Spirit in Action
Aaron Ellringer - Just Local Food
Aaron Ellringer's journey to living consciously, responsibly and healthily on this planet has included a number of years working with Sunyata Food Co-op before its closing, and as a major force in the creation of Just Local Food, a worker's collective bringing local and healthy food to Eau Claire.
- Broadcast on:
- 06 Jul 2008
- Audio Format:
- other
I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from this struggle and weak from growing old. I have no voice but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give or make it and the more. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue through you and will be done. The enders have my none to help and die. Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. I have no way to open people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind. My guest today on Spirit in Action is Aaron Elringer. Aaron Elringer's journey to living consciously, responsibly and healthily on this planet has included a number of years working with Sanyata Food Co-op before its closing and as a major force in the creation of Just Local Food, a workers' collective bringing local and healthy food to Eclair. Just Local Food's flagship product included doorstep delivery of organic milk and dairy products and has grown to include a wide variety of meats, dairy products, vegetables and more, primarily from local sources to minimize the ecological overhead and to maximize the local benefit. Through his work with Just Local Food, Aaron continues to live out the ecological values that he studied and learned while in college and the environmental activism, which has become a central part of his life. Good morning, Aaron. Thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action. How are you doing? Are you badly sleep deprived right now? I'm doing fine. I used to it now, if you can get used to it. How old are you two children? Size one and a half and all of it is about four. Had you always planned on doing much of a family? Not really. In college, I had gone through a lot of environmental awareness education and eventually learned that population was a big problem in our world, especially people bringing up kids in America where materialism and just the sheer amount of goods that an American human consumes is a problem and thought that I wouldn't have any children, but after I met my wife, realized that it can happen and we've done it and it's a beautiful thing. Everything that's changed about myself and things that I've learned about the world, I think hopefully will turn out good in the end. Too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but it's out of control, and it's a sing along. Too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, very important part, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but it's out of control, trial. Too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but it's out of control. At a mandate, time on their hands, hyperactive glance, room to expand. When they began begatting, they begatting to excess. It's chewing tactics, prophylactic, now we're in a mess, because there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but it's out of control. When Columbus sailed the ocean, we were 400 million, industrial revolution, still under a billion. The Great Depression, hit 2.1 billion, now we're pushing a millennium, 6 billion and counting. Civil wars rumbling, refugees stumbling, forests falling, deserts creeping, traffic crawling, resources deeply ding. Shivers shopping for, pleasures fleeting, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but it's out of control. Once I lived in the city, it was too big and noisy, so I moved to the country to stop and smell the roses. All my city friends join me and put up nice new houses, now it's too big and noisy, think I'll move to the country. Some say no, no, no, no, it's not the population, it's consumption, pollution, unequal distribution. I say that so, but it's a simple equation, population times pollution, equals no solution, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but it's out of control. If you are a child, welcome to the world, this blue-green earth is your gift by birth. May you rock to its rhythms, may you sing its anthem, and if you have babies, please stop that too, because there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but it's out of control, too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but there's too many people having too many babies, got to love them babies, but please stop that too. I really do think that having children is an important part of learning about connection with the world. You talked about the environmental awareness, which has grown in you, where did that start from and what do you mean by your environmental awareness? I think environmental awareness maybe starts at birth or even in the womb of course. For me, the environment that I kind of dream about or the environment I am aware of is the natural environment, going to the farm where my dad grew up, was very close to nature, and near my house there were woods and all sorts of other places that I explored as a child, that I have now seen be consumed by concrete and pavement and cardboard houses, so the initial awareness and then in college I started to learn about why those things happen, who's in control of them, and that's kind of an education aspect, and then I tried to figure out what I could do about it or things that I could do to preserve the natural environment or at least help curb the destruction. What did you do in college? What did you study? What were your activities? One of the first things I remember doing was helping to organize a milk dump, because when the recombinant bovine growth hormone was starting to become a new thing that they really wanted to put into the milk, put into cows to make them make more milk, and I worked with some local farmers and student organization on