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Blue Ridge Food Co-operative, which buys fruits and vegetables from local farms and sells them at cost to its members, is slated to open the first week of July. The distribution will be at Piedmont Episcopal Church, located at 214 Church Street in the town of Madison. Distribution hours will be from 2 to 5 on Thursday afternoons. Operations will continue through the end of September.
Membership is open to everyone. The cost is $30 annual membership fee. Weekly bags of garden fresh produce are priced at $15, and are pre-ordered and pre-paid a week in advance, lb join, call Kathie O’Connor at 923-4131 and request an application.
The co-op was formed in order to:
• Provide a local supply of an assortment of healthy, delicious, fresh picked produce which is grown in the area.
• Provide a local market for the county’s farms and encourage farmers to maxitnize their use of organic methods and pesticide free production. Growers will be asked to sign the BuyGreen Virginia Association for Biological Farming (VABF) pledge, which certifies that their products are grown with little or no synthetic pesticides and are not grown from genetically engineered seed.
• Provide an additional distribution for the Plant a Row for the Hungry Program. Donations and surplus amounts of produce can be dropped off at the BRFC distribution center on Thursday from 2 to 5 p.m. from July through September. Anyone tyith surplus produce from their gardens, whether a member of the co-op or not, is encouraged to bring in their donations.
The Blue Ridge Food Cooperative will be purchasing produce from farms in Rappahannock, Madison, Orange, Culpeper and Greene counties. Many of the farms are certified organic. Others, although not certified organic, are using organic methods for production.
Most of them sell to restaurants and grow a wide range of vegetables and fruits, many of them heirloom varieties. The co-op will also have pasture raised chickens, eggs, honey and other goods available,
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