby Merilee Kuchon, Kitchen Manager

Certain vegeta-bles, like zucchini,yellow squash, bellpeppers, asparagus, and portabella mush-rooms stand up well to grilling and bene-fit from a marinade to keep them moistand flavorful. A simple mix of oil, vine-gar, spices and herbs takes minutes toprepare and your chosen veggies cansoak up some great flavors during thehalf-hour it takes to get your grill hot.

Depending on what’s in my pantry, Itend to whisk together some olive oil,vinegar or citrus juice, black pepper orother spices, chopped fresh herbs, andminced garlic or shallots. Place yourprepped veggies in a bowl or zip-topplastic bag and add your marinade ingre-dients to sufficiently cover them. The veg-gies can stay at room temperature; justflip the bag over once or twice while youget your grill fired up. Shake off theexcess marinade and you’re ready to go.

What I like to do is keep the excessmarinade on hand while the veggies cookand then lightly toss the hot veggies withthe leftover marinade before serving forextra flavor. Delicious!

Grillers and smokers unite! Barbecuelives in the heart of Texas, and the timefor outdoor cooking is here! Whetheryou’re grilling steaks, chicken or veggies,or smoking ribs and brisket, there aretwo basic preparations that will makeyour barbecue go above and beyond theordinary: dry rubs and marinades.

A dry rub is ideal for whole cuts ofmeat, like brisket, ribs, pork chops andsteaks. Spices used in a classic dry rubare traditionally smoky; I use a combina-tion of paprika, chili powder, cumin,brown sugar, salt, oregano, black pepperand cayenne, but you can certainlyadjust amounts or alter ingredientsbased on your tastes. The spice mixtureshould be applied liberally to the cut,rubbed in and patted down. For best fla-vor, wrap the meat in plastic wrap andrefrigerate it – depending on the size ofthe cut you can let it rest anywhere froma half-hour for a pork chop or steak totwo days for a ten pound brisket or rackof ribs. While your fire gets hot, bringyour meat to room temperature, thentoss it on your grill and get ready forgreatness!

Homemade gel-type ice packsFrom Russia with Love2 cups water1/3 cup vodka (80 proof)Food coloring (optional)Freezer or vacuum bag

Pour liquids into bag; add food color-ing (hopefully a color that says don’teat or drink me) and freeze. If your gelpack is too hard, thawit out and add morealcohol until you getthe desired slush.

It’s Ice-o-propyl1 cup rubbing alcohol2 cups water2-1 quart size freezerbags

Pour liquids into bag,remove air and seal bag. Place bag sealside down into another bag, removeair and seal second bag. Place in freez-er. If your gel pack is too hard, thaw itout and add more alcohol until youget the desired slush.

Surfacting UpLiquid dish detergentFreezer or vacuum bag

Squirt liquid dish detergent in baguntil about 3/4 full, seal and thenfreeze.

Ice Chest 101If you’re thinking of making your ownice chest, there are a few things toremember. (1) Your container should be water-proof. If water can get out, hot air canget in. Water-soaked cardboard willalso conduct heat.(2) Your container should be as air-tight as possible. Hot air will try toflow into the colder air inside yourbox. You don’t want this to happen.(3) Choose an appropriate insulator.Styrofoam and cardboard are goodchoices. They’re excellent insulators,readily available and easy to form. Ifyou’re using cardboard, try to have

the flutesrunninghorizon-tally.

I foundone Web site(http://www.cockeyed.com/science/insulation/insulation01.php) whereintrepid scientist Rob Cockerhamran a hilarious fifty-seven hourexperiment using seven different

insulators,includingStyrofoam (theclear winner),corrugated card-board, dirty dia-pers, homemadeRice Crispytreats, goosedown, aluminum

foil, and balloons. (4) Since you went to the troubleto build your own ice chest, youshould likely cover or paint itwith a reflective material to limitheat radiation, namely the sun.You could paint your ice chestwhite or cover it in something likethe sunshade from a car. Keep thesun from beating your groceries todeath.

A Cool BagFor people who are more handywith a needle and thread than ahobby knife, owner Tina Shayfound a website (http://www.craft-ster.org/forum/index.php?topic=238341.0) with an idea to make yourown cold bags. You’ll need awindshield shade or two, strongthread, some kind of fastener withsnaps or Velcro and ingenuity.

“I think a simple box with anoverhanging flap (with or withouta shoulder strap) would be theeasiest pattern,” Shay said. “Youcould use the usual frozen foodpackages to help determine thesize of the bag needed, or use thedimensions of a bike basket/sad-dlebag attachment.”

Dearest Wheatsville family,I have been proud to serve you all for the past four

years. I am sad and excited to announce that I am moving toAlbuquerque, New Mexico to pursue a Master’s degree inNurse-Midwifery. Thanks for the good times. I’m sure I’ll beback!

Before I go, I want to make sure you know a little more about Mike Conti, ahighly regarded member of our staff. Conti, who goes by his last name, workeddiligently for almost a year as our full time, ever-so-necessary dishwasher. Thedeli team really appreciated his dependability and consistently good work. InMarch, he transferred to the grocery team, which was a much needed change bythat point. He hit the ground running and quickly became a valued member of thatteam.


New ItemsI only have one new item this past month, those deliciousWhispering Hills Organic Pecans from East Texas. Go ahead,sample one. Compare them with those from West Texas. Inmy opinion East Texas wins.

Coffee GrindingTo help your fellow shoppers, when you grind coffee withour grinders, after it seems done, lift the lid and tap withyour finger tips or tap the side of the machine to be sure allyour beans have fallen in and been ground. This leaves thechute clean for the next customer.

Thanks again for choosing Wheatsville and being so awe-some. Tell your friends about us.

Good Days and Good Eats by Allen Schroeder, Bulk Buyer

Due to the overwhelming requests for better environmental pack-aging, the cheese department has started using the Nature WorksPLAstic containers for our grated and shredded cheeses, olives,fetas, and fresh mozzarellas. Naturally derived from corn or other plants, NatureWorksPLA uses up to 50% fewer fossil resources than conventional plastic.

Wheatsville wants to know your favorite cheese recipes! Have a great recipe thatcalls for some delicious Dutch Parrano Cheese? Perhaps you’d like to share the recipefor that special quiche everyone always asks you about. Send us your prize winnersand your home cooked meals! Tell us how you love to eat that special cheese you’vedecided to splurge on. Send us a picture of a cheese sculpture you’re particularly proudof! The more creative, the better. Any recipe that is made with cheeses from Wheatsvillewill be featured with that cheese, and shared with your co-owners and customers.Include a picture of yourself and we’ll feature you, as well! Send your recipes andinteresting pairings to ssmith(at)wheatsville.coop.

Have fun creating!

I and my fellow bulkers, Konchok, Ryan,and Bruce, will continue to be careful maneu-vering around everyone. Luckily, we can, anddo chat with you as you shop and as we refillthe bins. By talking with you, we learn moreand more about the food we sell, and how tobetter serve you. Consider the Wheatsvillestaff as a brain trust; you share a little goodfood info with us; we retain it and, in turn,share your tidbit of info with many others.

Oh and by the way, y’all are so nice aboutexcusing yourselves for being in our way.You’re NOT in our way—if anything, we’re inyour way. You’re only here a few minutes andwe’re in the aisles eight hours a day. You’rethe reason we’re here!

WOW!!! That sums up theemotions I feel when I see thesales growth numbers for theBulk Foods department. As istrue with all the departments

in the store, the bulk foods sales here at Wheatsvilleare increasing dramatically, sometimes better than20% compared to the same month last year.

It excites me to no end to see the bulk aisles fullof customers helping themselves to all we have tooffer. I see patience and smiling and friendly conver-sation going on as you slowly make your waythrough this part of the store. If y’all are becomingfrustrated with the tight space we live in, you’re notshowing it. Thank you. You all must be looking for-ward to the remodel as much as we are.

There are some big bad bear beers hibernating in the top of thesingles cooler, and if you’re lucky they just may grab you. BearRepublic Brewing Company is the premier brewpub, restau-

rant and micro-brewery in Sonoma County,California and they make some great beers.

Racer 5 is a hoppy IPA. This is a full bodied beer usingAmerican grains and the unique floral qualities of two PacificNorthwest hops, Columbus and Cascade. Awardsinclude the 2004 L.A. Commercial BrewingCompetition, Silver Medal Winner; 2004 World BeerCup, Silver Medal Winner; 2001 Real Ale Festival, SanDiego, Gold Medal Winner; 2001 Real Ale Festival,Chicago, Gold Medal Winner; 1999 Great AmericanBeer Festival, Gold Medal Winner.

Red Rocket Ale is a crimson colored beer andit is very bold and potent so you have been warned. Itwas originally created as Scottish red ale but the brew-er states that it has taken on flavors of its own.

Red Rocket uses a very complex recipe using five different grains toachieve its unique flavor. The caramel malt used is a mixture of BelgianCaravienne and Hugh Bairds Crystal malts. Red Rocket is a full bodied,

hoppy brew which finishes on the palate with caramelmalts. Centennial and Cascade hops are used for bittering and aroma.Awards include the 2004 L.A. Commercial Brewing Competition, GoldMedal Winner; 2004 West Coast Commercial Brewers Competition, FirstPlace; 2003 California State Fair, Gold Medal Winner; 2001 Real AleFestival, Chicago, Bronze Medal Winner; 1999 Great American BeerFestival, Silver Medal Winner; 1998 Great American BeerFestival, Silver Medal Winner.

Hop Rod Rye is Essentially a strong American IPAmade with 20% rye malt. Darker in color, Hop Rod Ryeboasts a huge hop aroma and flavor accompanied by aslightly sweet, malty finish. Awards include the 2004California State Fair, Silver Medal Winner; 2002 NationalReal Ale Festival, Chicago, Gold Medal Winner; 2001 SanDiego Real Ale Festival, Silver Medal Winner & Best of

Show (Runner Up).Pete Brown’s Tribute Ale is American brown ale with the addition of

molasses and brown sugar for more body and slightly higher alcohol con-tent. Awards include 2004 Great American Beer Festival, Gold MedalWinner, Brown Porter Category; 2003 California State Fair, BronzeCertificate Winner.

All of these beers are great so do your self a favor and try one today.

Musings of a New Cheese Buyerby Sara Smith, Cheese Buyer

EB: Where are you from and when didyou get to Austin?

MC: I grew up in Watertown, NY andspent six years in Albany before movingdown to Austin in the spring of 2006.

EB: What is yourfavorite part aboutworking atWheatsville?MC: Working for acompany whereresponsibility to thecommunity and dem-ocratic decision mak-ing aren’t just stat-ed commitments, butare foundational tothe entire businessstructure, is pretty rewarding. Whilethe actual day-to-day work environ-ment is a bit more standard than theownership side of a consumer coopera-tive, you still get to go home knowingthat your sweat and labor wenttowards something better than, say,financing your CEO’s sweet Tuscan villa.That, and the free food.

EB: What is your favorite place to go (orthing to do) in Austin?

MC: Riding my bike with or without anyparticular destination is far and awaymy favorite activity. I hadn’t been on abicycle in years when I moved down here,and now I really can’t imagine living with-out one.

As far as places go, Lovejoy’s isnear and dear to my heart. Equally goodfor hanging out in large packs or sittingalone and scribbling in a notebook, tapsand bottles galore, and so much person-ality that your “Keep Austin Weird” t-shirt will spontaneously combust. Bestbar in town, hands down.

EB: What is your favorite productat Wheatsville?

MC: As you may have gathered, I’mrather fond of beer, and Shanestocks some tasty brews. Hop Rod,Arrogant Bastard, Chicken Killer, all

the North Coast, St.Peter’s, and NewBelgium stuff…neveran easy decision tomake.

EB: What are youmost excited abouthaving in the reno-vated store?

MC: Functional work-spaces. I think every

employee would agree that beingable to sustain such steady andsizable growth within our currentfacilities is a minor miracle. Whilethe scale and atmosphere of thestore is an important part of itscharm, I don’t think anybody’sgonna be brokenhearted over hav-ing room to move in the walk-incoolers, pulling out backstock with-out getting rained on, or working ina deli that doesn’t resemble a sub-marine.

