It is with heavy hearts we must share that The Old Post Office Bakery – who have been supplying us with incredible loaves, veggie sos rolls and pasties for years – are retiring. Our last delivery was a few weeks back, and the last day their Clapham shop is open is this Sunday 8th May. Thanks for everything OPOB, you will be missed by many a faresharer and swathes of Londoners! (on the off chance anyone’s interested in taking over a bakery… do get in touch with them)

However, every cloud has its silver lining, and through the grapevine we found local baker Damion, who has started supplying us. We’re now stocking his country loaves and porridge loaves – both sourdough and made with freshly milled organic wholewheat flour, organic white flour, water, leaven + salt; the latter also has a porridge of oats plus linseeds mixed in! £3.50 for a 1kg loaf. Porridge loaves apparently keep a fair bit longer than bread usually does (although that’s quite a challenge because it’s so delicious…)

Today we were treated to some incredible olive + zaatar bread sticks, £1.40 each. If you pop by the co-op asap there might still be some left…

Kale, Cavolo Nero
Spinach
Potatoes, Casablanca
Mushrooms, brown
Onions 60-80 mm
Potatoes, Sweet Med

The number of people buying their food at Fareshares is still quite a lot lower than before the pandemic, and meanwhile we’re doing our best to maintain or even increase the range of items available.

This, combined with other factors such as money we lose every week on unsold fresh fruit and veg, and our inefficiency in keeping prices up to date, means that our bank balance is running pretty low at the moment.

So please…

• keep shopping!
• let other people know about Fareshares
• if you can, make a donation when you shop

The more help we get from our community, the better.

Meanwhile we’ll do our best to keep things going and make improvements.

If you have the time, you’re warmly invited to join us and help out as part of the collective.

The fridge was stocked up nicely on Thursday! We’re trialling some soya yogurts (Sojade) and cashew cheese (Tyne Chease), although you won’t see any of the latter in this pic as it was all gone by 6pm…

The bakery order has been upped slightly, meaning you have a bit more of a chance of getting your hands on a veg pasty or sourdough loaf if you come in later in the day / week 😅

Other recents additions include chocolate (Montezuma’s), coffee (Clippers), a new variety of baked beans and a new vegan mayo!

Always useful to hear what you love / loathe / would like to try… chat to us when you’re in the co-op or email info AT fareshares.org.uk

Fareshares isn’t by any stretch of the imagination zero waste. Nor is any other shop, unless they’ve built a pipeline for their oats.

Yes, when you bring your own containers and fill them from the bulk bins, as well as saving money you are indeed substantially reducing the packaging that you cause to be produced, because we’re all sharing the use of big bags or sacks rather than lots of individual packaging. But that still ain’t zero.

And of course we sell lots of things individually wrapped as well. For example, the lovely dried fruit we get from Infinity. Up until recently Infinity’s plastic film packaging has been made up of a laminate of two kinds of plastic, as they explain on their packaging FAQ page — with the result that it cannot be recycled.

But recently Infinity has started packing some of its products in pure LDPE (low-density polyethylene), which can be recycled with shopping bags at most large supermarkets. So please look out for the marking that lets you know it’s LDPE and deal with it as such.

Loads of things are made of LDPE, it turns out. Not just plastic shopping bags, but also bread bags, bubble wrap, cling film, freezer bags, toilet roll wrapping, and delivery bags (eg from eBay — but cut out non-removable labels). Basically, you can tell it’s LDPE if it stretches rather than splitting or tearing.

You definitely shouldn’t be putting LDPE and other plastic films in your local council’s domestic waste recycling. Almost none of them can deal with it.

You can check where your nearest LDPE “plastic bags and wrapping” recycling point is here on Recycle Now.

So yes, this is Fareshares encouraging you to go to large supermarkets. Or your local Co-op Food shop, many of which now have collection bins for soft plastics. Not necessarily to part with your money there, but definitely with your LDPE.

• Candy beetroot
• White winter radish
• Festival squash
• Marfona potatoes
• Brown mushrooms
• Onions
• Sweet potatoes from Spain

Apology: We ordered blood oranges but those that turned up turned out not to be blood oranges! Sorry to those who bought them and discovered this too. We are taking this up with our supplier Better Food Shed.

Thursday 23rd December: 2-4pm
Friday 24th December: 4-7pm
Saturday 25th December: closed

Thursday 30th December: 2-6pm
Friday 31st December: 4-6pm
Saturday 1st January: closed

We expect to be back to normal opening hours from 5th January onwards.

We wish you a happy solar new year, a jolly Yuletide, a merry Christmas, a super Saturnalia, and all the best for 2022!

Our calculators have little solar panels, which is great when there’s light, but inside our windowless shop there isn’t much light, especially in the darker months! So they depend on a little fallback button cell (battery). It’s a little bit tricky to get inside and replace them, but worth doing and the new cells are cheap.

So we’ll have two fully charged calculators for you to use this Thursday!

All being well we will have fridge products such as tofu, miso and spreads back in stock from next Thursday 4th November.

This is due to a customer offering to take on the job of ordering from Suma Wholefoods, after a gap of some weeks where we had no volunteer for this task.

Fareshares is entirely dependent on people volunteering their time, and we are still short of volunteers, so please do give us a hand if you can! Drop your details into the box in the shop next time you’re in.