You can receive this newsletter on email by requesting it to fareshares@aktivix.org

Next Saturday

Due to volunteer shortages, FareShares will be closed next Saturday 24th of March. We apologise for the inconvenience and we encourage welcome new additions to this all-volunteer-run co-operative.

Fridays

On Fridays, for the next two months, fareshares will only open from 4 to 7pm, also as a result of volunteer shortages. Again, we apologise for the inconvenience and we encourage welcome new additions to this all-volunteer-run co-operative.

Herb study

The next herb study will be on Tuesday 3rd of April at the usual time, 7.30 pm.

We will be looking at spring herbs, cleavers, dandelion, nettles and chickweed, focusing on cleavers as the herb study itself.

If you can, please bring fresh of any of the above (or any other herb you know and see growing near you) for us to look at.

Open to anyone – whether you are new to herbs or want to deepen your connection to the plants. We look at one herb each time, drink it fresh (if we can) and dried, share our immediate responses and collective experiences, and cross reference herb books for medicinal and traditional uses.
Free or on donation.

Empty bottles please!

Don’t forget to bring back the 1L bottles you bought washing-up and laundry liquid in; we can refill these.

Finances and donations

Fareshares tries to keep shelf prices as low as possible so that more people can afford to shop here – we’re all volunteers, and we only add a small mark-up – but please do put a donation in the jar when you shop.

With an increased rent and rates bill (as well as utilities) the running costs of the building are higher than they were before. Please consider filling in one of the Standing Order forms, if you can afford to make a regular donation (between £2 and £20 a month – any amount would be brilliant!) to the Building.

We also welcome donations of pens, sellotape, black bin-bags, new envelopes, postage stamps, and A4 paper for printing on.

You can receive this newsletter on email by requesting it to fareshares@aktivix.org

Products

You may have noticed some new products in the shop recently. We’ve ordered in some different kinds of toothpaste, and would now like your feedback: which ones should we stock in the future?

Other new products include Kallo oat milk, unperfumed Urtekam soap, and Doves Farm yeast. If you have any comments about the things that we sell, please talk to the shiftworker, or send us an email, or post a comment on the blog.

We also have a few items on special offer right now – Clearspring noodles, Organico olive oil and Natural Selection “ready to eat” fruit – which won’t be available for much longer.

After many months of unavailability, it looks like we’ll have hemp seeds back in stock from this week onwards.

Prices

All the dry foodstuffs we sell loose (by the kilo) are organic, and come from all over the world.
Prices change regularly, depending on how the climate has affected harvests globally. We tend to change our prices every two months. Recent increases are: quinoa, chickpeas, brown lentils, aduki beans, couscous, brazil nuts, cashews. Recent reductions are: buckwheat, red, green and puy lentils, yellow split peas, almonds, pumpkin seeds.

Empty bottles please!

Don’t forget to bring back the 1L bottles you bought washing-up and laundry liquid in; we can refill these.

Finances and donations

Fareshares tries to keep shelf prices as low as possible so that more people can afford to shop here – we’re all volunteers, and we only add a small mark-up – but please do put a donation in the jar when you shop.

With an increased rent and rates bill (as well as utilities) the running costs of the building are higher than they were before. Please consider filling in one of the Standing Order forms, if you can afford to make a regular donation (between £2 and £20 a month – any amount would be brilliant!) to the Building.
We also welcome donations of pens, sellotape, black bin-bags, new envelopes, postage stamps, and A4 paper for printing on.

Herb study

The next herb study will be on Tuesday November 1st at 7.30 pm, looking at Oak bark.
Open to anyone – whether you are new to herbs or want to deepen your connection to the plants. We look at one herb each time, drink it fresh (if we can) and dried, share our immediate responses and collective experiences, and cross reference herb books for medicinal and traditional uses.
Free/ donation.

Herb study

Some of the volunteers in FareShares run a herb study group into the remedies that herbs can provide. If you are into making Big Pharma obsolete, this group may be for you. Try it out. No purchase required.

The next Fareshares Herb Study is on Tuesday 5th July at 7.30pm. On this occasion the study will focus on Comfrey.

Need for Donations

FareShares is going through a difficult financial spot. The council put up our monthly rent way beyond inflation, and we are now having to pay business rates to keep the shop open.

The volunteers have considered a number of options. Before putting all the prices up, we want to try requesting for your generous donations and, if you can afford to, for your regular donations too. Please ask in the shop about setting up a standing order so we can rely on regular income.

Bags

We do not have a budget for bags, so we rely on customers bringing their own. Donations of bags are welcome, but ONLY IF:

(1) they are clean – would you use it yourself for food? If not, please don’t expect others to.

(2) they are placed INDIVIDUALLY (i.e. not in one big lump) in the bag tidy in the corner. Volunteer shiftworkers do not have time to sort through bags and any that are left anywhere else in the shop (including bags of bags left near the bag tidy) get dumped in landfill. Please don’t expect Fare Shares to dispose of your bags for you!