EB: What is your fantasy vacation?

MC: I can’t say as I really have one,but I always like traveling to placesI’ve never been before. I guessPortland and San Francisco wouldrank pretty high on that list in theUS. Everyone who has ever been toIreland makes me insanely, insanelyjealous. The fact that I still haven’tcrossed the Mexican border is sim-ply inexcusable. A road trip is longoverdue.

Get to Know Your Staff!Conti interviewed by Ellie Biegel, HR Coordinator

Bear Beersby $hane Shelton, Beer & Wine Buyer


“It is very hard for me to imagine that the economycould ever get so bad that somebody could not afford to goto buy a Double Cheeseburger from McDonald’s or aWhopper Jr. from us for $1.,” Chidsey said. “If you go tothe grocery store, I really challenge you to find somethingfor under $1.”

Philpott accurately and gloomily predicts – Grist’s edi-torial bent, after all, is “gloom and doom with a sense ofhumor.” “So laugh now – or the planet gets it!” Grist com-mands. – that higher commodities prices alone won’t stopthe cheapening of our food because “industrial food pur-veyors... will use any means necessary to absorb higherinput costs and preserve their share.” Like using cheaper,alternative “formulations” for eggs, for example.

So what do we do?Pollan admits that advocating higher food prices

seems counterintuitive. “You are ceding popular highground to McDonald’s when youdo that.” But he says higher foodprices “level the playing field forsustainable food that doesn’t relyon fossil fuels.”

Ignoring the petroleum usedfor fertilizer, it takes much lessgasoline to get fresh tomatoes,eggs and cheese from local farmsto your plate than the 1,500 milesthe average American omeletcould have traveled. A shortersupply chain should mean lesspricey gasoline is burned. I havethe suspicion we have a coupleexamples of this in the dairycooler right now: KimAlexander’s (the pink carton)and Henry & Joan Ludwig’s (thewhite carton) eggs.

I feel like Kim’s and Henry’seggs are among the best items we

sell at the co-op. For a long time, much of the value of theireggs was rooted in principle. They’re both family-owned,both use no hormones or antibiotics, both are so localthey’re within a bicycle ride. Now, they’re less expensivethan the organic eggs from Organic Valley and some otherconventional eggs I could be buying for us.

Remember your food dollar. What makes up thelargest portion? Paying everyone who touches your food,including me, eats up almost 39 cents of your food dollaron average; packaging costs you 8 cents. Trucking foodfrom the farm your plate costs about 4 cents. The business-es along the supply chain share about 4 cents of profit onyour dollar.

Fewer hands touching your food means more moneyfor you. The USDA’s Economic Research Service hints atthis. The marketing portion of your dollar (money spentgetting it from the farm to your plate) changes with theamount and type of products people buy. Meals in a restau-rant (even fast-food) and microwave dinners cost moreafter leaving the farm than a bunch of bananas in the pro-duce section.

Over the last two decades, the amount we spent onfood after it leaves farms has increased from 73 cents of ourfood dollar in 1982 to 81 percent in 2002, according to theUSDA’s Economic Research Service.

So it’s not just what we’re paying for food but whomwe’re paying for our food.

Although Texas is the second largest agricultural statein the nation, we’re losing more farmland than any other,according to the Sustainable Food Center. Nineteen coun-ties are facing more farmland loss than anywhere else inthe country, the center says. Closer to home, only 11% ofthe food available in Central Texas is grown locally.

If we don’t support our local farmers and farmersacross the state despite these higher prices, soon they won’tbe here. Not even the largest food companies in the countryare immune.

In March, Brazil-based JBS SA, the world’s largest beefproducer, bought the fourth- and fifth-largest meatpackersin the U.S. – National Beef Packing Co. and Smithfield BeefGroup – for a combined $1.1 billion.

New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman is worried about themergers, which he claims “would give a single companycontrol of about one-third of the domestic market and amonopoly in many areas.” JBS could potentially makeranchers short-sell their cattle, knowing they have nowhereelse to go, Bingaman told the Alamogordo Daily News.

Pollan reminds us that “perhaps more than any other,the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand.”Look what has happened to organic food in the pastdecade. It’s the fastest-growing sector in agriculture, with20 percent annual growth for the past 10 years. Sales oforganic food hit $15 billion in 2005.

So let’s vote with our dollars and decide which pro-ducers we’d like to weather the costs buffeting our food.Let’s keep control of our food by deciding who is making itfor us and under what circumstances.

Unfortunately, your receipt is right. From the dairy coolerto the freezer, prices are climbing. Eggs, butter and milk(and their soy counterparts); chocolate, cereal, crackers,and bread; beer, bacon and beef; ice cream, veggie burgersand frozen dinners.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, foodprices nationwide climbed 4.8 percent last year. The priceof a gallon of conventional milk rose 12 percent last year to$3.80 a gallon; eggs are 35 percent more costly than a yearago at $2.18 a dozen. Prices generally were up 4 percent asof February, but cereals, baked goods and dairy productscontinued to climb.

Someone’s getting rich, right? Not the farmers andranchers, they get about 19 cents for every dollar youspend on food (down from 31 cents per dollar in 1980),according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service. Therest goes to pay for marketing the food, everything to get itfrom the farm to your plate.

Wholesalers like United NaturalFoods Inc. – the largest wholesale dis-tributor to the natural and organicindustry in the United States (includ-ing Austin’s own White Mountain,Wheatsville and Whole Foods) – madeabout 18 cents for every dollar youspent on organic tomato sauce, eggs,milk and even produce. They get tokeep just above a penny and a half.

Not grocery stores; they makeabout 18 cents for every dollar youspend and keep from a penny to threecents. Natural foods stores, includingWhole Foods and co-ops, on averagemake about 35 cents for every dollaryou spend. Whole Foods pocketsbetween three to six cents. Co-opskeep one or two cents.

What’s going on? Prices for thefour grains that feed us and almosteverything else we eat (corn, wheat, soy and rice) havegone up from what some economists have called “a perfectstorm” – rising demand for meat, dairy and grains for thegrowing worldwide population; rising prices for petrole-um, which is used to make fertilizer and ship our food; andrising demand for biofuels to offset rising gas prices.

In the U.S., corn prices have climbed 70 percent fromlast year and it was selling at $6.17 for May delivery, whilewheat prices have tripled in the past year. In early April,wheat was $10 a bushel, down from its all-time high ofabout $13.50 a month earlier. Soybeans were selling at$13.45 a bushel, their highest price ever.

Stocks of these grains are at 40-year lows. This is kindof scary, considering the U.S. is the leading producer ofmaize and soy in the world and the fifth leading producerof wheat worldwide.

In March, representatives of about 80 of America’slargest baking companies, representing more than 85 per-cent of our baking industry, marched in Washington toprotest the dangerously low supplies of wheat, rye andother grains.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission held apublic meeting with the U.S. Department of Agriculture,exchanges, traders, merchandisers and producers in April.The CFTC called the meeting after grain and cotton indus-try organizations – including the National Grain and FeedAssociation – claimed the commodities market was broken.

Local farmer Kim Alexander described the squeezefrom rising grain prices in a March letter to our co-op.“These are the greatest price upheavals in feed grain mar-kets in a generation. … This may be good for corn farmers,but it isn’t for livestock farmers,” Kim wrote. “Corn is foodfor animals not fuel for automobiles and any governmentprogram that believes differently isbackwards.” Feed makes upbetween 60 percent to 75 percent ofthe cost to raise livestock forslaughter or for eggs and milk.

Corn and soybeans are bothused for biofuel and can fetchhigher prices from biodiesel subsi-dies in the U.S. and abroad. Notonly does it take corn and soy outof the food stream, but the higherprices can lead some farmers toswitch to biodiesel “cash crops” from rice and wheat.

Some farmers seem to be following the money. Afterproducing a record-high amount of corn last year withrecord prices, U.S. farmers plan to plant 8 percent feweracres of corn this year, according to a March report by theU.S. Department of Agriculture’s National AgriculturalStatistics Service (NASS).

Meanwhile, farmers plan to plant 18 percent moreacres of soybeans, 74.8 million acres, 1 percent below 2006’srecord high, according to the statistics service. And farmersin Kansas, New York and Pennsylvania are expected toplant their largest soybean crops in history. Soybeans fetch

almost twice as much as a bushel of corn and they’re easierright now to grow. Fertilizer for corn has been hard to find.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that cornethanol production in the United States accounted for atleast half the rise in world corn demand in each of the pastthree years. Meanwhile, the world still has the sameamount of arable land now 1.6 billion acres as it did 20years ago.

Food costs worldwide skyrocketed 23 percent from2006 to 2007, according to the U.N. Food and AgricultureOrganization (FAO). Grains climbed up 42 percent, oils 50percent and dairy 80 percent. The FAO predicts consumersstill face at least 10 years of more costly food.

“It’s not likely that prices will go back to as low aswe’re used to,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, economist andsecretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains for theU.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Glancing across the dairy cooler doors, more pricechanges could be on the way. Producers and suppliers planmore increases this summer. The suggested retail price fora half-gallon of Organic Valley milk in May is over $5; it’sthe same price for a half-dozen of organic brown eggs. Apound of organic butter could cost $6.50. That organic gal-lon of milk should get $8.

But Michael Pollan, a UC Berkeley journalism profes-sor and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A NaturalHistory of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater’sManifesto, argues that the rising cost of food may be a goodthing (April 2, 2008; The New York Times).

He has accused us of being “as addicted to cheap foodas we are to cheap oil.” Americans on average spend lessthan 10 percent of income on food, down from 24 percentin 1947, he says. (About that oil addiction? Feeding our-selves accounts for 17% of U.S. fossil fuel consumption,according to Pollan.)

Cheap foods are cheap because their raw ingredients(corn, soy, wheat, rice) are government-subsidized; they(and cotton) were helped with $26 billion in the latest fed-eral Farm Bill, Pollan says. Most of the tongue-twistingingredients on the back of processed food are corn, soy andwheat, according to Pollan. And they’re molded intoshapes, fortified with more nutrients and sweetened withhigh-fructose corn syrup.

If farmers are planting corn for fuel, they’re not plant-ing corn (which is likely genetically modified) for high-fructose corn syrup. Products using high-fructose cornsyrup – breads, cereals, soft drinks, and condiments – willcost more because it will be in shorter supply. Higher pricescould also make it more economical for ranchers and farm-ers to pasture their livestock and let them eat grass than

feed them grain. Following Pollan’s

logic we could see real sugarused in Coca-Cola and Pepsiin North America if the priceof high-fructose corn syrupwere greater than the tariffson sugar.

Days after the NYTimes article, Tom Philpott,food editor for Grist Magazineand a founder of Maverick

Farms, noted a fast-food fire sale of sorts in his biweeklyblog. At McDonald’s he saw a Big Mac combo meal, withfries and a Coke, for $4.29. Wendy’s offered something sim-ilar for just more than $5. Domino’s was selling a one-top-ping large pizza for $10. Papa John’s started tossing three-topping pies for $11. (Pizza could have ingredients includ-ing rice, soy, corn, flour, dairy and meat. How is it socheap?)

In a follow-up Philpott pointed out a Wall StreetJournal interview with Burger King CEO John Chidsey.Chidsey admits fast-food chains benefit “from the pressurepeople feel from a disposable-income standpoint.”

Sounds from the Dairy Cooler— Is a $10 Gallon of Milk Hard to Swallow?By Mike Crissey, Perishables Buyer

“We don’t do you or us any good if we go outof business because we aren’t profitable. …The old farmer philosophy of ‘stack it deep andsell it cheap’ may work for Wal-Mart but is notone we endorse,”Kim Alexander of Alexander Family Farmsin a March letter to Wheatsville Co-op.

is the time to show the world that helping theenvironment can be done with two wheels, twopedals, and two legs.