campus. We went down to Kerms on Water Street and I dumped a bunch of milk in the street and I was just up like a cow. From then on, the university was a place to meet people that were interested in making a difference in the world and learning about things and experimenting with different ideas, and I also got to go to classes and learn some good hard science about things and take some philosophy classes and expose myself to other things in the world, but mostly for me college was interacting with people and just trying to rile things up a bit. Did you have a major or a couple of majors? My major ended up being geology. I had a distinct interest in hydrogeology and groundwater flow and had a good experience learning about groundwater and politics with the Menards plant here in town and how they bought property around their buildings in order to control access to even testing the groundwater, so that we had a hard time even finding out monitoring wells and how to put them in the right places and dealing with the moneyed interests. So I got interested that way but ended up learning that a lot of hydrogeology was computer work and desk work and I had kind of imagined doing more things outside or at least kind of a varied work atmosphere. So I just kind of tried to graduate at the end of things. Now are these interests that hit you when you got to college or do they have a basis in your family life and your high school life? I think when I moved to college I redefined myself in a way learning from my surroundings here in Eau Claire and fell into a group of friends and an interesting time in the world where we could try to make a difference. So what you're saying is these were not really the interests of your childhood or the values of your childhood, were they? No. For the last two years you've been a principal player in what's called just local food. What was the concept behind what was the drive behind just local food? The drive behind it is many varied drive. It's a response to a need in our community for good food and I had worked on farms. I've known farmers for a long time in the area who are growing wonderful food and through my experience at a former store in town. When I had a food co-op I had met all sorts of people who liked to eat good food and had noticed that those people weren't connecting with each other. And so there needed to be a more solid way for local farmers to connect with local consumers and what we've done is kind of a response to that. It's a response to my need and desire to have a job where I don't have a boss but actually work together with other people to accomplish our goals together. So my own sustainable job, my own workplace and having control over what I'm doing. And to make something happen in Eau Claire and to work with other people and to create other jobs, good jobs for other people. And to make a positive impact in Eau Claire and do something good, all those things kind of came together and that's what we're doing now. I guess before I explore too deeply what just local foods is doing, maybe we should talk about your experience with Senyatta. Senyatta food co-op started in the 1970s and ended I think in 2000. What drew you to Senyatta and what about it eventually did not work for you? I originally went to Senyatta as a college job and was hired and worked there for quite some time with various people. One thing that happened while I was there was that a manager would burn out and it was a sad thing where a good person was put into this position of running an organization and they had all the pressure and all the stress was put onto this one person. So that person would get tired and burn out. The workers who were baking bread and running the cash register and making sure the floors were clean and doing finances and all those other things were left to run the store after the manager would burn out. The workers we had meetings talked with each other and made a proposal to the board that we run the store and that we be allowed to establish a structure by which we would manage the co-op and we successfully did that for a couple of years where we didn't have a general manager or a boss necessarily but all the workers together made the decisions and ran the store and we had membership drive where we got the most members in a month ever in the history we had the best sales in the history of the group. [Music] Step by step, longest march, candy one, candy one. Many stones can form and are singly none, singly none and my union what we will can be accomplished still. [Music] We will be accomplished still, drops of water turned on him, singly none, singly none. [Music] Step by step, longest march, candy one, candy one. Many stones can form and are singly none, singly none and my union what we will can be accomplished still. We will be accomplished still, drops of water turned on him, singly none, singly none. Step by step, longest march, candy one, candy one. Many stones can form and are singly none, singly none and my union what we will can be accomplished still. We will be accomplished still, drops of water turned on him, singly none, singly none, singly none, singly none. [Music] [Music] [Music] But it ended up, in my opinion, being a problem where the structure of the organization was kind of getting in the way of its progress. The business was owned by over 500 people in the community, most of which didn't shop there or were definitely not involved in the day to day or even month to month operations of the store. And the workers who were there every day and were ready to make strategic decisions were kind of crippled and weren't able to make decisions to impact the positive direction of the business. So the business closed and I think it was a good thing. Not everything is meant to live forever and it's not really natural for something to imagine something to just keep growing and growing and growing and never change significantly or metamorphose or lose its leaves or do