Stumptown Coffee

A guest post from me pops:

"I don't know if you want to pay $12 per pound of coffee, but I recommend that you review Stumptown's great coffee. I have read in several places over the last few years that Stumptown - in Portland - makes the best coffee of all the "gourmet blenders". They are not big like Starbucks, and only have a few stores in that area, but they are consistently rated the best. I also found them rated tops in Consumer Reports, as I recall. I read somewhere that Portland folks will line up at length each morning just to drink Stumptown's coffee. I think they are a green company, also, and that much of their beans are free trade. If you visit their site www.stumptowncoffee.com you can read all about them. You can find their organic blends at between $12 and $13 per pound, which is high but may be worth the cost, at least for a treat." --Pappa Java

I checked out the site and found this bit: "Believing in the social, environmental, and economic benefits of sustainable business leads us to not only support coffee farms that are committed to the well being of their workers, land and water, it compels us to be a sustainable business in our own community. Providing health insurance for our employees and donating freshly roasted coffee to the Oregon Food Bank are some of the ways that we act on our belief in sustainability."

That's a lot of money for coffee, and most of us will need it shipped, but I'd gladly support these guys because of what they do.

Organic Birthday

I wrote about my wife's 30% organic shopping trip to Meijer, and yesterday was the day we celebrated by birthday and got to eat all those goodies. The breakfast was smoothies with organic yogurt, bananas, blueberries, and orange juice; and organic eggs and turkey sausage. The highlight was the organic ice cream cake (no cake mix). The crust was a layer of crushed organic chocolate cookies held together with organic unsalted butter. Then two layers of Meijer Organics ice cream of different flavors, and topped with melted organic fair trade chocolate chips. It is excellent!

Meijer has come out with their own brand of organics called Meijer Organics. All the containers have this wording: "All Meijer Organics products are made with: No artificial ingredients; minimal processing; no pesticides, antibiotics, or growth hormones; dedication to renewable farming practices." The orange juice carton I read that off of does have a USDA Organic cert stamp.

Mission Accomplished

I covered Mission Organic 2010 here, and described the mission to purchase 10% organic products by 2010. Well, my wife whipped that goal yesterday: of the 82 items purchased on her weekly Meijer grocery trip, 25 were organic for an astounding 30%!

Two of those items were organic cotton clothes, which grabbed her attention with the large "organic" sign above them, and they were on sale. It's a brand called I.W.I., which I can't for the life of me find any reference to online. The label says cut and sewn in Taiwan, and finished in China.

If she had gone to "Fresh Market" or "Whole Foods" or "Trader Joe's", you might not even be able to get under 50% organic, but we're talking Meijer in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The bill? A lot! There's no doubt we paid more for many of the organic items vs. their normal competitors. And I can't say that we'll get 30% every time from now on, as this trip was in preparation for my bday, when I will be treated to all-organic breakfast and dinner - including ice cream pie!

Mission Organic

A non-profit group called The Organic Center has launched a campaign to try to get Americans to get to 10% organic consumption by 2010. Right now, America is at about 2%, which is higher than I expected. They're calling the campaign Mission Organic 2010. Whether you pledge to or not, check out their site. It has a lot of very good information and links about organic food, including recent science on human and environmental health related to the fertilizers and pesticides used in "non-organic" food production.

I believe that knowledge is the only way to get many more people to change behaviors (buying organic as one), and The Organic Center seems to offer quite a bit. And I did check to see that it was non-profit before suggesting it.

As I mentioned before, organic products are more readily available every day. Via TreeHugger.

Organic Cotton

I don't believe one can talk about organic cotton without mentioning Patagonia. While they could never have made the conversion without the smaller companies that started the trend and the existing organic farmers, Patagonia kicked the trend into a higher gear. Since then, organic cotton has sprouted up almost everywhere you turn.

I got a very nice organic cotton blanket for my daughter from WalMart, where there is also a decent selection of organic cotton baby clothes.

One of my favorite brands, Speesees, uses fair-trade organic cotton for some very clever kids clothes.

Gaiam, another fav green shopping site, has organic cotton clothes among everything else green. My wife is wearing some organic cotton pants from there right now.

Organic Cotton yarn, fabric, batting, etc. is also available online for the do-it-yourselfers at places like earth friendly yarns and sewshoppe.

Hemp is Good

Hemp has been a staple fabric for a certain group of friends since, oh, middle school I guess. Little did I know how green they were! Widely misunderstood and linked to the marijuana culture, hemp is actually an excellent material with many uses, and can't be smoked. Well, it won't get you high anyway!

Hemp (Cannabis Sativa) is one of the most intriguing plants humans have come into continued contact since and before the advent of agriculture. For thousands of years, right up until the 1900s, hemp was of critical value because it is a rapidly renewable resource that is capable of being grown all over the earth in varying climates and soil conditions. It is grown for textiles & fabrics, fuel, fiber, food, paper, medicine and more, making hemp one of the most valuable and beneficial crops humanity has been wise enough to take full advantage of...until now. -The Hempest

The Hempest has the largest variety I've found of reasonably-priced hemp products. I got a (Hempy's Beanie) hat from there for an early Christmas present and like it a lot. It's my first experience with hemp so I'll let ya'll know how it lasts.

My other fav hemp online store is Rawganique, which carries many other organic fabric items too.

To shop in real life, go to this mapmuse map of hemp clothing stores nationwide. I also keep this link over in my link list for future reference.

A few hemp species are even native wild forbs in this part of the world, so I've got some on order for delivery in the spring. Hopefully by next fall I'll have some dead stalks that I can try to harvest and weave. We'll see how that experiment goes....

In the days and weeks to come: organic cotton, bamboo, flax, coconut(?), who knows.

Organic Everywhere

Whether you're just curious about "Organic" products or you buy nothing but, you can't deny the explosion of the availability of organic products in the last few months. Remember, I'm talking Fort Wayne, Indiana here. If this were San Fran or New York, well ... you know.

Probably 6 months ago Wal-Mart announced the organic children's clothing line called George (not all George products are organic though). Now I'm learning that one can find more and more organic products every day at Meijer. That includes ice cream and even frozen fruit - perfect for my smoothie fix.

You have probably noticed that many grocery stores now have a small organic food section too.

No matter how organic you are or want to be, it's getting easy for even the most midwestern of us!