The Yellow Bike Project turns 11 this year, andwe have a lot to celebrate. Alongwith helping thousands of peoplelearn bike maintenance, andreceive bikes, we are moving to abigger and better location so thatwe can better serve the Austincommunity.

We’re pleased toannounce that on Thursday,March 20th, the City Council

authorized the City to negotiate a 50-year leasewith Yellow Bike Project on approximately oneacre of land at 1200 Webberville Road. The City’slegal department is now drafting the terms of thelease, which we hope to sign during Bike Month.Once the lease is signed, we will begin the process

of building a3000 sq ftfacility on thesite as ournew head-quarters. Thislarger facilitywill incorpo-rate a learn-ing center formore commu-nity outreachprograms including bikemaintenance workshopsand bicycle safety courses.With a clear picture of ournew headquarters now inmind, we are stepping up

Our rights as individuals depend on our will-ingness to defend them.The ACLU of Texashas established or is supporting projects totarget specific civil liberties issues: Police Accountability, Cyber-Liberties, theBanned Books Project, and the Prison & JailAccountability Project.

Community Action Wednesdays

The Austin Yellow Bike Project is dedi-cated to providing human-powered trans-portation for the people of Austin, runninga community bike shop, and educatingkids and adults. Our project promotescleaner air, land, and water, while encour-aging people to meet their transportationneeds through an active lifestyle andcommunity participation.

The group selected for May is the YYeellllooww BBiikkee PPrroojjeecctt and for June is theAACCLLUU CCeennttrraall TTeexxaass CChhaapptteerr

Guess What!! We have staffanniversaries to celebrate!$hane Shelton, 1177 years as of 6/14Bill Bickford, 99 years as of 6/10Ricky Shaw, 55 years as of 5/27Mariah Downing, 2 years as of 5/30Mark Maddy, 2 years as of 6/9Jimmy Evans, 2 years as of 6/13Erin Welch, 1 year as of 5/8Joseph Ramirez, 1 year as of 5/15Andrew Bogle, 1 year as of 5/21George Pryor, 1 year as of 5/24Konchok Rodrick, 1 year as of 5/26Josiah Schaddelee, 1 year as of 5/30

Ellen FeldmanMassage Therapy

* Swedish

* Reiki

* Polarity

* Shiatsu

* Aromatherapy

by appointment 451-5045

Managing Money for Social Responsibility Investor Activism as a Moral Issue

Politically, we can all hope an Obama nomination and Presidential victory willtake us closer to a better world. And in terms of results, consumer activism is avery effective means to achieve positive environmental, social, political, andeconomic change. But the third leg of a progressive’s stool, and one that shouldnot be ignored or rationalized, is a citizen’s responsibility to invest ethically. Investor Activism as a Moral Victory Most Americans take the stance that it is OK to invest in morally corrupt com-pany stocks either because a stock is in a mutual fund (where they erroneouslybelieve they have no control) or simply because when it comes to makingmoney, morality and personal profit are mutually exclusive. These assumptionsare simply ignorant rationalizations and based on a clear lack of understandingabout Wall Street and how the investment paradigm works. For example, if onehundred people refuse to invest in the war profiteer Halliburton (HAL), it willnot directly affect the direction of the stock price. Yet if an organized campaignof five million people sells their HAL stock, it will affect the stock price nega-tively. Remember, a company executive’s compensation and job security isdependent on the stock price going up. And as far as mutual funds go, it isincumbent upon the investor to research a fund’s s prospectus and weed out theimmoral stocks (as viewed by the investor) and contact the fund company andtell them you will either 1) refuse to buy or 2) sell the mutual fund. If aninvestor is not willing to take responsibility for his or her mutual fund selec-tions, it is hypocrisy plain and simple. In the end, even if an investor’s actionshave no direct economic affect, you’re still achieving a higher moral victoryand your entire life and self-esteem will be better because of it.

Take action. If you want to seriously invest with a progressive intellect and amoral compass, Arrowhead Asset Management, a fee-only “socially responsi-ble” (SRI) investment management firm in central Texas, can offer professionalhelp. If you would like further information about our cost structure and ourinvestment philosophy, contact Ralph (Rocky) Boschert or check out our web-site at www.texasorp.com. Client references are available upon request.

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our fund-raisingefforts to supportthis important constructionproject.

Come helpus wrap upBike Monthwith a bang atour annualYellow BikeBirthdayCelebration onSaturday, May 31st.Although our location is still to be determined,our birthday party is guaranteed to be the biggestbike bash on record. There will be beer from NewBelgium and Shiner and tea from Sweet Leaf Tea.There will be bike art from the Austin community,

a silent auction and araffle, bands and djs,track stands andtricks, and bikes,bikes everywhere.

Visit our website,austinyellowbike.org,for more informationon the party and ournew space. If youwould like to make atax-deductible dona-

tion to the cause, you can do so on our websitehttp://www.austinyellowbike.org/donate.htm, or mail acheck to us at 2013 E. 51st street. If you’d like moreinfo on our project, send an email to austinyellow-bike(at)gmail.com.

Ride on, Austin.

Ah, bikes. Do you know that feeling you get whenyou’re going the perfect speed, and the hills of ourbeautiful city just melt under your wheels? We arelucky here in Austin. We have a great city thatloves its bikes. We get thechallenge of making bik-ing more accessible andsafer for our citizens. Weget the responsibility ofteaching kids how to ridesafely, teaching adults howto fix their own bikes, andteaching drivers that thereare other, cooler ways toget around. Bike Month is our chance to celebratethe successes that we feel everyday when we rideour bikes. Bike Month is a chance for us to help ayoung person find a safe way to school, or to teachpeople that their bicycle is the same as a car on theroad and that it’s okay to take a lane. Bike Month

Celebrate the Eleventh Birthday of Yellow Bike Project on May 31stBy Russell Pickavance, Yellow Bike Project


BEFORE YOU RIDE, CHECK YOUR BIKE FOR SAFE OPERATIONHave your bicycle inspected twice a year by a bike mechanic.

SADDLEAdjust frequently for comfort and growth.Tighten saddle and seat post nuts securely,leaving at least 2 1/2 inches of seat postdown in the frame.

FENDERSBe sure they are undamagedand securely fastened.

BRAKES (coaster or hand)Check before your firstride.Must brake evenlyevery time,no slippage.Periodically inspect andmaintain brakes.Thecoaster brake arm mustbe securely fastened tothe frame.

CHAINCheck frequently fordamage and stretch, andreadjust if necessary.Lubricate frequentlywith light oil.

PEDALSReflectorized pedals add safety in night riding.It is imperative that the shoulder of the pedalaxle be securely tightened against the crankarm.Replace worn or damaged pedals.

BELL OR HORNBe sure it works properly,load and clear.

LIGHTS ANDREFLECTORSIf reflectors are damagedor lost, for your safety, replace them immediately. Lights and reflec-tors should be visible at dusk and at night; headlights from 500 feet,

rear reflector from 300 feet. Flashing lights and pedal and spokemounted reflectors are very visible to motorists.Don’t ride atnight without a light.At some angles, an unlighted bike is invisi-ble to motorists.Use state-approved reflectors.

HANDLEBARS AND GRIPSAdjust frequently for comfort and growth.Keep at least 2 1/2 inches of handlebarstem down in the frame, then tightensecurely.Handlebar grips should fit snugly,and worn ones replaced.

TIRESInspect frequently for wear or leaks.Remove embeddedstones, nails, glass, etc.Keep inflated to the correct pressurewhich is stamped on the sidewall of the tire.

SPOKESReplace broken spokes promptly.Keep them tight.

WHEELSShould rotate smoothly without wobbling from side to side. Ifnecessary, should be realigned.Axle nuts should be kept tight.

improved surface and bicycle/pedestrian bridgealong the north side of Cesar Chavez between Mopacand Lamar. The route will continue on to the ShoalCreek Trail northbound over a bridge that connects to3rd St. The proposed bikeway will continue along 3rdSt to a two-way facility on Trinity for one block north-bound to a two-way facility on 4th St from Trinity toIH-35. The two-way bicycle facility on 4th St will belocated directly south of the commuter rail tracks.There will also be a bike/ped bridge installedbetween Red River and IH-35 to facilitate crossingWaller Creek. The bikeway will then continue underIH-35 on 4th St. On the east side of IH-35, the bike-way crosses north one block to 5th St and stays on 5thfor the reminder of the facility. On the east side of IH-35 the route is signed and is striped from PleasantValley to Springdale. This project shall be completedby the end of the year.

• Lake Austin Boulevard’s bike lanes are gettingreconstructed. The bike lane will be from five to sevenfeet wide and will be made of a monolithic concretegutter that will eliminate the “ridge” often created bya curb and gutter. This project should be completedby summer 2010.

• Boggy Creek Trail is being constructed to provideaccess to the Martin Luther King Boulevard TransitOriented Development area and to provide bicycleand pedestrian access to and through this park. Workon the trail should be completed by summer 2011.

For questions or comments regarding bicycling inAustin, please contact, Annick Beaudet, City ofAustin Bicycle Program Manager at 974-6505 orAnnick.beaudet(at)ci.austin.tx.us.

Hello Wheatsville Co-opers. Your City of Austin BicycleProgram is delighted to be a part of your special MayBicycle issue of the Breeze. We would like to take thisopportunity to provide a quick update on what has beenkeeping us busy.

In March, the Bike Program held four public meet-ings to discuss updating the existing Bicycle Plan(passed by Council in 1998). Cyclists and other commu-nity stakeholders from all over the city provided staffwith feedback on the existing Plan and recommenda-tions for improvements in bicycle routes, policies andgeneral programs. A secondary set of public meetingsare tentatively planned for September.

During the meetings in September staff will presenta revised draft of the Bicycle Plan that will include thehundreds of comments received from the residents ofthe City. After the September meetings, the Plan will berevised and submitted to comment by an internal techni-cal advisory committee. We hope to have a final draft forapproval of the City Council before the end of the year.The Bicycle Plan Update will also include the recom-mendations from the Mayor’s Street Smarts Task Force,a group formed in March 2007 by the Mayor and formerprofessional cyclist Lance Armstrong, tasked to advisethe City of Austin on how to increase bicycle use. TheTask Force formed four subcommittees: Policy,Infrastructure, Law Enforcement, and Education andPromotion. These subcommittees met various timesthroughout the year and produced a final report thatwill be submitted to Council for approval in May(National Bike Month!). This final report includes recom-mendations from each subcommittee on how to “trans-form Austin into a world class bicycling city.” Please seehttp://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council/streetsmarts.htm for moreinformation and a copy of the final report.

Last, but certainly not least, the BicycleProgram would like to update you on six projectsthat are currently underway. These projects are amix of on and off-street facilities that serve toeliminate barriers to bicycling, improve connec-tions between existing facilities, and get more peo-ple on bicycles.

• Improvements to Barton Springs Road haveincluded painted bicycle lanes between LamarBoulevard and Robert E. Lee Road. Additionalbicycle lanes will be painted west of Robert E. Leeto the Mopac access road. This project should becompleted before the end of the year.

• A plan for the Pfluger bridge extension is alsounderway. The northwestern “nub” of the bridgewill be extended over Cesar Chavez towardsapartments planned for construction at CesarChavez and Lamar.

• The roadway through the Gables site will con-tinue northeast from the Pfluger Bridge extensionunder the Union Pacific Railway Bridge. This proj-ect, the “Bowie Railroad Underpass tunnel” willallow cyclists and pedestrians to easily access theshopping and eateries located near 5th and Lamar(The Market District) by way of the Pfluger Bridge.