If you’re using bags for small stuff like seeds and grains, please check they don’t have holes in…

Recipe for this month

Also, here’s a recipe for the month, since it’s broad bean time:

BROAD BEAN POD SOUP

If you eat broad beans, don’t throw the pods away! They make great soup.

Pods from 1 lb/500g or more of broad beans
1 onion
A little olive or sunflower oil
Vegetable stock
A couple of sprigs of tarragon or rosemary

Chop the onion, put it in a pan with the olive oil and sweat over a gentle heat until onion is soft. Remove strings and any black bits from broad bean pods, chop into rough chunks and add to pan, stir and sweat for a few minutes. Add stock and herbs, bring to boil and simmer for half an hour or so. Remove from heat and sieve or pass through a mouli (you can also use a blender but you might need to sieve it after to remove any strings). Season to taste. If you like you can also add a swirl of oat cream before serving.

The mailing list

We now have a mailing list to administer the big amount of email addresses of you nice people who have requested to receive these newsletter. It would greatly help if you click on the link below and follow instructions to subscribe yourself:

https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/fareshares_newsletter

If you have difficulties, you can email back to us, info@fareshares.org.uk. Please include the error message you receive.

Thanks for your ongoing support.

FareShares Food Coop, 56 Crampton Street, SE17, Elephant & Castle

Contents:
Introduction
Herb study
Apple juices
Palestinian Olive Oil
Need for Donations
The mailing list

Introduction
You are receiving this email because you have requested to receive the regular newsletter, either by signing up for it in the shop, or via internet:

lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/fareshares_newsletter

Herb study
Some of the volunteers in FareShares run a herb study group into the remedies that herbs can provide. If you are into making Big Pharma obsolete, this group may be for you. Try it out. No purchase required.

The next Fareshares Herb Study is on Tuesday June 7th at 7.30pm. On this occasion the study will focus on Elderflowers.

Apple juices
Somerset apple juice is back in stock; in fact it looks like we are now getting a regular supply of 250 ml and 750 ml bottles, and there are lots of different varieties to try! (and they are all truly delicious). You can find them in the frigde, next to the counter.

We buy it directly from the producers and the bottles are returnable.

Palestinian Olive Oil
We have had a recent delivery of Palestinian Olive Oil. You will find that the prices of the big, 5litre tins have not varied since they were last in stock, but you may find other prices have changed, and there is even an apparent anomaly. This is due to the cost of the Fair Trade Certification.

Usually we do not buy fair-trade certified oil from Zaytoun. We trust that what Zaytoun say on their website (www.zaytoun.org) is true and we believe that all their products meet Fair Trade standards, even if they do not have a stamp stuck on them.
However this time the only bottles of 500 ml that were available for purchase from Zaytoun were the “Fairtrade-certified” ones, and these carry the cost of the certification, which the others do not. And that is why the 500 ml bottles are even more expensive than the 750 ml ones.

Need for Donations

FareShares is going through a difficult financial spot. The council put up our monthly rent way beyond inflation, and we are now having to pay full business rates to keep the shop open.
The volunteers have considered a number of options. Before putting all the prices up, we want to try requesting for your generous donations and, if you an afford to, for your regular donations too. Please ask in the shop about setting up a standing order so we can rely on regular income.

Thanks for your ongoing support.

FareShares Food Coop, 56 Crampton Street, SE17, Elephant & Castle

The mailing list

We now have a mailing list to administer the big amount of email addresses of you nice people who have requested to receive these newsletters by email. It would greatly help if you click on the link below and follow instructions to subscribe yourself:

the mailing listlists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/fareshares_newsletter

If you have difficulties, you can email back to us, info@fareshares.org.uk. Please include the error message you receive.

Thanks!

================

Dear FareShares customer,

If you are receiving this, you have signed up for our newsletter in the shop. So you know by now that it is run entirely by volunteers.

These volunteers are a bit stretched out in our tasks. In short, we are short of volunteers. So we need your help.

As any other shop, we need to take a note of our inventory every once in a while. Our next stock-take is on Saturday 2nd of April. Please let us know if you could come and help for an hour or longer. It is not a difficult task, it just takes a few people to do it.

If you decide to come, please write back or let the shift workers know, the next time you are in the shop. Please write your name and some way to contact you on the day book, so we know how many people we can count on.

We are also currently requesting blank, or one-sided-blank A4 paper. So if you work in an office that produces lots of scrap paper that can get into a printer, feel free to bring it to FareShares!

Thank you for all your help and your support.

FareShares

These are some notes you can see on the shop now.

How it all works.

Please return any old wash-up or laundry liquid bottles, so we can refill them.

The Herb Study Group runs the First Tuesday of every month at 7.30pm. Open to every one who wants to learn to use herbs.

What do you think of the new coconut-based and hemp-based milks? Please give us your feedback so we can decide if we’ll keep stocking them …

Would you be interested in buying 1kg of baking soda for £2.93? If there is enough interest, we will get it …

Procedure to order in bulk from the suppliers FareShares gets its stock.

… And we sell mooncups! For just £13. Ask at the desk.

Feedback is welcome here or by email but our main channel of communication continues to be our day-book in the shop.