different things. It's now thoroughly composted, new seeds have been planted here in Eau Claire and different things are popping up as a response to the need for good, nutritious, healthy, local food. What were particularly the values, the part of Senata that attracted you there that made it worth putting a whole lot of your life effort into trying to help that to mature? Most of the role that I saw Senata taking in our community was the social need for a meeting place, a place for people where you kind of need to go there on a regular basis. You need to get your food and it was a place to always run into somebody or to make a new connection. And when people are running into each other, that's when ideas start to form and new concepts take place and real change happens in our world. So just to have places like that and I think Eau Claire has some of these places now and it can always use more. So to have a store, a place where someone can go and feel good about what they're doing, they're buying good, nutritious, local food and they're running into other people who are interested in making a small difference in our world, it's always a good thing. I think you've been doing some exploration with just local foods as to exactly what its structure is. I believe you're a worker collective, but I think you're also experimenting with the co-op side. What is the structure of just local foods and maybe it's still evolving? It's definitely evolving. The way our society is structured is very complex, especially when you want to become a business. And so officially, according to the State of Wisconsin, we are a chapter 185 cooperative, which is where official cooperative. We have it set so that the only people who are members of the co-op are the workers. Currently, there's five of us. So we are a co-op. There's no doubt about it, according to the State. However, when we look at other things, there's cooperative principles. These are official internationally recognized cooperative principles. There's seven of them. And there's nobody really policing to make sure that we're adhering to all seven cooperative principles at any one time. But it's a generally recognized thing where you work together. You don't really compete with other things. An example of that is in Menominee. There's a store called Menominee Market. It's a food co-op. And we don't compete with them. We work with them. So we work with making deliveries together. We have farmers bring stuff there and we go and pick it up so the farmer doesn't have to drive so far. Our structure right now is no hierarchy. All the workers work together to accomplish what we do. And we do have someone whose primary responsibility is getting ready for deliveries and someone's primary responsibility is taking orders. But otherwise, we meet every once or twice a week. So Aaron, you've referred a number of times to healthy food or good food or local food. What do you mean by that and why are those things important? Good food, local food, nutritious food. It all kind of goes together. Food that's been grown by the world, by humans, by all the birds that pack up the seeds and the worms that dig through the earth. And more practically, it's food that you could actually go and see in various stages of growth, whether it's going and seeing the chicken that laid the egg or going to see the little carrot seedlings that are going to be planted in the ground a couple months from now. Local food is food that's grown near here so that in the real world you know where it's coming from. You can meet the person who's tending the land. You can see how they dig it up and how they bring it to you. And by its own nature, when it's that close, it's fresh, they're picking it at the right time, not two weeks ahead of time because it needs to drive in a truck for a couple of weeks. It's picked at the right time and it's brought to you fresh and so those things equal higher nutrition almost always. Good local nutritious food builds our soil. It protects our countryside and makes it a beautiful place to go and visit when we get out of town. It's nice to see small farms rather than giant factory bull sheds full of millions of animals cramped up next to each other. There's all sorts of good things about local fresh nutritious food. I don't think you mentioned organic as one of your criteria there, but is that part of what you strive for? Organic has many different definitions. Of course, the definition when it comes to food is now a definition that's owned by the federal government. They define organic now, it's a USDA standard and a lot of farmers fought hard to get this standard federal so that an organic potato and Michigan is an organic potato and Nevada. The original rules that were passed by the USDA were pretty good and they met with the standards that farmers were actually using. Now, big businesses see organic as a growing interest amongst consumers and also of course a huge potential for profit. And so the corporations now, this includes people like Walmart who are selling organic and maybe the world's largest seller of certified organic food. However, when you look to see what organic can mean, according to the federal government, you realize that unfortunately some of the products you might find on the shelf, although they are stamped with a certified organic symbol, are not grown in the same manner that a small certified organic farmer near us here in Eau Claire would be growing thing. This includes Horizon Dairy, which is a very widely distributed organic milk. They have been found to have factory farms of organic cows, which simply can't exist unless there's some federal rule that has a loophole that allows them to do that. And so you go to buy Horizon Organic Milk and it's not really something that you'd want to be drinking if you're really looking for good healthy nutritious food that builds the soil, that nourishes the farmers, that nourishes the people that work on the farms, and