• The Lance Armstrong Cross-town Bikewaywill extend six miles from Veterans Avenue andLake Austin Blvd to 183 and Airport Blvd. Theeast/ west corridor will be made up of on and off-road facilities. Starting at Lake Austin Blvd, thebikeway will extend southbound on Veterans nearAustin High School. The bikeway will include an

City of Austin Bicycle Program Updates

Riding my bike west on Barton Springs road early on the morning ofJanuary 16, 2008, heading out of Zilker Park near the botanical garden, Iwas grazed/clipped by a black Chevy pick-up going 50+ mph. I stillhave this visceral memory/sensation, feeling the side of the truck slidingalong my shoulder and then the slap of the mirror hitting my left arm.The clip pulled me from the tiny shoulder out into the road where a car,following close behind the pickup, swerved dramatically to avoid run-ning me over. I somehow stayed up on my bike, got off the road quickly,and tried to figure out what had happened. The shock of the violent con-tact out of nowhere and the absurd contrast of my speed and the speedof the vehicles left me more than rattled, feeling vulnerable, exposed andsilly for “sharing the road.”

The truck driver tracked me down 5 minutes later, a half-mile downthe road. He was a very shaken old-school Austin hippie, not the psychofascist I had imagined. He never saw me (“I was watching the traffic.”)He felt the impact and looked in his rear view mirror to see me wobblingin the road. He thought the car behind him hit me. He told me he was soglad I was alive, he wanted to hug me. We hugged. I thanked him forcoming back and told him to watch out for cyclists.

I have had several accidents with cars in my long bicycle history, but never with theunbelievable clarity that I was inches (an inch?) from death. It hung on me like a ghostlyshadow. How do I, as a bicycle transportation advocate, push people out onto the road,knowing that one of them (you? me?) will have a showdown with a car/truck and lose.Can we manage this risk in some way? Avoid roads with no shoulder? Take the entirelane? Wear a helmet? I know there is lots of advice out there about cycling safely, but I feltlike a sucker. The speed/mass discrepancy between cyclists and cars is so great… Are wecrazy?

As a member of the Yellow Bike Collective, I knew that I had to get some peer perspec-tive. I asked for help, and within hours the collective responded with unbelievable empa-thy and support. I got stories (much scarier than mine), advice on how to be more visible(and not the obvious stuff), calm reassurance that the end justifies the means (one less caron the road…), and most importantly, I got invisible hands lifting me up, dusting me off,and setting me right back on that bike. Within a day I was on the road, getting jitters hear-ing cars come up behind me, but determined. I doubt this incident would have kept me offmy bike, but having the luxury of a passionate, focused and clever community of bicyclistssaved me in more ways than one. I am grateful to that driver that came back to face his vic-tim, to Austin for continuing to strive to be a bicycle town, and to the Yellow Bike Projectvolunteers, fighting the good fight everyday, all day, mile after human-powered mile.

A Near-Death Story of Virtual Violence and Communal RedemptionBy Mateo Scoggins


as now, money is scarceand the air is filthy,people would like tosave money and stressby walking instead ofdriving to the store. ButAustin won’t spend thenecessary money on sidewalks. What’s more,Austin has no policy for a temporary fix for pedes-trians until sidewalks can be built.

Something’s got to give.At the bicycle forum, only Demling and

Cravey said they would support an increase inbicycle and pedestrian staff and funding. The oth-ers did not see the necessity for this. It’s a shame.One candidate kept talking about making Austinwalkable by building town centers. But he couldsee the need neither to fund sidewalks, nor to pro-vide an alternative walkway where sidewalk doesnot exist.

If you’d like to help, you can e-mail the entireAustin City Council at once from the City ofAustin website. Tell them we need sidewalks now,not 500 years from now. They will need to hearthis many times before there is any chance thatthey will listen.

Heavy TrainingMany years ago, I bought the worst bicycle in theworld for $5 at a yard sale, and gave it to a friendof mine who didn’t have a bicycle. He didn’t havea car, either. My friend and I biked together toBarton Springs, but we had to keep trading bikeson the way back, because his bicycle was so hardto ride. To ride this bicycle uphill was to be con-vinced that one was about to die of a heart attack.

Still, it was faster than walking, and my friendrode the bike about 5 miles a day—to work andback—until he got his next paycheck, Then hespent $300 on a brand-new, smooth, light, easy-to-ride bicycle. After riding the heart attack machinefor over a week, he was very strong and fit, andcould ride for hours in the heat without difficulty.

By the time this sees print, it is probable thatAustin will have elected three new city councilmembers. In recent years, only about 10% ofAustin citizens who were registered to vote actual-ly voted in the city council elections. So it’s defi-nitely worth it to vote—your vote does count.

Often, however, people feel that they don’treally know anything about city government orcity council. People may also feel that it doesn’tmake much difference who runs our city govern-ment. The prescribed remedy for this is to attendone of the various public forums in which the can-didates for office present their views and answerquestions. Unfortunately, some of these forums arevery dull indeed.

This year, for a change, there was a candidateforum that I was actually interested in attending. Ittook place on Monday, April 7, at the LCRA build-ing on lake Austin Boulevard, and was sponsoredby the Austin Cycling Association, the Yellow Bikeprogram, and the League of Bicycling Voters. Itwas about as good as an Austin city council candi-date forum can be. That is, it was a public meeting,not a happy hour or an interesting science talk. Soit had the basic drawbacks of public meetings asentertainment. But then, we did not attend for thesake of entertainment. We attended in order to getinformation from the candidates, and also to givethem information about what is important to bicy-clists (and, to a lesser extent, pedestrians).

The bicycle-centered candidate forum willneed a bigger hall next year. There were over 60seated people and almost as many standees.

Most people in the audience were clearly bicy-clists, and many (including one candidate, AlanDemling) had come on bicycles, which wereparked outside the building. All the people madethe room very hot. It was a hot evening.

All the candidates were tired—during the twomonths of campaign season, they attend several ofthese forums per day. But they were gratified atthe full house—one candidate told us that they’reaccustomed to lackluster forums with a crowd offive or six.

Alan Demling in Place 1 and Robin Cravey inPlace 4 were easily the favorites among bicyclists.In Place 3 (currently held by incumbent JenniferKim), no one was really very good. Kim has theadvantage of having been present for the 2006attempt to impose a bicycle helmet law on Austinfor no reason. (Most bicyclists who oppose a bicy-cle helmet law in Austin actually wear helmets.But it’s no fun when the police start issuing ticketsto everyone riding a bicycle without a helmet. Itdiscourages people from bicycling.)

Nobody really likes public meetings. They’reusually an annoying mixture of boredom, anger,and stupidity. City government can be very exas-perating, but we do need to pay attention to it. Ifwe don’t pay attention, we may wake up one dayto find that walking and bicycling have beendecreed illegal. We all like to think that people arenot mean enough or crazy enough to ban walkingor bicycling—but really, people can believe almostanything, and do almost anything, no matter howcrazy.

So we really must go to public meetings some-times. Government is too important to leave topoliticians and corporate lobbyists. As publicmeetings go, the bicycle candidate forum wasvery, very good. But it needs a bigger hall. I’m surethat twice as many people will attend the next one.

A Sidewalk StoryTwo days after the bicycle forum, an interestingsidewalk story appeared in the Statesman. TravisCounty built most of a much-needed sidewalkalong Brodie Lane south of Slaughter, but stoppedat the Travis County border, a quarter mile awayfrom the intersection at Slaughter Lane. The Cityof Austin, whose responsibility it is to finish thesidewalk, has no immediate plans to do so.Michael Curtis, of the city bicycle/pedestrian pro-gram, said that there is a huge backlog of unbuiltsidewalks, and that the city spends 5 to 7 milliondollars annually (out of a budget of over 2 billion)on sidewalks. He said further that right now allthe sidewalk money is being used to put wheel-chair curb cuts in existing sidewalks.

Austin’s air quality fails to meet even the min-imum federal standards, gasoline prices are rising,and people need to walk more instead of drivingcars. The mayor and city council keep saying thatAustin encourages people to walk and bicycle inplace of driving. But it’s not true.

The case of the sidewalk at Brodie andSlaughter highlights our city’s misplaced priori-ties. Many people who live near this corner wouldrather walk thandrive to the shoppingcenter less than half amile from theirhomes. And TravisCounty has built mostof a sidewalk. ButAustin doesn’t havethe staff or the fundsto finish the job.

The economy isin a downturn. When,

Human Power-Will Elected Officials “Walk the Walk?” by Amy Babich,

FREE MAMMOGRAMS for Low-Income Women

The Community Women’s Wellness Center offers free breast exams and mammograms to low-income women 50 and older, residents of Travis County, with limited or no health insurance.

Women receive comprehensive breast examinations, learn how to do breast self-exam, and getblood pressure & weight checks. Call 232-4707 for eligibility and appointments.

A project of the University of Texas School of Nursing.


Texas Bicycle Coalition (1902 E.6th)City Hall Plaza (sponsored by City ofAustin employees)Texas One Center (505 BartonSprings Rd.) (also sponsored by Cityof Austin employees) Mellow Johnny’s (4th andNueces)Bicycle Sport Shop (517 S.Lamar)Shoal Creek Blvd. at the FarWest Bridge (sponsored by ClifBar)

Additional breakfast station loca-tions will be added as sponsorshipsare confirmed in the next fewweeks. For more information, con-tact Monica Leo at austinbike-month(at)gmail.com

Friday, May 2ndCivic Bicycle CruiseLocation: City Hall PlazaTime: 4:45 pm; ride at 5:00 pmBike advocates ride with elected officials andenjoy the common denominator of two wheels.Explore Austin’s brand new Town Lake Parkbikeway and environs. Join your elected officialsand community leaders in this convergence ofpolitics and the joy of cycling.Contact: Scott Johnson (512) 389-2250

Bicyclists’ Happy HourLocation: The Rio Grande Restaurant, 301 SanJacinto Blvd. (on the Lance Armstrong Bikeway)Time: Happy Hour 6:00 pm until 7:30 pmFollow the Civic Bicycle Cruise to its final desti-nation, or join the group after the ride, forsnacks, libations, and lively conversation.Valet bike parking. Complimentary snacks and libations. Live music by Jim Keaveny and Shand WalsonContact: Eric Anderson at bikeeric(at)yahoo.com__________________Saturday, May 3rdCapital Area Bicycle &Pedestrian SummitLocation: University of Texas Jester Center,Speedway & 21st St.Time: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.Help promote bicycling as a viable transportationmode for all persons in the region by sharingideas and bridging disciplines between regionalbicycling leaders engaged in planning, advocacyand implementation. Attendance is FREE,thanks to Austin Cycling Association, CapitalArea Metropolitan Planning Organization, U.T.Austin, and Texas Department of Transportation.Register on-line at www.campotexas.org/pro-grams_bicped.phpFor more information, contactGreg.Griffin(at)ci.austin.tx.us

Armadillo Hill CountryClassic Packet PickupLocation: Bicycle Sport Shop, 517 S. LamarTime: 12pm to 4 pmPick up your rider packet for the AHCC andshop for those last-minute items you need to getyou and your bike ready for the event.

Saturday, May 3The Hundred Acre WoodOvernight Ride &Camping EventLocation: Start at Yellow Bike Project, 2013 E. 51stSt.; Destination: The Hundred Acre WoodTime: start time to be announced Cost: Free!The Hundred Acre Wood is a new event space locat-ed 20 miles east of downtown Austin in Manor,Texas. On May 3rd they are hosting a Mixed MediaShower Arts and Crafts fair leading to a night ofcamping under a meteor shower. Note that there isvery limited parking space at the Yellow Bike Project.Please plan to have you, your bike andluggage/camping gear dropped off by a friend orfamily member. Baggage transport will be providedat no cost by The Hundred Acre Wood folks.Registration: Although this is a free event, we need ahead count so please go to ACA Home Page and fol-low the link to register for the event.

