Camas Food Co-op

Submit your creative designs and your art could grace the pages of important Co-op Documents and lead others towards the rewards of shopping at the future Co-op store front! Your design ideas will act as part of the Co-ops image in the greater community. What do you want people to think of when they see the Camas Food Co-ops logo? Spring, summer, fun, fresh, local foods? We hope your designs will make others feel welcomed and happy to come to our community owned grocery store! A brief history of the Cooperatives name choice: Michelle chose the name Camas Food Co-op for it’s clarity but also because as a CHS grad and having a strong Native American heritage she liked the idea of keeping some local history in the Cooperatives name. The Camas Lily has an edible bulb in the earth’s soil that the native tribes use to depend on as a food source. There are beautiful lily fields around the city of Camas that turn a wonderful lavender in early spring! Michelle found the idea of naming a healthy foods grocery store not only after the town it will reside in but also after a highly traditional food source of the areas earliest habitants who had a deep respect for our earth and helped Lewis and Clark on their voyage as a strong metaphor steep in history that will also at as an educational tool. The Deadline for submissions will be three weeks from today, July 29th 2010 by midnight! Thank you for submitting your ideas. If you don’t feel art inclined but would like to be involved, please e-mail Michelle at michweek@aol.com to gain a position on a five person logo panel who’ll sift through the submissions and decided on the final logo design!

That’s right! Potluck Thursdays will be the last Thursday of each month. Due to tight scheduling, this months potlucks is actually on July 1st. (Or June 31st if you will) We’ll have guest speaker Marjorie Casswell speak with us at 7:30pm on some of Vancouver Food Coopertative’s hurdles and accomplishments at the potluck. She’ll be around after words for some Q&A time. Please welcome her to the great community of Camas with us! This months potluck will be held in the great outdoors so that we can better enjoy our summer weather. We’ll be at Crown Park starting at 7pm. Please bring the whole family! We’d love to meet you all!! Potluck Thursdays are our way of facilitating community building through the co-op. We realized that not everyone wanted to be apart of the business aspects of the Camas Food Co-op, but are interested in it’s development. We welcome your involvement and questions through this informal function. Potluck Thursdays are excellent opportunities for you to keep abreast of our evolution and accomplishments. A few announcments: Co-op Leadership meetings will now become Bi-weekly events, still located at the Camas Friends Church at 7pm. Which Thursdays has yet to be determined. Michelle Week recently received a call from the Post Record. Look for the Camas Food Co-op in the June 29th publication of the Post Record!! The Pedalpalooza ride was very fun! We had three Portlanders ride with Michelle and Trevor to Camas and back. We made a stop at Camas Bikes & Sport and Piccolo Paradisio Cafe. We then made a quick little tour of downtown Camas. We enjoyed ourselves and hope that next year we’ll have an ever greater turn out! The Camas Food Co-op unfortunately had no presence at the Farmer’s Market this last Wednesday. Michelle became ill and could not attend. We hope that this next Wednesday will not turn out the same way, if you would like to volunteer for a two hour time slot please contact Michelle at Michweek@aol.com and check out the volunteer opportunities tab for additional information. The Co-op is now officially registered as an association with the State of Washington! Enjoy the sun!

This last week has been hectic, but very productive! I’m so happy to see many people attending our now weekly meetings! We are starting to get more organized and moving forward quickly. We are in need of some items. If you have them, please consider donating to the Camas Food Co-op. We would really like to have an old wood framed window to use as the Co-ops Sign, hanging it from the canopy tent that the co-op occupies at the Farmer’s Market. We would also like to have an A-board designed using old plywood and reused hinges. Another thing to consider to help the Co-op out would to join the Azure drop in Camas. E-mail Minda@eatwellbewell.net to get the drops route numbers. You’ll need them to make sure your order makes it to the right place. We would like to eventually transition the Azure Drop into a distributorship, which would allow us to make a profit off the orders which we would then funnel into the Co-ops needed capitol for opening the store front. We won’t be able to convert to a distributorship until August, but at current order levels we’d only be making $8… we’d like to make a little more money to justify becoming a distributorship. When we do become an Azure Standard Distributor we’ll be in need of more volunteers to help sort the orders for people to pick up, as everything will be coming in bulk sacks instead of individually packed as they come now. So by ordering more we can also cut back on trash! Make sure to look for the Co-op every week at the Healthy Living Ed. Booth at the Farmer’s Market, 3pm to 7pm on Wednesdays. And remember, the Co-op has weekly meetings at the Camas Friends Church starting at 7pm on Thursdays.

