The Co-op Scoop

Today we welcome a couple of old friends of the Co-op who are working together on a new project to secure farmland for farmers in the Capay Valley. Kendra Johnson has been working on farmland access and conservation for over 15 years, with California Farm Link and most recently Agrarian Trust. With our Co-op and the One Farm at a Time campaign, she helped permanently protect Good Humus Produce for food production and affordable access for future generations of farmers. Paul Muller i...

Oak Park Brewing has been crafting creative small batch beers just a hop and a skip from the Co-op. Owners Geoff and Rodg are also the brewers - and they take pride in every painstaking step of their brewing process. We offer a rotating selection of their beers at the Co-op, and each can is a work of art.

The Bay Area Ranchers Co-op was founded to provide farming and ranching communities in the greater Bay Area with USDA-inspected animal harvest in a sustainable, non-competitive environment. Adam Parks is a rancher, owner of the Victorian Farmstead Meat Company in Sonoma County, and a founding partner of BAR-C.

Today we welcome Jason Rose, the President and Co-Founder of Full Heart Hospitality. He has experience as an Executive Chef and Culinary Director for over 15 years, working with Bi-Rite in San Francisco, Dean & Deluca, and the groundbreaking food incubator La Cocina. He has been working with our food service team at the Co-op for the last several months.

Tanka protein snacks are created by Oglala Lakotas on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. This inspiring company is committed to making a big difference in its community - creating jobs on the reservation and restoring the buffalo to the land. Tanka’s Director of Sales, Phillip Gaudon, joins us today.

Sola Bee Farms is a family owned and operated solar-powered honey bee farm based in Woodland. It began as a way to offer the family beekeeping business a way to sell their pure, raw honey directly to their customers, including Co-op shoppers. Claire Tauzer has been a part of the business since its beginning and joins us today.

Javier Zamora owns JSM Organics in the Salinas area of Monterey County. If you’ve bought a strawberry from the Co-op in the last several years, it was probably from JSM! Javier started his farm on one acre in 2011 and became certified organic in 2012. Since then, his farm has grown in diversity and acreage, and Javier has been a leader in the organic farming movement in countless ways.

Spreadwing Farm is a 15 acre organic farm at the top of the Capay Valley in the town of Rumsey. Owned and operated by two families, the farm offers a wide variety of vegetables and fruit to Sacramento residents at the Co-op and the Sunday Farmers Market. Brent Levin joins us from Spreadwing Farm. Brent has been farming for five years, since he and his wife, Liz, and daughter Esther joined Cathy, Michael and their children at Spreadwing Farm in 2016. Prior to farming, they homesteaded for 12 y...

Full Belly Farm is a beautifully diverse organic farm near the Capay Valley town of Guinda, about an hour from the Co-op. We have been working with Full Belly for over thirty years, and are proud to offer its vegetables, nuts, flowers and more—year-round in our Produce Department. Dru Rivers is one of the farm’s founding partners, and among her many roles, she is instrumental in the production of one of the farm’s most beautiful crops - its flowers.

Violet Irigo and her family operate TaTa Raw, makers of sprouted raw organic walnuts. Many of our Co-op shoppers may have met Violet during pre-Covid times when she was a regular in our store, sharing her delicious and nutrient-dense product with Co-op shoppers.