3-1-1 Pothole Ride Sponsored by REI

Location: Meet at REI downtownTime: 3:30 p.m.We’ll fan out from the downtown REI to locate thoseteeth-jarring, frame-cracking, chain-rattling cracksand holes that threaten to ruin our morning com-mutes. Our list will be reported to the City of Austinfor repair. After-ride event at REI will reward partici-pants for their efforts.Contact Scott Johnson at 389-2250.__________________Sunday, May 4Inside Austin8:00 a.m.Tired of driving to the country for a good bike ride?Come join us for a ride entirely within Austin, follow-ing established city bicycle routes. We’ll start inNorth Austin and go through Hyde Park, UT, theCapital grounds, Congress Avenue, Travis Heights,Barton Springs, Zilker Park, Deep Eddy andTarrytown, all at a leisurely pace. Start at PillowElementary School, 3025 Crosscreek Dr. FromMopac/Loop 1 take the Steck exit. Go east one blockto Shoal Creek. Take a left (North) on Shoal CreekBlvd. and Crosscreek Drive is the ONLY right turn onShoal Creek Blvd. between Steck and HWY 183.**PLUS BEGINNER RIDE** There will also bea Beginner’s Ride of 10 - 12 miles with delayed startand a separate ride leader.Contact: Preston 512/345-1154.

Tuesday, May 6AHCC Packet Pick-upLocation: REI North, 9901 Cap. of Texas Hwy.Time: 4 pm to 7 pm

_________________Wednesday, May 7AHCC Packet Pick-upSpin City Cycling, 11415 RR 620 N., Ste. KTime: 4 pm to 7 pm_________________Thursday, May 8AHCC Packet Pick-upFreewheeling Bicycles, 2401 San GabrielTime: 4 pm to 7 pm

_________________

Saturday, May 10$ ACA’s Armadillo HillCountry Classic $Routes from the 6-mile kids-and-family ride to100+ miles in the beautiful, low-traffic edges ofthe Texas Hill Country. A premier Austin arearide and a fundraiser for Austin CyclingAssociation’s bicyclist safety education and freebike helmets for area children.Go to www.austincycling.org/dillo for details.Contact: Laura King 512/923-9700 or emaildillo(at)austincycling.org

May is Bike Month, and probably the best-known event during Bike Month is Bike toWork Day. Mark your calendars now forFriday, May 16, and plan your route toinclude a stop at one of several breakfaststations around town. Or hit them all!

The Austin Cycling Association is coordi-nating the event, with the gracious supportof several breakfast station sponsors,including long-time Bike Month supporterWheatsville Coop. Each stop will featurelight breakfast snacks and beverages, andoffers an opportunity to visit with otherbicycle commuters.

Here are the locations confirmed so far(the location is the sponsor, unless other-wise noted): Wheatsville Coop (3101 Guadalupe)Whole Foods (6th and Lamar)

Celebrate Bike Austin! Month!From our friends at the Austin Cycling Association www.austincycling.org

Bike Austin! Month Rides & Activities

In addition to Bike to Work Day, May is filled withevents planned by Austin area bicycle organizations,

groups and bike shops. Activitiesinclude commuter classes,

group rides, the PoliticalPedal/Civic Bicycle

Cruise, bike mainte-nance clinics, bike-inmovies and music,community celebra-tions and bikeparades, bicycle-related art shows,and much more. For

information on all ofthe Bike Month happen-

ings, check out the coolcalendar on the Bike Month

page of the Austin CyclingAssociation webpage at austincy-

cling.org. May is Bike Month. Let’s Ride!


Monday, May 12 Bicycle Maintenance 101REI Gateway (9901 N. Capital of Texas Hwy.)Time: 6:30 pm Maintaining your road or mountain bike can be adaunting task when you don’t know where tobegin. Topics to include:I. Installation/Removal of wheelsII. Flat Tires/TubesIII. Bike cleaningIV. LubricationV. Fine tune brake adjustment using barrel adjusterVI. Other sources of information: REI bike shop,books, websites, cycling clubs.Cost: $15 for REI Co-op members, $20 for Non-membersRegister: Customer Service at (512) 343-5550This class is limited to 6 participants.__________________

Tuesday, May 13Advanced BicycleMaintenanceLocation: REI DowntownTime: 6:00 p.m.Class topics and details coming soon.Registration required: Please call REI DowntownCustomer Service at (512) 482-3357Cost: $25 for REI Co-op Members; $30 for Non-membersClass size limited to 6 participants.__________________

Thursday, May 15Commuter ClinicREI Gateway (9901 N. Capital of Texas Hwy.)Time: 7:00 p.m.Want to commute by bike but• Have questions and fears;• Can’t figure out a good, safe route;• Don’t have a way to secure your bike?This clinic takes a look at commuting in Austin andcovers a variety of topics and concerns of the bicy-cle-commuting newcomer. Topics include bikeselection, clothes, tools and finding a route thatworks for you. Instructor Preston Tyree doesn’town a car and has never been hit after 100,000miles of urban commuting.Contact REI Gateway 343-5550

Bike to Music/ThirdThursdayLocation: Waterloo Cycles, 2815 FruthTime: 7:30 pmBikes, music, and Third Thursday quirkiness com-bine to create an essential Austin Bike Monthevent. Check back here for more details as theevent date nears, or go to waterloocycles.com.__________________

Friday,May 16Bike toWork Day —

Breakfast StationsEscape the stress of sitting in your car in bumper-to-bumper traffic by riding your bike to workinstead! You’ll feel invigorated and relaxed whenyou arrive – and you’ll look forward to the ridehome all day. Plan to stop at one of these locationsfor free food and drink on your way to the office.Locations: • City Hall Plaza• Texas One Center• Texas Bicycle Coalition• Mellow Johnny’s (4th and Nueces)• Bicycle Sport Shop (Lamar location)

• Wheatsville Co-op (3101 Guadalupe)• Whole Foods (6th and Lamar)

Check www.austincycling.org/bike_month.php formore breakfast station locations.Contact: Monica Leo (512) 635-4738; austinbike-month(at)gmail.com

__________________Friday, May 16Bike to Work Day – FreeMinor Bike Tune Upsand Snack Stop by REILocation: TBA

__________________Wednesday, May 21The Ride of Silence 2008Time: 7:00 p.m.Location: Pfluger Bridge over Town LakeOn this day, bicycle riders all over the world willride in honor of fellow cyclists that have beeninjured or killed while cycling on public roadways.Meet at Pfluger Bridge for an eight-mile ride.Organizers ask that you wear a helmet, maintainsilence, ride no faster than 12 mph, and obeystop signs and traffic signals. Some riders willwear black armbands in memory of riders killed,or red armbands if they themselves have beeninjured.More information at www.rideofsilence.org__________________Thursday, May 22 Bicycle Maintenance 101Location: REI DowntownTime: 6:30 pm Maintaining your road or mountain bike can be adaunting task when you don’t know where tobegin. Topics to include:I. Installation/Removal of wheelsII. Flat Tires/TubesIII. Bike cleaningIV. Lubrication.V. Fine tune brake adjustment using barreladjuster.VI. Other sources of information: REI bike shop,books, websites, cycling clubs.Cost: $15 for REI Co-op members,$20 for Non-membersRegister: Customer Service at (512) 482-3357This class is limited to 6 participants.

Mountain Biking BasicsLocation: REI Gateway (9901 N. Capital of TexasHwy.)Time: 7:00 p.m.Get geared up to hit the trails! Mountain BikingBasics will teach you what to look for when pur-chasing a new mountain bike or fixing your exist-ing one, as well as touching on gear, clothing,safety, and good mountain biking locationsaround Austin. Basic skills will be covered suchas balance, climbing, descending, cornering,braking, and getting past obstacles.More information at REI Gateway CustomerService: 343-5550

Thursday, May 22Bike-in-Movie NightLocation: Waterloo Cycles, 2815 Fruth St.Time: 7:00 pmLiberating film from the theater, removing youfrom your car, fueling discussion, inspiring peopleto . . . act, ride, play, ride. Films may be non-con-ventional, informative, and hopefully inspiring.Movies to be determined. Bring chairs or some-thing to sit on, food, drink and your friends.For more information: waterloocycles.com__________________

Friday, May 23and Saturday, May 24Street Cycling/Road ICourseDesigned to provide cyclists of all skill and experi-ence levels with comprehensive information nec-essary to ride safely in traffic. Instruction fromPreston Tyree on how to avoid crashes, how notto fall, safe bicycle handling and control, signal-ing, how to make an emergency stop, how tosafely cross railroad tracks, and how to avoid the“right hook.”Location and Time:Classroom: 5/23 - REI Downtown, 5:00-9:00 pmOn-Bike: 5/24 - Cafe Mundi, 1704 E. 5th, 8:00am- 1:00pm.Cost: $65 (Unless you’re a ride starter for theACA, in which case ACA will pay your fee).Contact: Preston Tyree, preston(at)StreetCycling.org__________________Saturday, May 31Yellow Bike Project’s11th Birthday Party/Raffle/ArtShowLocation:Not decid-ed atpresstimeTime: To bedeterminedHelp YellowBike Projectcelebrate their11th Birthday instyle. Although their officialbirthday is January 25, they’ve had their birthdaybash during Bike Month for several years. Asalways, the party will include a bike-themed artshow, bands, and beer. New this year is a raffle ofa classic and classy road bike. Check back atwww.austinyellowbike.org for more information asthe happy day approaches.__________________Saturday, May 31Real Ale RideLocation: Real AleBrewery, 231 SanSaba Court, Blanco,TexasRide begins at 8:30amRides of 15, 30, 50,65 and 80 miles. Thisyear’s proceeds ben-efit the Blanco PublicLibrary.More informationavailable atwww.realaleride.com


Wheatsville Food Co-op continues to have excellent financial performance thanks to the great hardwork of our staff and the amazing support of you, our owners! This excellent performance allows usto be on a great financial footing as we head into our project. Our great financial success gives us anexcellent cash position, which is very important for a successful project and the long term health ofour co-op.

Since this is a mid-year report, it will be brief, but we’ll look at the major financial categoriesbeginning with the income statement.

The income statement, also known as a profit andloss statement or P/L, is the financial record of our co-op for any given period. It includes all of our sales,our expenses, and our total earnings before incometax.

Sales for this period were our highest ever for thefirst half of the year at an incredible $4,061,468. (I can’thelp but note, that when I started at Wheatsville in1998, annual sales were hovering around $3.8 mil-lion...)

Our adjusted gross margin was strong, as we con-tinue to benefit from our association with the NationalCo-op Grocers Association and some better pricingfrom our main distributor. We have experiencedincreasing fuel surcharges that we have been absorb-ing up to this point. Despite higher fuel costs and soon, Wheatsville has not raised shelf prices unless themanufacturer’s price to us has gone up.

We spent more than ever on personnel at the co-op at over $780,194. Personnel is our second biggestexpense after the cost of goods with about 22¢ ofevery dollar spent at Wheatsville going to pay ourgreat staff who now number over 85, full and parttime! In addition to wages, Wheatsville has variousbenefits including a staff discount, sick and vacationpay, available health, vision, and dental insurance anda new 401K plan added this year.

Our earnings on operations was one of the high-est in our history, and even though we spent over$92,000 on planning our renovation in this period, westill had one of the strongest earnings before incometax in our history. Because of this great performance,we have been able to give staff our fourth mid-yearbonus in as many years of approximately $25,000! Iam very pleased that our operation is so successful asto be able to offer the highest wages in Wheatsvillehistory and to offer such significant mid-year andend-of-year bonuses. Your support makes it possible.

Moving to the Balance Sheet, we see essentially asnapshot of the co-op’s financial picture at a givenmoment in time, in this case, Dec. 1, 2007. Our balancesheet is extremely strong and shows a co-op that is ina tremendous state of readiness for our next phase.We have plenty of cash on hand with no debt to speakof. Our current ratio, a figure used to measure thehealth of a business, is an astonishing 4.38 to 1! Betterthan 2 to 1 is considered good in financial circles andis what Wheatsville has historically achieved. Thisratio is one good indicator that we are in a very strongposition in regard to our ability to pay off our liabili-ties in a timely manner.

In every way, our financials continue to impressour colleagues in the co-op world as well as NCB, theNational Co-op Bank, who is helping us finance ourexpansion. I am very proud of all we have done tostrengthen the co-op and get on extremely solid finan-cial ground. I thank you for your continued incrediblesupport!

