community education

Being a student again can be a humbling and invigorating experience. It's a fact that there will always be more to learn. This is true for all subjects and especially for anything food and cooking related....or at least its true for me. There are always new ingredients, techniques, tools and not to mention endless and conflicting information about food politics. Now that I have completely overcomplicated the subject of cooking, let's break it back down.

The story of how the newest Twin Cities area co-op came into existence is a testament to the power of community.

First, a commitment to community sparked the idea more than five years ago.

“I grew up in a small town,” explained Kari Pastir-Smith, one of the founders of Harvest Moon, in Long Lake, Minnesota, and now its marketing chief. Last week, she sat down with me, a Harvest Moon member, and Peter Doolan, Harvest Moon’s general manager, in the new store’s cheery, sunlit deli. “I saw Long Lake as a small town, too,” she continued, “except that it didn’t have a grocery store, and it didn’t have a gathering place to bring the community together in a cohesive way. With Harvest Moon, we now have both.”

For a while, though, there were doubts about whether they could actually pull it off.