that keeps the cows naturally healthy and free from disease and free from all sorts of need for antibiotics and chemicals and hormones. Here at our store, we sell organic things as much as possible. If a local grower has certified organic, we look at that as a good thing because it means that they're very aware of the rules and the need to build the soil along with just not using pesticides and herbicides that are chemicals. So we sell organic things, we also sell things that aren't organic, and there's a lot of farmers around here who see what has happened to the federal organic rules and say they don't want to be a part of it. And so we try to respect their need to be true to themselves and grow their food the way they want it without having to follow certain rules because I know that consumers in the end really just want a good, healthy, locally grown food product. And we don't necessarily need someone to put a stamp on it to make that happen. I'm not sure if you mentioned this or not, Aaron, but one of the significant aspects of having local food is that you don't have a tremendous energy cost to transport it in. In a time when we're worried about whether we have to go to war or not in order to guarantee access to petroleum, that seems significant. Do you know anything about the studies as to what portion of the energy used in producing a food is involved in its transportation all around the country and the world? I can't give you any standard numbers. I know that a widely propagated fact or at least estimation is that most of the food that we eat comes from at least 1000 miles away. I've heard anywhere from 1000 to 2000 to 5000. And so just the concept of food, just imagine a week's worth of your meals, putting all that in a suitcase and putting it on a plane to fly 2000 miles to get to you. It's a concept that seems kind of ridiculous and you wonder how we got to this point where there are farms within 10 miles of where we live that could probably grow every single thing that we want. Save for the obvious banana avocado and other things that just don't grow in our climate. But the point is the amount of energy that goes into that is usually it's taken away from the farmer in the end. It reduces the amount of money that the farmer ends up getting. Here at our store we're able to certify that at least two-thirds of what we are charging the customer is going to the farmer. And of course the farmer isn't necessarily putting all that in his pocket, he's paying bills and of course paying for fuel for their tractors if they have them, paying wages to other people, buying seed. Here at our store I know that a large amount of the money is going to the farmer to run their business. And when you look at other food it's anywhere from two cents on the dollar to a quarter of what the farmer ends up getting. That's an immense difference. Is there a whole family of farms that you're connected with here with just local foods? Definitely, we work with over 40 local and regional suppliers right now. And you can probably meet a good number of them at the downtown Eau Claire farmers market. That's kind of where our business has a lot of roots by just by interacting and talking with a lot of the farmers down there. We recognized that when the farmers market closes in the fall they aren't able to sell much anymore. And our business was a response to that need as well. And some of the people that we met down there, Vince and Julie Morrow out at Coon Creek family farm, they're just between Eau Claire and Mondovi. They like most of the farmers in Wisconsin in their entirety have other jobs. So they work in town or in other places but they also are farmers. They recently got their organic certification. They have a very diverse farm. They grow heritage turkeys. These are turkeys that your great-grandma would eat. They're not all white meat or bread to have giant breasts or other funky things. Some of them were giant thundering turkeys that were beautiful blue and just these wild, crazy creatures. They also have a bunch of chickens. Julie milks goat so she makes handmade goat milk soap from the milk of her goats. They have some horses and they grow all sorts of vegetables as well. Vince and Julie do all this. They have all these animals care for them. They have two kids and they have jobs to basically subsidize all this. And of course their goal is to work on the farm and that's what they want to do. They want that to be their focus. But in order to do that in today's world, like almost all farmers have to have at least one person working off the farm. Often this is a result of the need for health insurance or some other kind of required life necessity. Just some cash at certain times of the year. So that's Vince and Julie. They're a wonderful farming family that is producing great food that lots of people in Oakland are eating right now. ♪♪ ♪ I remember the year that my granddaddy died gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ And that duck is grave on the mountainside gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ I was too young to understand ♪ ♪ The way felt about the land ♪ ♪ But I could read his history and his hands gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪♪ ♪ It's pouring in the crib and the half was in the bin gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ I am with a small cast and cotton in the gin gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ Cows in the barn and hogs in the lawn ♪ ♪ You know I never had a lot ♪ ♪ But it worked like the devil for the little he got gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪♪ ♪ He sampled trees on the mountainside gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ He planted the seeds just before he died gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ I guess he knew that he'd never see ♪ ♪ The red fruit hanging from the tree ♪ ♪ But he planted the seeds for his children and me gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ ♪ I am a ridge above the farm gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ I think of my people that have gone on gone ♪ ♪ Gonna rise again ♪ ♪ I can tree that grows in the mountain ground ♪ the storms of life they've cut 'em down. But the new wood springs from the roots of the ground gone. Gonna rise again, gone. Gonna rise again. At one point in the past you leaned towards eating raw foods, maybe primarily vegetarian, I'm not sure. And one thing I've noticed about your store now is there's plenty of meat in there, kind of healthy meat. Has there been a change in your philosophy and your values about that as the years have gone by? Life is a learning process and it's learning about who we are, what we need, and our impacts in the world. And I came of vegetarian when I was in college, I was working at Erbert and Gerberts, while simultaneously taking a biology class where we were dissecting fetal pigs. And that day in lab I was dissecting a fetal pig and they inject this colored fluid into the arteries and veins, blue and pink, so that you know while you're dissecting what is an artery and what's a vein. Later on, while I was at the Erbert and Gerberts slicing ham, I saw in the ham that I was slicing veins of the pink and blue and I went to the back and threw up and from that point on for many years I was a vegetarian. While working at Sunyatta, I was a baker for a long time and developed an allergy to wheat because I was inhaling flour downstairs, I was pouring flour into the mixer or putting bread together. So I became allergic to the point where I would eat something made from flour and I would sneeze or my nose would start running. And I developed a line of wheat-free and allergy-free muffins and baked goods and that was about when Sunyatta ended up closing. I ended up moving to Colorado and that's where I became primarily raw and vegan wheat-free and had a very strict diet and came over a lot of allergies and systemic health problems that I had had. And now I'm able to eat a wide variety of foods. I have started eating meat again and it's an issue where I looked at what was available locally, what sorts of things were around me that I could eat. Meat was one of them and I had been offered it by the farmers, just learning about local food and needing to supply a year round, supply of food for people in Eau Claire. I knew that meat was going to be a part of that. By meeting the farmers, seeing what they're doing, seeing the animals, I no longer had an aversion to it that I did before and so that's a choice I've made for myself. I don't judge anybody, I could certainly become a vegetarian again tomorrow if I wanted it needed to be. But right now in my life that's what I've chosen to do and it's an okay decision. One of the factors that changes much of us is what kind of living situation we have and you've got a family with two children. You were a vegetarian and maybe Jen was vegetarian, I don't know. How has that played out in your family life? How does that work as you're trying to juggle so many things including what your family needs? It's been really fun because as the children get older we talk about and learn about where our food comes from and so it's really interesting to force that connection to a young mind where it's like okay we're going to eat a dead chicken now and to be able to put it in those terms and sometimes they'll think it's kind of silly. Oh it's a dead chicken you know or you're being silly papa but it's a dead chicken and someone killed it and that chicken was running around so just being real about it I think is an important part and I think a lot of kids naturally do become vegetarian and a lot of people for that matter especially in today's world where you learn where that chicken came from. And really where did that chicken that's on your plate or in that bag of food where did that come from? If you learn where that comes from you may or may not want to eat it. If you're shopping at just local food I can guarantee you that you can feel good about that and I can introduce you to the farmer who raised the chickens and take you out to visit some of that chicken's relatives possibly. And from the store those chickens were more part of an industrial factory system than any part of our natural world so to be able to teach children, myself, other people around here about where our food comes from and to help them make good choices it's a beautiful thing and if my children choose to become vegetarian that'd be awesome I would join them in a second. Maybe we can look at some more of the overarching spiritual outlooks, social environmental principles that are part of who you are airing. I know some people who view humans as the top of the chain where the most important and what's important for us matters and the fact that you're going to eliminate the snail darter doesn't matter to them. That we're supposed to have dominion over all the animals. What's your view about the right relationship of homo sapiens with other species? I think we should be a co-op together, I think we should be organized, everybody should have our own little say in the world. Humans have made a lot of what we call progress, that's the cement and the roads and all sorts of things and that progress has taken the place of a lot of progress that other things had made for many years. The progress of the oak scrub and the progress of the prairie and the river flowing in a certain direction and forming oxbows that made Carson Park where it is. That natural sort of progress has been superseded in many places by our human version of progress and I guess I'd like to help direct our progress in a way that allows animals a little more room again and native plants and room for other species. And for other things to kind of exert their will upon our world, flowers in the crack of the sidewalk I think are a beautiful thing and dandelions and all that. Those are evidence of the