Wheatsville’s Mid-year Financial Report:Financially Strong and Ready for Expansion! Prepared by Dan Gillotte, GM

Toward A Perfect Wheatsville by Jimmy Robertson, Board Member

Last summer I had the pleasure of eating dinner withseveral other owners at one of those periodic “dinnerwith the board” events. Three or four times a year afew members of the board, a few owners of the co-op,and GM Dan Gillotte “dine and shine” onWheatsville, our deli-catered event devoted to con-versations about the co-op. That particular eveningthe conversation turned to Wheatsville’s mission andprinciples as expressed in our official Preface to theBylaws. We talked about whether these early, found-ing statements were still relevant after all these yearsand whether or not the co-op was actually still guidedby them. Someone asked are we doing any of this?and a lively conversation ensued about what we real-ly stand for.

About that same time the board started talkingagain about one of its own policies, the so-called “A”or “Ends” policies.1 A few years back we had adopteda set of “ends” statements, but then recently got inter-ested in the Brattleboro (Vermont) Food Co-op’s land-

mark 100-Year Plan project (2007). At BrattleboroFood Co-op the owners figured out what they want-ed to be like in 100 years and then wrote a set of poli-cies to guide their boards and staff toward gettingthere. Back here in Austin, we started thinking abouthow we might make our policies more responsive toWheatsville’s own unique heritage and vision.

During the summer and fall of 2007, the boardreviewed its Ends policies. We decided that a newpolicy should be adopted that would includeWheatsville’s Mission Statement, as stated in ourBylaws. The new policy would also include theInternational Cooperative Alliance Co-op Principles,which, since we support them, should also be a stan-dard against which we regularly evaluate our per-formance. Finally, we agreed that most of our currentends statements should be retained in the revised pol-icy because they still seemed valid.

The challenge of having A policies like this is tointerpret what they really mean and then determine

whether or not we are in compliance with them. As aresult of the policies adopted by the board last fall, wenow must annually evaluate how well we’re doing atthings like serving a broad range of people, avoidingmanipulation of consumers, minimizing exploitationof producers or damage to the environment, supply-ing high-quality food and non-doctrinaire informa-tion, and promoting a ”transformation of societytoward cooperation, justice, and non-exploitation.”These inquiries are now part of a regular conversa-tion among the board—and ideally the wholeWheatsville ownership—about whether Wheatsvilleis actually practicing what we stand for. From nowon, once a year, we’ll be answering that questionraised at last summer’s dinner (are we really doingany of this?) and hopefully having some lively con-versations about it!

The General Manager is responsible for monitor-ing compliance with the A policies. The board’s job isto keep Wheatsville aligned with its Mission and


Goals. The May board meeting will be the first timethis new policy gets reviewed, so everybody pleasestay tuned for a report on how we’re doing.

Changes to Wheatsville’s Bylaws and CharterIn other action, most owners probably know by

now that the board is engaged in a process to reviseand update the co-op’s Bylaws. Since the spring of2007 we’ve been studying ways to simplify, con-dense, modernize and generally improve the Bylaws.As mentioned at the recent Owner Gathering, revis-ing the Bylaws requires the approval of Wheatsville’sowners. Here’s what our current Bylaws have to sayabout this:

These bylaws may be adopted, amended, orrepealed by a simple majority vote of the activemembers voting in a store vote or in person at amembership meeting attended by at least 400 activemembers. Bylaws amendments may be proposed bya 2/3 vote of the Board of Directors or by member-ship voting at a membership meeting. (Article 9 –Adoption of Bylaws, The Wheatsville Bylaws)

Right now the board’s intent is to complete itsproposal this summer in time to give owners an

opportunity to review, comment on and modify theproposed changes leading up to a store vote this fall. The board of directors is also looking into howWheatsville will comply with the state’s newBusiness Organization Code. Starting in 2010,Chapter 251 of this Texas statute (regardingCooperative Associations) replaces the old Texas Co-op Association Act, under which Wheatsville is cur-rently incorporated. Transitioning to the new Texasstatute requires focusing on our current charter, orArticles of Incorporation, originally adopted in 1976.Our current charter says this:

This Association is organized for the purpose ofacquiring, producing, building, operating, manufac-turing, furnishing, exchanging and distributing anytype of property, commodities, goods and services forthe primary and mutual benefit of the members ofthe Association; and to engage in any other activitiesand exercise any other powers which are not incon-sistent with the Texas Cooperative Associate Act.(Article IV, Articles of Incorporation for West CampusNeighborhood Co-op, January 5, 1976)

In August of 1982, Wheatsville amended its char-ter to change the official name to Wheatsville Co-op

and to add a provision allowing for up to $1 millionin investor shares. The charter was modified again inJuly 1993 to address investment dividends, provi-sions for dissolution of the co-op, and indemnifica-tion and limitation of liability for board members.

So in conjunction with the Bylaws updateprocess, the board is studying what changes wemight need to make to the charter as we transition tothe new statute, and what effect, if any, those changesmight have on the Bylaws. One of the board’s mostimportant tasks in this process is to achieve the mean-ingful involvement of Wheatsville’s owners, andprior to an election we’ll be providing plenty ofopportunities for owners to get informed andinvolved with these changes. For now, you can readup on our current Bylaws and Articles ofIncorporation at www.wheatsville.coop. Stay tuned!

1 The Wheatsville board adheres to “policy governance,” an industry-wide frame-work for co-op board behavior developed by John Carver. Mr. Carver has writtenextensively about how co-op boards can function in a way that invigorates their com-munity, meeting the needs of the owners and securing short- and long-range opera-tional achievement. Food co-ops around the country – Wheatsville included –embrace the theory and practice of policy governance. The board has a full set of poli-cies which we routinely monitor, and when necessary, evolve. Please read the full setof current board policies at www.wheatsville.coop.com.


Questions/comments/address updates? Drop me aline at membershipwheatsville.coop. Pleaseinclude your name andowner number.

Congratulations toWheatsville’s newestInvested Owners!!! Keep up the great work!

On April 7, 2008 our board of directorsamended the Membership AdministrationGuidelines. Copies of the most recent ver-sion are available at the member center forthe taking. Please remember that if you arean Investing Owner on a “paymentrequired” status, you must finish investingyour capital ASAP to avoid potential accountclosure and regain ownership benefits.

With our renovation just around the corner, I would liketo ensure that Wheatsville’s owners are well informedon what will be happening throughout the project andhow it will affect each and every one of us. To do so, weare trying to recruit as many owners as possible to joinWheatsville’s Weekly E-mail. You can sign up on ourwebsite www.wheatsville.coop, or at the cash register.Topics addressed in our e-mail include renovation talkand the latest breaking co-op news!

Gabriel MaxitGreg LindseyLisa LarattaKam McEvoyAlex BajorisRichard RibbRobby LarkinRobert ColsonMarisa SeccoCherrie SmithRandall DavisRandy GarstElla Schwartz Mark DeinertJulia HeskettJulie WilliamsKanya LyonsKatja TauteDennis HodgesDrake WilsonDeborah LykinsAngela K MooreSusan Gebhard

Cyndi FerrisTroy FeltonChad PetersSunni ZunigaCandy SmithJared FrostBrian KremerWilliam GoochWinnie HsiaScott DubbleShahin AminiDaniel MeePaul LabudaPaula GruberAnn TarletonDavid PrestonLeah BeckerKirk JohnsonEric HarveyKelly WhitisLynn OsgoodDebra EvansDenise Geihm

Sign Up for Our Weekly Email Updates by Gabriel Gallegos Membership Coordinator

Ty LaneJohn HurtSanaz FailiBen ApplJulia LailLiz JonesVicki HornW K LicariWalter LinTeri AllisonJoy JamesMarti BierMat DarbyLeah BojoBeth Beutel Alex LocklinAlexis SmithG’nell SmithAmy ConnorAngela LeeCraig TownsBecca KahnLeary Kelly

Susan SheltonAnnie HardingAshley MengerBetty EdmondBeverly BarrettBob SlaughterBobbie MooreBrianne HavensCandace WendtCarolyn FlemingCassie MulderCharlotte KeithGunnar HedmanHigh Hope RanchHillton LindleyJennifer BalkanJessica ShipleyZachary MartinJohn FoxworthJohn R RipleyJohn WalewskiJoshua DilworthJoy Henderson

-------------- Our Newest Invested Owners 2/13/08 – 4/10/08 ------------Kristin JohnsonLaura S FowlerM Ryan KimbroMargaret Darby Margaret DoanMarques JohnsMartha RogersMeredith KuchonMichelle ValekMonica GaudinNancy KnightNara TakakawaNicol SchrinerRachel ZierzowSaro HelpinstillVera StoynovaRachelle AdamsReagan TaylorRebecca CohenPhilip BenavidesRebecca OdumPatrick BartelAddie Broussard

Ana KlausmannAndrea BasinskiAndrij BamberCharles CrawfordAndrew TownsendChristina BilliotChristina CastilloChristine ParejaCristin KroegerDaneen MachicekElizabeth MelvinJessica W BrownPeter EschbacherMatthew DurtceeMatthew JasekPiret Sari – TateBridgett WallaceCandace McgriffyLiliana HashemianRobyn S CloughleyRyan Mc ReynoldsSandra Y MendezSarah Blanchard

Wheatsville Member DirectoryCommunity Service Organizations

Action For Animals Animal rights is alive in Austin!Timothy 879-7437 www.actionforanimalsaustin.org ___________________________________Crossings Care Circle Information for families about in-home after-death care & alternatives to the funeral industry. www.crossingscircle.org.___________________________________Dress for Success Austin Provides free interview suits to referredlow income job-seeking women 916-4322. www.dressforsuccess.org___________________________________EarthSave, Promoting food choices that benefit health for all life. Stormi27(at)aol.com___________________________________ Front Lion Organization Frontline action projects for cultural & communi-ty awareness. Dianah Birdsong 803-5873 myspace.com/frontlionorg___________________________________GreenGirls.net women who care deeply about our environment. . Be part of ournetwork and have fun being powerful together. www.greengirls.net___________________________________The Inside Books Project All-volunteer non-profit which sends free literature &educational materials to Texas prisoners. 647-4803. insidebooksproject(at)yahoo.com___________________________________SAY NO TO GMOs Grassroots education, activities & resources for con-sumer choice & genetically viable future 303-1400 www.saynotogmos.org___________________________________Rainforest Partnership an Austin-based nonprofit focused on pre-serving tropical rainforests www.rainforestpartnership.org ___________________________________TexPIRG, Texas Public Interest Research Group Austin-basedconsumer and environmental advocacy www.texpirg.org ___________________________________Vegans Rock Austin! Austin vegan community organization/site.Ross Abel 477-4912 Here to rock. www.veganaustin.org___________________________________Vegetarian Network of Austin Resources, info,contacts, fun. 896-5018 www.vegnetaustin.org___________________________________YELLOW BIKE PROJECT Urban free bike program. Bikes recy-cled. Donations accepted.457-9880 www.austinyellowbike.org

Are you our MySpace friend? http://myspace.com/wheatsvillecoop

(Check out our videos! We've uploaded two of our television commercials including one from a few years ago featuring our friend Toni Price!)

We Wanna Adopt

Your MacGot an old G4, G5,iMac or iBook sit-

ting around since you got your IntelMac? We would appreciate the dona-tion of iMacs, G5s, G4s, or peripheralslike DVD Burners, LCD monitors, laserprinters, USB printers, or externalfirewire hard drives, etc. We can’t offeryou a tax-deduction but you will defi-nitely amass some good karma. CallAldia at 478-2667 or email her ataldia(at)wheatsville.coop to place yourMac in a loving home.

We Wanna Adopt Your PCs,too! Our PC guy says we could use afew speedy PC laptops. Email him atit(at)wheatsville.coop.