Dear Future Co-op Members, We are happy to announce that we will be hosting our second community meeting and the first of the Camas Co-op Planning Meetings! Please invite your friends and join us: Thursday 6/3/10, 7-8pm Camas Friends Church, 1004 NE 4th Ave. Camas, WA 98607 We will be meeting in the Sanctuary (enter through the double doors on 4th Ave.) During this meeting, we will be creating subcommittees to facilitate the planning of the Co-op and to get you all involved in this process. These subcommittees will focus in the areas of Operational Planning, Finance and Membership. Please see the posted agenda under the ‘Meetings’ Page for further details. We’ll also be conducting a plate & utensil supply drive for use during potlucks and future meetings. Bring your unwanted dish ware and silverware to the meeting and donate it for use by Camas Food Co-op! We hope to see you there, with your thinking caps on and motivated to get this project moving forwards! See you there, Rosie Platt & Michelle Week P.S. Big thanks to the Farmer’s Market Staff & Board! What a great event, even with all the rain! I now have two official volunteer opportunities for those of you who are interested. There will be two shifts at the Healthy Living Booth inside the Farmer’s Market. One will be the opening shift from 2:45 pm to 5:30, the second is the closing shift, 5:30 pm to 7:45 pm. E-mail me for more details! Also don’t forget about the Last Sundays Film showing this Sunday, May 30, 2010 @ 6:30pm. It’ll be all about Co-ops! See you there, Michelle Week

Welcome to the Camas Food Co-ops webpage. I hope this page will be informative, useful and keep you excited to be apart of this growing community run co-op! Please check out the ‘About’ tab to learn more about the Co-ops Visions, Values and Goals, these aren’t set in stone. Since the Co-op is community owned and governed you’ll all have a say on the changes and growth of the Co-op when you become member-owners. If you’d like to sign up for the Camas Food Co-op Newsletter please send me an e-mail at Michelle@camascoop.com. You can also visit the Camas Food Co-op on Facebook and Twitter, links located to the right. Eventually I’ll have a Calendar to the right that will allow you to view upcoming co-op events. Untill then I’ll just list them here: May 26th 3-7:30pm Opening Day! Camas Farmer’s Market Healthy Living Educational Booth, Stop by and say ‘hi’ and then go support our local farmers and producers! There are so many yummy things to be had! 600 block of NE Fourth Avenue, between NE Everett and NE Franklin Camas, Wa 98607 May 30th 6:30pm ‘Last Sunday Film Showing’ at the Camas Friends Church, Come by and watch a few shorts on Co-ops and share in the following discussion about the Camas Food Co-ops roles in it’s community! 1004 Northeast 4th Avenue Camas, WA 98607 June 1st 6pm ‘Co-ops 101′ at People’s Food Co-op, Join me and other interested folks at this workshop to learn how to get a food co-op started and the available resources we’ll need to get the Camas Food Co-op up and running. 3029 Southeast 21st Avenue Portland, OR 97202 June 22nd ‘Camas 2 PDX’ Pedalpalooza Ride!! Come ride with me from the Gateway Transit Center, across the 205 bridge and along scenic Old Evergreen Hwy to downtown Camas. After a stop for treats and touring, we’ll take one last deep breath of the paper mill and then ride back! 30 mile round trip with a few intermediate hills. Dress up in paper showing your Camas pride and rock the world of motorists all along the way! Gateway/NE 99th Ave Transit Center Portland, Or 97220 As you can see I have many events coming up and as much as I would like to hold another community gathering to discuss the co-op, I just don’t have the time! Early June appears to be the soonest that I can schedule another meeting. I hope you all can stay exited that long! A Co-op Progress Report will soon be generated and e-mailed so you all know what’s been done and what the next steps are. Thanks you for visiting the Webpage! Have a wonderful Day! Michelle Week