natural world wanting to exert its idea of progress upon us again. Humans growing food and tending the earth can take different forms, you can drive down the highway and see acres and acres and acres of corn and more corn and corn or you can go to other places and you can see how the landscape can be changed by a small farm that's growing a hundred different kind of vegetables which all have different flowers and different colored leaves and different heights and it's a beautiful diverse thing to look at. So we impact in many ways and so for me by buying local food I know that I'm exerting that vision of the diverse landscape to our local countryside and making that direct impact. And by starting this business I'm allowing a whole lot of other people access to making that same impact. You know now sixty five seventy five hundred thousand people in Eau Claire can learn how to eat local food, meet the people who grow their food and make an impact locally that way. I'm kind of assuming that something like the Ten Commandments doesn't hold much warmth for you. That probably your principles and values would be best expressed by kind of general aspirations. I think you expressed one of them just now and that was something about diversity. Are there other principles which are fundamental? I think you said co-ops working together in partnership as opposed to competitive and I think you said diversity is one of them. Are there other central principles that would be part of maybe Aaron's ten suggestions or aspirations? But I have any aspirations of that variety. Live and let live I think is there's room for all sorts of people and we try to convince people of things that we feel are right and try to join with others when we think that they're doing something that's good or right. And you know that's what I'm trying to do and people join me. I join other people who I think are doing cool things like the radio station that popped up in town and supporting volume one and the other things that help kind of connect people in our community. That's what I want to do. I mentioned earlier progress and frequently there's been a kind of a narrow view that progress is human technological progress. Something else you didn't talk about was efficiency and sometimes that's been measured in how many bushels can you produce per acre. If you can up that then you're doing better efficiently though there's other measures. I have a feeling that efficiency and this technological progress are just not as important to you. What would you say is important in their place? There's an inherent efficiency in local food and so just by having our food come from down the road is inherently I think more efficient than having our food. A carrot for instance coming from California as opposed from down the road which we just got a shipment in late January of fresh local carrots. So it is possible. There is efficiency but then there's another efficiency that I imagine in a business sense where a worker sitting at their desk not doing something is inefficient in our workplace. It's okay to sit at your desk for a little bit and think or to take a break while you're on the delivery route or those sorts of hardcore efficiency you need to be working all the time and not a square inch of your land should be unplanted. There are sorts of ideas of efficiency I don't think are really valid in what we're doing. The idea of progress in local farming I believe is looking back not just over the last ten years or twenty years of progress in seeds and chemicals to apply and all these sorts of things but looking at the progress that we made over the course of hundreds of years where we developed broccoli that made nice green heads when it was cold in northern Europe. And to be able to bring that sort of progress is diversity of three hundred different kinds of tomatoes that's progress to me not one kind of tomato that can sit in the truck for two weeks. That definition of progress is something that's happening in Eau Claire I see a lot of progress. I'll mention them again volume one and the radio station and WHIS and ninety six three in Eau Claire is a form of progress and that's where it's progress where people are getting together diverse. People and diverse interests and making their own little impact in the world. I wanted to explore a couple of the other exploits that you've been involved in. One of them is the kind of vehicle you drive or some of the vehicles you drive. I believe you use vegetable based diesel fuel for them. How'd that come about and why do you do that? Well the power that I got to get down here today was mostly oatmeal because I rode my bike which is the primary form of transportation. But I'd done a lot of research on other ways of transporting ourselves around in the world and looking at sustainable development and one of the things I ran across was the difference between diesel and gasoline engines and how diesels are a little bit more efficient. And then looking at the kinds of fuel that can be used in place of diesel and how the diesel engine was originally built to run on Denod oil. So I thought that was kind of cool and ran across people all around the world who are running their new diesel cars on various forms of vegetable oil or slightly variated forms of vegetable oil. So I found the diesel car for our family and then we've got a fleet of diesel vehicles for our business now and it's definitely an experiment. I mean it's learning about what's available locally, what sorts of fuels can we make it ourselves and so it's been an interesting experiment for us. I can't say that it's for everybody and I don't even know if it's for us because it requires a lot of mechanical knowledge or chemical knowledge or understanding concepts of fuel and how an engine works and stuff because these things aren't really well formed. You can't take our vegetable oil powered car to the local mechanic because he's never probably seen a vegetable oil powered