After another meeting this week to get the envisioned Delridge Produce Co-op further down the road to reality, Galena White shares how it went, including word of a possible produce source, and a search for entertainment experts! Read on for Galena’s full report:

The most exciting part of this meeting was the appearance and interest of Minh Chau Le, from Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch Program. She is interested in providing a regular and easily-accessible sales outlet to the small farmers of the P-Patches; especially from Marra Farm, the new large P-Patch. Delridge Produce Co-operative could send a van to the neighborhood once or more a week to purchase produce from the farmers, and the farmers would be able to remove themselves from the sales aspect of farming. This arrangement has the potential to be *highly* beneficial to all parties.

We also had three new volunteers show up, one of whom can provide free printing services to the co-op, which will make a lot of things much easier – Thank You, John! To Ranette and Brian: Welcome!

We talked about our plan for getting the co-op off the ground. We need to hold an event to get the community involved and garner volunteers, and that event will come in the form of a Produce Partners Potluck, which we plan to have somewhere around the last week of March. Once we have many more volunteers, we will immediately begin an intensive survey of the neighborhood to determine who is willing to participate, what kind of produce they want, and how much they want. Hopefully, the surveying can be accomplished within a few weeks of the potluck, and it will be time to spend money. We will be applying for grants, but the money for the pilot project (like a Mobile Market) will probably come from Delridge residents. The pilot project may be limited in span to a few weeks, or we may attempt to make it sustainable; but the point is to find out how a produce co-op could work on Delridge. The pilot project may transform easily into a storefront, with the investment of just a few thousand dollars more. The information that we collect from the pilot project will allow us to stand on much firmer ground when asking the community for more money. Upon this reinforcement, we will be ready to open a storefront.

Next week on Tuesday the 24th at West Seattle Library (2306 42nd Ave SW) at 6:30 pm we will be having our Potluck Planning Ponder to figure out what activities should be at our free community event. We need people to show up who know about entertainment, or have skills or talents that they would like to showcase. We’d love to have teens show up, perhaps to host a quiz show or recite poetry; so tell your kids to come spend the evening at the library!