Kay Lynn McnabbJulie Vander-PloegDirk Vander-Ploeg Genevieve E DavisDorothy N ScurryGregory TenenbownShannon HonigblumShannon Leigh KempStephanie SavageMark Rayner DickeyStephni M DemarestBratten ThomasonCelia Campos-OrtizXochitl GostomskiVirgilio AltamiranoRegina Mullen BarnesJavier Toribio GarzaJoann AssawamatiyanoutNathaniel R Ben-AttarAnne-Charlotte Patterson

DEAR WONDERFUL WHEATSVILLIANS,Paul & I want to thank you so

much for everything you did to hostand support the blood drive. Theblood drive was great in so manyways-including boosting Paul’s spirits.Seeing people help and give bloodbrought a good feeling of support.The event also raised awareness

and also donations to Paul’s fundto help with expenses. We aregrateful for that! Thank you.Paul’s Austin doctor recommended

he be seen at MD Anderson inHouston. We are there now. We areglad that he is being seen at MDAnderson. Thank you again!Susannah Erler & Paul Holman

TToo DDaann,, AAllddiiaa,, JJuuddiitthh,, TTaammmmyy,, KKiimm,, SShhaannee,, AAlllleenn,, aanndd EEvveerryyoonnee!!


make ends meet. When asked how much they wouldneed to be able to send their kids to school (not toomuch to ask), they say they would need $400 amonth, twice what they make now.

This sounds like a lot, but it would cost con-sumers very little. The farmers’ problem – and their

opportunity – is that they are at the far end of along, long chain. Coffee beans are typically soldto beneficios – coffee processing plants thatremove the coffee bean from the fruity berry,strip off the hulls, and dry the beans for trans-port. The beneficios ship the coffee in 100-pound sacks to roasters, most of which are asso-ciated with the Costa Rican elite or largetransnationals. The roasters, packers, whole-salers, and retailers all get their cuts. Americanconsumers buy their coffee beans at $8 a pound;only about $1 of that finds its way back to thefarmer.

So the math is simple: Instead of $1 perpound, farmers need $2. The total cost needs toincrease from $8 a pound to $9 a pound. Byincreasing the retail price of organic coffee by 12percent, we could provide a decent life for

Central American coffee farmers, even if every-one else kept the same cut.

But it may be easier than that. Many Austin cof-fee houses roast their owncoffee, taking “green” beansin exactly the form theycome from the beneficios.Many of the beneficios areco-ops, and take a minimalprofit. If the coffee housecould deal directly with thebeneficio, we need notinclude the cuts for the roast-er, packer, and wholesaler.That means cheaper coffee,or more for the farmer, or

both.Perhaps more important, it also means the coffee

is no longer anonymous. If there’s a quality problem,the coffee house/roaster doesn’t take it up with atransnational conglomerate that has completely losttrack of its sources. Instead, they deal directly withthe farmers who produced the coffee. For the firsttime, consumers can learn about the soil, the water,the air, the biodiversity, the surrounding forest. Theycan learn about the farmers themselves: Whetherthey make enough to care for their families and whathappens to their children. Some won’t care, but somewill. Some will even pay a premium for the “story,”cherishing the lack of anonymity.

If we just learn more about where our producecomes from, we can do much to support a sustainablelivelihood for people here in Latin America and else-where. Indirectly, we’ll be supporting the health andpreservation of the environment and the forests thatare important for all of us and for the planet.

Niyanta Spelman is the executive director of RainforestPartnership (www.rainforestpartnership.org), an Austin-based nonprofit that works with local communities in LatinAmerica to protect tropical rainforests from deforestation.Niyanta is traveling through Central and South Americato identify partner communities, and wrote this articlewhile living near Turrialba, Costa Rica. You can reachNiyanta at niyanta(at)rainforestpartnership.org.

None but the best-informed North American coffeedrinkers were aware of it, but the international coffeemarket was hit by a tidal wave in 2001. That’s whenlarge quantities of raw beans – “green” beans, readyfor roasting – began to come out of Vietnam.

Vietnam had been a big producer until the 1950s,when war with the United States reduced pro-duction to minimal levels. But when the U.S. –by far the world’s biggest coffee market – liftedtrade sanctions and normalized diplomatic rela-tions in 1995, the stage was set. Vietnam’s pro-duction tripled in three years, and the interna-tional market was flooded with cheap Robusta.Raw coffee prices dropped by almost 50 percent.

That change in US policy probably wasundertaken without much thought for theeffects it might have on other coffee-producingcountries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.Certainly few American consumers knew any-thing about it, or recognized its ramifications.But the effects were enormous. By 2001, farmersin Costa Rica and elsewhere in the CentralAmerica couldn’t sell their coffee for enough toeven meet their production costs.

The Central Americans faced two major dis-advantages. First, Central American coffee farms aremostly hilly; coffee must be picked by hand. (Some ofthe hills are so steep that coffee pickers dangle from arope to reach the beans.) In contrast, the farms ofVietnam (and, for that matter, Brazil, still the world’sbiggest producer) are mostly flat. That means coffeecan be picked more quickly by hand, and in manycases can be picked by machines. Second, wage ratesin Vietnam are about one-tenth the wage rates inCentral America.

Some Costa Rican farmers tried switching toorganic production, hoping that the premium fororganic coffee would help cover their costs. Somesucceeded, but others found that the premium (about$20 per 100-pound sack of unroasted beans), whencombined with the overall drop in price, wasn’tenough. Some farmers just let the coffee rot in thefields; it wasn’t worth the expense to hire coffee pick-ers. Many farmers aban-doned coffee entirely andturned their land intopasture, instead. Dairyand beef markets may beless lucrative, but theywere a lot more stable.And cows are easier tolook after than coffeeplants.

Despite the enor-mous drop in price, manycoffee farmers hang on bytheir fingernails. Coffeefarming has been in thefamily for decades; orthey don’t know how toproduce anything else; or,despite the price drop, cof-fee remains their best cashcrop. The key to making money in the current marketis to maintain yields at the highest, possible amounts.The quality of the coffee is secondary; most roasterscombine coffee from so many farms and regions thatthe quality of any given farmer’s product is unimpor-tant. Yield is everything. (One exception: growers ofJamaican Blue Mountain coffee largely avoided thetrauma, mostly because of the loyalty of Japanese cof-fee drinkers.)

Yield and the “dirty dozen”The pursuit of high yield has resulted in high andincreasing use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.So the field – ordinarily full of all kinds of life, frommicrobes to trees – is effectively dead, except for theone plant that brings in income. This appears to beentirely typical of Costa Rican farming for all kinds ofcrops. Got snails? Use a molluskicide. Insects still eat-ing your crop? Switch to a more potent insecticide.Just like Western medicine, some chemical additivewill fix whatever ails you. And don’t bother with pre-vention; it’s faster and easier to solve the problemsafter they arise.

Here’s another indication of the use of chemi-cals. Recently, we drove across Costa Rica to a farmin the southeast, near the Osa Peninsula. We passeddozens of towns in all kinds of rural areas – alongmountain ridges and in high valleys. Every town wewent through had a chemical distributor, and the

distributor was usually the biggest store in town.The chemicals are freely available – with inadequatelabeling, inadequate education inuse, and substantial incentives tothe sales staff to sell just as much asthey can.

If consumers demanded organ-ic produce – or at least a reductionin pesticide and herbicide use –farmers would adapt. But theincentives all work the other way.With a few exceptions, nobodyknows or cares about the condi-tions under which coffee and simi-lar products are grown, and theonly issue is the yield per hectare. Organic produceis imperfect, thus harder to sell and often worth lessthan those laden with chemicals. Chemical inputs

are expensive,but low yieldsand hard-to-sell produceare even moreso.

A visit toa pesticidestore inTurrialba for acloser lookshowed thelarge storelined withcustomers aswell as sale ofpesticides thatare bannedelsewhere andincluding

some of the “dirty dozen” – the persistent organicpesticides that have been banned by internationalconvention.

A living wage for $1 a poundVietnam was able toundercut other pro-ducers because wagesare so much lowerthere, but we’re nottalking about bigsalaries. A Vietnamesecoffee picker getsabout $1.50 a day,compared to $16 aday in Costa Rica.Even the small farm-ers who grow organic,fair trade coffeearound Turrialba,Costa Rica only makeabout $200 a month –barely enough to

It’s 8 AM, Do You Know Where Your Coffee Came From?story and photos by Niyanta Spelman, Rainforest Partnership

None of the bulk coffeethat Wheatsville sells issourced from Vietnam.Almost all the coffee isOrganic and Fair-Trade

certified.

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Abandoned coffee farm turned to pasture with nitrogen fixingtrees remaining

Sun grown coffee plantations around Turrialba


The Heart ConnectionEicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid(DHA) are the more complex forms of omega-3 fatty acidsthat are found in fish and shellfish. Our bodies can makethese forms in a limited amount from the alpha-linolenic acidwe consume, but this conversion can be hampered by a diethigh in saturated and trans fat. A diet that is too high inomega-6 fatty acids can also interfere.

EPA and DHA are the forms of omega-3 fatty acidsfrom seafood that are recommended by the American HeartAssociation (AHA) for the protective heart benefits that theymay provide. The AHA recommends two servings of fattyfish per week.

Saturated fatsThis kind of fat can raise cholesterol levels, increasing heartdisease risk. Saturated fats are found mainly in fatty meat anddairy products such as full fat milk, butter, andcheese. They are also found in bakedgoods, cookies, and snacks. In general,these fats are solid at room temperature.

Tropical Time OutCoconut, palm kernel, and palm oils areoften referred to as tropical oils, becauseof the temperate region of the worldwhere they originate. Unlike other plantoils, these are predominantly made up ofsaturated fatty acids. Coconut oil contains92 percent saturated fatty acids, palm ker-nel oil contains 82 percent, and palm oilhas 50 percent. Compare this with olive oil(14 percent), canola oil (6 percent), or soy-bean oil (15 percent).

Trans fatty acidsTrans fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acidsthat have been processed with additionalhydrogen atoms, forcing the unsaturatedfatty acids to become more like saturatedfats: solid at room temperature, resistant torancidity, and able to raise blood choles-terol levels, even more readily than saturat-ed fat.

Trans fatty acids are found in partiallyhydrogenated vegetable oils, shortening,cakes, pies, and cookies, snack foods, friedfoods, and solid stick margarine.

Natural Trans FatsRuminant animals (for example, cattle, sheep, and goats) havea four-chambered stomach, in which trans fat productionoccurs naturally. Small amounts of trans fatty acids are pres-ent in the fat of foods from these animals: dairy products,beef, lamb, and goat meat.

What About Cholesterol?Cholesterol is an important part of every cell membrane.While not technically a fat, it is in the lipid family, whichincludes fatty acids. Our bodies make enough cholesterol tomeet our needs, even if we never eat any.

Even though saturated andtrans fats may have a greater role inraising cholesterol levels, eating toomuch cholesterol in your diet alsocontributes to high blood choles-terol levels. High blood cholesterollevels can lead to heart disease andstroke because of the fattybuildup of cholesterol depositson artery walls.

For people without heart dis-ease or other risk factors, the

American Heart Association andother national health organizations

recommend a limit of 300 milligramsof cholesterol a day.If you have an elevated LDL-choles-

terol level, diabetes, high blood pressure, orother heart- or artery-related disease, a lower level of

200 mg a day is recommended.Because cholesterol is produced in the liver, choles-

terol is found only in foods of animal origin, such asmeat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products. Cholesterolis never found naturally in plant foods, but it can beadded. For example, potatoes are naturally cholesterol-free, but if potatoes are made into chips and then fried inlard, the chips will contain cholesterol from the lard.

How Much Oil?Eating the right amount of the right kinds of oils is thegoal. For a person who requires 2,000 calories a day, thelatest guidelines recommend 6 teaspoons of oils fromplant and fish sources each day. (Step 2 of Better Eating forLife explains how much oil is recommended for your per-sonal calorie level.)

Recommended sources of unsaturated liquid oilsinclude canola, corn, olive, soybean, and sunflower oil;foods such as nuts, olives, some fish, and avocados; andfoods that are composed mainly of oil including mayon-naise, most salad dressings, and soft tub or spray mar-garine.

The table below gives the oil content of some com-mon high-oil foods.