car before. So learning it all by ourselves has been a challenge. So that's what we're doing. We're trying to make an impact wherever we can. Another thing I know you were involved in Aaron was some relief efforts to help out after Hurricane Katrina. Describe what those efforts were and what you did and why you did them. To the hurricane of course in the days and week after it hit we were able to hear news and see images of people that were suffering and in need of help. And we also saw what appeared to be maybe an inept government or a federal system that maybe most of us assumed would be able to respond to such a thing that wasn't. There wasn't this massive response or aid effort that was really apparently visible and whether it happened or not I can't tell for sure. But some people in Eau Claire and it all over of course felt it their need to help and so I was just part of that. Some people called around and found a school bus company donated a school bus and they needed someone to drive it. And I have a license to drive a school bus although I wasn't honestly all that excited about going. It turned out that it wasn't really my choice because I have a family and I can't just leave drive up school bus down south for three days and leave my kids behind because my wife works too and someone needs to care for them. So you know I ended up driving the bus but it was a community effort and it could have been called exciting or people looked at it as oh you were the bus driver. Someone watched my kids while I was gone and those people need to be recognized for the effort that they made. And it was just kind of a form of work. I mean I had my foot jammed on the gas pedal of this school bus for two days and it was hot and we delivered a bunch of goods and came back home and went on with life here. What did you deliver? It was part of this stuff from just local foods that became not local anymore. Some of it wasn't our business necessarily. We talked to the farmers that are around here and they have a strong desire to help people just like everybody else and they gave what they could. And it was very heartwarming to send down cases of water bottled on the local family farm here. And to know the sacrifice that this local family farm made because I know that they're not making tons of money and that bottles cost money to them. But they heard about what we were doing and they gave a whole bunch of what they had. So we brought that and we brought all sorts of other stuff. Hundreds, probably thousands of people in Oakland had backed into that bus. When you first started out with Just Local Foods, Aaron, you didn't have a storefront at that point and now I think you're working with a storefront. Where are you in your progress? What actually is Just Local Foods? I think there's five of you involved right now. Tell us where your store is. The store is currently located downtown Dead End Street called Gibson, which is the street that goes under the parking ramp in front of the downtown hotel. And you need to find us. Come on Graham Avenue or Barstow or Farwell, all those streets run into Gibson. And it's a small store. We carry stuff from over 40 local farms, hundreds of products. We have frozen veggies and berries, grains, chips, pancake mixes and maple syrup, coffee and fresh bread now. All sorts of cheese and dairy product. There's meat, chicken and turkey and beef and pork all raised mainly on local farms with access to pasture and fresh air. And our store is open six days a week. The concept is just to give people here in Eau Claire and all around access to local food. The plans for Just Local Food are basically continuing our mission of local and fair trade. If it's produced locally, we're interested in helping whoever is producing it get access to people who want it. And so we've sold some soap. The beekeeper makes candles. We sell candles. Someone else in Eau Claire started to make some candles from environmentally friendly materials. And so we're selling those as well and health and beauty products like lip balm and stuff like that that are made from local product by people making local jobs available to people too. So just expanding that over and over again is really what we imagine doing. We'd like to make more jobs like mine and like the other people who work for Just Local Food just to have more people working with us. I don't think we necessarily need to have a structure that has members or consumers as owning the business in order for us to respond to consumer needs. Right now we're able to, if a customer asks us to carry a certain kind of bread, we'll do our best to get that bread. They don't need to own a part of what we're doing or join a club or pay me anything to let me know that they're looking for a certain product or would like us to do something differently. So I feel good about what we're doing as far as working with the community, working with the farmers and that's what we want to continue to do. I think you missed mentioning one of your first products and that is that you have milk delivery, right? That's right. We've been the milk man in town and now there's another place that's another dairy in town that's been doing some home delivery which is really great. There's more than one place that you can get stuff from now. But we've been doing home delivery, weekly home delivery of everything that we sell since we started. And we did that out of a need for us to get rolling with the business without having to spend all the money on a storefront on all the equipment and refrigeration equipment required to open a store and all that upfront cost. We were just five, fairly poor people here in Eau Claire that had a dream. And so we put together what little money we had ourselves, talked to the farmers who gave us product up front for a couple of weeks so that we were able to sell the milk and then pay the farmer so that we did it. So that we didn't have to really outlay all that money. So it