Casterbridge Food Co-op launches at last!

It was a big night on Thursday, for me at least. Regular readers might remember that I first tried to start a food co-operative about a year and a half ago. The concept of going straight to a wholesaler to buy (mainly) dry goods really appealed to me, since five minutes' research convinced me that I could convert more of the family shop to organic produce and save a little money in one swell foop. Not to mention slapping it up the big boys' bottoms. I had half a dozen people who seemed interested and, so convinced was I that the idea was a good one, I decided to hold a first meeting using nothing more than word of mouth to attract members. An evening spent sitting on my own in the pub soon taught me otherwise!

A year later I tried again, this time appealing to the mailing list of Transition Town Dorchester – people who are environmentally aware and therefore more likely to have thought about how their food is produced, and also substantially less fond of supermarkets. Feeling a bit nervous this time, I called a second 'first' meeting. I brought along six cucumbers to give away to the first six bums on seats, since I needed six households to make the idea work, and hoped I hadn't brought too many. As it turned out, I would have needed twenty-three cucumbers.*

It took taken a few months to jump through the flaming hoops of bureaucracy, but on Thursday it was finally time to take delivery of our first order. I am now the proud owner of enough organic dry produce to substantially reduce my dependence on the supermarkets for a couple of months – another vital step towards not going there at all. So thanks to all my fellow Casterbridge Food Co-operative founders, particularly Rentman and Steve, who between them took care of placing and taking delivery of the order.



*Although knowing my luck I would have been stopped by the police and asked to explain where I was going with twenty-three large knobbly curcubits. In my life I have been stopped by the police three times, and on each occasion there has been something embarrassing for the policeman to remark upon. Why am I dressed like a Roman?(Because I went as a Viking last year.) How many cats are in that box, exactly? (Five, but I'm only going round the corner.) Why is the drunken Irishman swearing at me from your back seat dressed like a doctor? (Because he is a doctor, a senior psychiatrist in fact, and he apparently doesn't like the police very much. Might I take him home now, before he vomits over the upholstery?) You can see why I might hesitate to travel with a significant number of cucumbers.