Fats ForwardThe following steps provide ideas for meals and snacksthat are delicious and move your fat intake into a healthfulbalance. Eating too much of any kind of fat, even if it’sheart-healthy, will cause added weight gain and increasethe related risk factors for chronic disease.

• To keep your daily oil intake on target, choose often foodsthat are naturally low in saturated fat, such as fruits and veg-etables; whole grains and foods made from grains like cereals,rice, and pasta; vegetarian protein sources such as tofu, tem-peh, and veggie burgers; low fat or fat free dairy products;lean fish and shellfish; nuts, beans, and peas.

Step TenMake Friends withFatI find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. –From“Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman

Trans fat, tropical oils, cholesterol – eat it or not?Thinking about fats and oils can be very confusing.

Fat, especially when in the form of healthful liq-uid oils, is as essential to a healthy eating plan as pro-tein or carbohydrate. Our bodies need a certainamount of fat to function normally and to absorband transport the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and Kas well as health-protective plant compounds such ascarotenoids (i.e. beta-carotene, lycopene, and lutein).

Fats are also part of every cell membrane in ourbody. They are crucial for a healthy immune system;they play a role in the regulation of inflammation,blood pressure, and blood clotting, cholesterolmetabolism, and body organ insulation. They areimportant for the proper development of the brain,nervous system, and vision.

For good health, the 2005 Dietary Guidelinesfor Americans recommend specific daily intakes forunsaturated liquid oils because of their heart- andhealth-protective benefits.

In addition, the guidelines recommend limitingsolid fats in the diet because they contain moreartery-clogging saturated fats and/or trans fats thanoils. Solid fats are saturated fats and trans fats, whichtend to stay firm at room temperature. These fatstend to raise undesirable low-density lipoprotein(LDL)-cholesterol levels in the blood, which, in turn,increases the risk for heart disease.

Fats and Oils 101Monounsaturated OilsThis healthful group includes olive, canola, peanut,and avocado oils and the oils found in nuts. Researchhas shown that replacing solid fats with monounsatu-rated oils can help to lower undesirable LDL-choles-terol levels.

Polyunsaturated OilsPolyunsaturated oils include those made from soy-beans, corn, safflower, sunflower, and other nuts andseeds as well as those from fish. Like monounsaturat-ed oils, replacing solid fats with these oils can help toreduce cholesterol levels. But unlike mono’s, polyun-saturated oils also provide essential fatty acids that wemust obtain from our diet, since they are indispensa-ble to our health, and our body cannot create them.

There are two types of these essential fatty acids:linoleic acid (omega-6) and alpha-linolenic acid(omega-3). Alpha-linolenic acid is found in plantfoods, such as soybean and canola oils, flax, hemp,and walnuts. Linoleic acid is found in soybean, corn,sunflower, and safflower oils, whole grains, beans,and walnuts.

Better Eating for Life An easy, step-by-step guide to your best nutritional health ever!by Mary Saucier Choate, M.S., R.D., L.D., Food and Nutrition Educator Co-op Food Stores, Hanover and Lebanon, NH

Better Eating for Life seeks to help you move toward a whole-foods eating style, not out ofdrudgery or a sense of restriction, but from a joyous discovery of delicious foods that are adelight to eat, as well as a boon to good health.

This program provides gentle, accurate guidance to improving your meal and snackchoices and your level of physical activity. It is not intended to substitute for the expertise andadvice of your personal healthcare provider. Please discuss any decisions you make about dietor exercise with your own healthcare provider, who knows your health and medical historyintimately and can best advise you on your proper course of action.

My goal is to provide credible nutrition information in a lively way that is immediatelyuseful to the reader. Quick tips abound, easy recipes follow most steps, and the use of jargonis avoided. The series is based upon the latest nutrition guidelines: the 2005 DietaryGuidelines for Americans, the MyPyramid Food Guidance System, and information fromhealth organizations such as the American Institute for Cancer Research, the American HeartAssociation, the American Diabetes Association, and the American Dietetic Association.

I hope that whether you are an interested consumer, a parent, a healthcare professional,a nutrition educator, or just a casual recipe hunter, you will find something of value to helpmove you, and those with whom you share these ideas, toward a healthier eating style andactive life.

Oil Content of Selected Foods

*Avocados are part of the fruit group; nuts and seeds are part of the meat andbeans group. These choices provide servings from both oils and the additional foodgroup at the same time.


• Include two or more meals of fatty fish in your dieteach week such as salmon, mackerel, and herring.

• Choose walnuts as a snack several times per week.

• Add a teaspoon or two of flaxseed oil on salads.Flaxseed oil and good balsamic vinegar make a greatdressing! The flaxseed oil has a delicious nutty taste.

• Sprinkle one or two teaspoons of ground flaxseed onhot breakfast cereal, or blend into a fruit smoothie.

• Use the Nutrition Facts label to find products with theleast amount of harmful saturated fat and trans fatgrams. For products that contain less than 0.5 g of totalfat in a serving, manufacturers may state “0g” of trans fator “not a significant source of trans fat.”

• Try using heart-healthy monounsaturated fats such asolive, canola, and peanut oils in cooking.

• Select a liquid or tub margarine that has water or liquidvegetable oil as the first ingredient, no trans fat, and 2grams or less of saturated fat.

• Scan the ingredient labels of packaged foods to findproducts made with healthful oils.

♥ Avoid or limit foods and ingredients that are high insaturated fat such as whole milk; cream; regular icecream; full-fat cheese; bakery goods; saturated oils likecoconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil; high-fatprocessed meats like sausage, bologna, salami, and hotdogs; fatty red meats that aren’t trimmed; and solid fatslike shortening, regular stick margarine, butter, and lard.

• Keep track of the fat you eat for a few days to be sureyou are on the right track with your total fat intake.

“Good for You” RecipesFeaturing Healthful OilsGive these recipes a try to expand your oils repertoire.

Tangy Citrus-Cran Flax MuffinsServes 12

Ground flaxseed is used in this recipe, but don’t stop here. It makesa delicious topping on hot or cold cereal and on salads.

1 cup cranberries, coarsely chopped1/4 cup sugar1 1/2 cups orange juice, divided2 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour1/2 cup milled flaxseed1/2 cup sugar2 tsp. baking powder1 tsp. baking soda1/2 tsp. salt1 tsp. orange peel, grated1 egg, beaten1/4 cup canola oil

In a medium bowl, combine beaten egg, oil, orange juice,and 1/4 cup sugar. Gently fold in cranberries. Set aside.In a large bowl, mix together flour, milled flaxseed, 1/2cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and orangepeel. Pour liquid mixture into dry ingredients. Stir untilingredients are just moistened. Do not over-mix. Fillmuffin cups 3/4 full. Bake at 375oF for 30-35 minutes.

Per muffin: 242 calories, 5 g protein, 6 g fat, 42 g carbohydrate,245 mg sodium, 18 mg cholesterol

E-Z Olive Tapenade Serves 4

1/2 cup pitted and finely chopped green or black olives1 Tbs. capers2 anchovy fillets (optional)freshly ground black pepper1 tsp. olive oil

Mash all of the ingredients together to form a paste.Spread on toasty whole grain bread slices.

Per 2 Tbs. serving: 30 calories, 0 g protein, 3 g fat, 1 g carbohy-drate, 226 mg sodium, 0 mg cholesterol

Poached Salmon with GreensServes 4

1 lb. salmon fillets 1-1/2 cups water 1/2 cup dry white wine or water 2 green onions, sliced 1 bay leaf 1/2 package of frozen no-salt-added choppedspinach,

or Swiss chard1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg 1/4 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese Freshly ground black pepper Lemon slices (optional)

Cut salmon into four pieces, rinse, and pat dry. Setaside. In a large skillet, over high heat, combinewater, wine, green onions, and bay leaf. When mix-ture begins to simmer, gently add salmon, andreturn to a simmer. Then cover, and let cook for 8to 10 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork.Remove fish.

Meanwhile, cook spinach according to packagedirections. Drain well in a colander. Place in a smallbowl, sprinkle with nutmeg, mix in cheese.

Preheat broiler. Place fish on the well-oiledrack of an unheated broiler pan. Top with spinach-nutmeg-cheese mixture, and season with pepper.Broil four inches from the heat for 1 to 2 minutes,until cheese melts. Garnish with lemon slices.

Per serving (1/4 pound fillet and 1/4 cup spinach mixture):190 calories, 27 g protein, 8 g fat, 2 g carbohydrate, 1 mgsodium, 47 mg cholesterol.

Tuna and Walnut MeltServes 4

1 6-oz. can tuna in water, drained1/2 cup chopped apple1/4 cup nonfat plain yogurt1 Tbs. chopped green onion1 tsp. Dijon mustard 1/2 tsp. curry powder4 slices whole wheat bread, toasted4 Tbs. chopped walnuts, toasted4 -1oz. slices reduced fat cheddar cheese

Combine tuna, chopped apple, yogurt, green onion,Dijon mustard and curry powder.

Spread about 1/2 cup of the mixture on eachslice of bread; sprinkle with 1 tablespoon walnuts.Top with cheese slices. Broil 5 inches from heatuntil cheese is melted, about 2-3 minutes.

Per serving: 262 calories, 25 g protein, 8 g fat, 24 g carbohy-drate, 559 mg sodium, 26 mg cholesterol.

Sweet Pepper-Walnut Dip Makes 1-1/2 cups

1 small jar red bell peppers2 Tbs. fine unseasoned dry breadcrumbs2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil1-1/2 Tbs. grated onion 1 Tbs. lemon juice1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste1/4 tsp. ground cumin 1/4 tsp. sugar 1/8-1/4 tsp. cayenne pepperPinch of ground cloves 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts 1 Tbs. pine nuts, toasted, for garnish

To make Dip:Coarsely chop the peppers. You should have about1 cup. Combine the rest of the ingredients in afood processor until smooth. (Some of the walnutscan be added after blending, if some texture isdesired.) The dip should have a cake batter consis-tency. If too thick, blend in some hot water, a tea-spoon at a time. If too thin, add more bread-crumbs. Transfer to a serving bowl. Garnish withpine nuts if desired.

Serve with whole grain crackers or pita crisps

Per tablespoon of dip: 51 calories, 1 g protein, 5 g fat, 2 gcarbohydrate, 54 mg sodium, 0 mg cholesterol.

Making Friends with Fat onthe Web Essential Fatty Acids in Vegetarian NutritionThis well-researched article explains specific strategiesvegetarians may wish to consider to optimize their essen-tial fatty acid intake. www.andrews.edu/NUFS/essential-fat.htm

The Flax Council of Canada provides flax nutritioninformation, tips, and recipes. www.flaxcouncil.ca

The International Olive Oil CouncilLearn all about olive oil, how it is made and graded, andhow to use it. www.internationaloliveoil.org

The American Heart Association (AHA) recommendseating fish two times per week as a good source of pro-tein without the high saturated fat found in fatty meatproducts. Read more about the potential heart benefits offatty fish.http://216.185.112.5/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4632

USDA Study Shows Trans-Fatty Acid is Non-Detectable in Peanut ButterWhile hydrogenated fat is an ingredient in some commer-cial brands, the amount found was insignificant.www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2001/010612.htm

Cookbooks featuring Omega-3 andMonounsaturated Fats • The Mediterranean Heart Diet: How It Works and How to

Reap the Health Benefits, with Recipes to Get You Started byHelen V. Fisher with Cynthia Thomson, Ph.D., R.D.

• Seafood Twice a Week by Evie Hansen• The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen: Meat-Free, Egg-Free, Dairy-

Free Dishes from the Healthiest Place Under the Sun byDonna Klein

• The Flavors of Olive Oil: A Tasting Guide and Cookbook byDeborah Krasner

• Cucina Fresca; Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style; CucinaRustica all by Viana La Place

We published Step One of Better Eating for Life starting in the January, 2007 issue of our membernewsletter, the Wheatsville Breeze, and we will print the next eleven steps, one in each issue.

Copyright © 2006 by the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, Inc. Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 Allrights reserved. Better Eating for Life logo by Katie Cahill

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