was really a beautiful thing that made it all happen in the beginning and we started as a delivery service out of a need to get going with something. In November of 2005 we opened our storefront and that was a happy moment for us because now we have the beginnings of a space that people can start to run into one another and new ideas can happen and we can decide together where we want what we need in this community and where we want to grow. I've got to come back and clarify some of the points about the milk because it's one of the things that's really impressed me. It kind of completed a circle with my childhood. I think when I was growing up there still was milk delivered, not much of it, but that milk also came in glass bottles instead of the plastic stuff which is choking our planet. So it's organic milk, it's in glass bottles and you can get delivered to your door that is to say you can have a real relationship with real people on a local farm producing it, delivering it to your door and in a way that isn't going to degrade our environment. I found that a very impressive, well-rounded concept. Now, I'm not taking shots at you or anything but one of the local foods that you saw at your co-op is some chocolate, right? Why do you carry that particular chocolate? I guess along with your coffee. We sell the chocolate to make a connection in people's minds that the concept of fair trade doesn't need to be. When people think of fair trade now, it's usually some distant concept of some poor farmer or some poor factory worker in a different country and just this kind of vague notion of them getting paid a little more. But for me and for our store, fair trade is a relationship that we have to whatever it is that we're consuming or buying or in our case selling. And we picked up the coffee, seemed a natural fit because there was a local non-profit group of farmers called Farmer to Farmer. They go down to Guatemala and interact with this village of people and actually some of our customers adjust local food who had been buying coffee have just gone to Guatemala now. And so someone that we kind of introduced to this coffee is now going down to the village where the coffee is grown. And that's the concept of fair trade that we're looking at is now this person's going to come back home to Eclair and they're going to have an experience of where that coffee came from. It's going to have meaning to them and they're going to share that with friends, maybe their church. They're going to talk about it and the concept of fair trade is going to get more and more. We try to introduce the concept of fair trade to all the farmers that we work with here locally too. And that is that they need to make money to stay sustainable and we need to do the same as the middleman, as just local food, as the store. You know, the farmer in the store need to make money in order for the consumer to be able to do this on a sustainable basis. So in our need to make money we need to have as many products as we can on the shelves. And so when we find something local, something fair trade, something that our customers have asked to already pick it up. Equal Exchange is a worker owned cooperative based in New York. They've been around basically since the beginning of this concept of fair trade coffee and have worked with cooperatives around the world of farmers who are growing coffee and cocoa beans. And have a network now of worker fair trade cooperatives from the cocoa bean where it was grown to where it was manufactured into a chocolate bar to where it was. Boxed up and packaged to where it was brought to us here in Eau Claire. And so that's another connection. That's a fair trade connection that we feel strongly about and to introduce people to the idea that you can get. All sorts of different goods that treat people right the way we would want to be treated. Well Aaron, if people wanted to get a hold of you besides driving down the store, is there a website, phone number where folks can track you down? We have a website with a small introduction to all of our farmers and descriptions of products and the different services that we offer. It's at JustLocalFood.com. There's someone down at our store six days a week, Monday through Saturday, and people are welcome to give us a call or leave us a message. And that's at 577-5564. And otherwise it's really great to come down to the store and see the hundreds of things right now that are available and just imagine the breadth and the beautiful store that we're going to grow into as we continue to find local suppliers of all sorts of different great food and other things. Aaron, thanks for taking time out of your sleep deprived day. I probably got you here earlier than you probably wanted to get up and get moving. But I appreciate your work, not just with JustLocalFood, but your work for Peace and Justice and your work with Senyatta, your work for the environment. I really think that a clearer is just really fortunate to have someone with your vision and commitment working here locally. And I'm proud to live in a community that supports all sorts of interesting underground emerging progressive things. And that this radio station is here to make this all possible and that likewise you and your family and the people we interact with are all doing wonderful things. So thank you as well. You've been listening to an interview with Aaron Elringer, active with Just Local Food in Eau Claire. You can listen to this program again and access information about it via my website at northernspiritradio.org. Music featured on this program has included Too Many People by Fred Small, Step by Step by John McCutchen, and Gone Gonna Rise Again by Psychon. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeat@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher call for you than this. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy selflessness. Music (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]