Saturday April 2nd, 8-12noon
Community Yard Sale
Start your spring cleaning or find a hidden treasure at this community yard sale on the Tidal Creek lawn. Please park in the UNCW / Old Cinema 6 parking lot. Seller space is FREE; seller is responsible for all set-up, break-down, and sales. No need to register.
For questions please call Bethany, 910.799-2667 ext 214.

Monday April 11th, 6-7pm
Essential Oils for Relaxation
FREE lecture.
Essential oils have been used throughout history for their medicinal and therapeutic benefits. Sheen Perkins of Agape Oils will share how you can use essential oils to de-stress and find relaxation.
Register at Customer Service or by calling 910.799-2667.

Wednesday April 13th, 6-7pm
Food Allergies
FREE lecture
Join Holistic Health Counselor, Cortney Shallow, to learn about different foods and the reactions that they can cause, as well as using the elimination diet to truly test yourself for food allergies without buying an expensive lab test or paying for a biopsy.
Register at Customer Service or by calling 910.799-2667.

Saturday April 30th, 12-6pm
Earth Day Celebration @ Hugh MacRae Park
Join Tidal Creek Co-op and the Earth Day Alliance as we celebrate Wilmington Earth Day 2011. This spectacular springtime event will be held at Hugh McRae Park in Wilmington, including food by Tidal Creek Coop, live music, kid’s zone, and great opportunities to promote awareness of environmental issues while connecting with your community neighbors! The theme for the 2011 event is “Clear the Air”.
For more info go to wilmingtonearthday.com.

Monday May 2nd – Sunday May 8th
Hemp History Week
Celebrate Hemp History Week at Tidal Creek with discounts and samples throughout the store on hemp products; such as milk alternatives, hemp seeds, and protein powder. Hemp History Week seeks to celebrate America’s rich history with industrial hemp and generate strong support for the re-legalization of hemp farming.

Tuesday May 10th, 6-7pm
Essential Oils for Home Remedies
FREE lecture.
Join Sheen Perkins of Agape Oils, to learn how you can use therapeutic essential oils to be your own family physician. Essential oils have healing properties beyond aromatherapy. Learn how they can be used to benefit your family’s health and wellness.
Register at Customer Service or by calling 910.799-2667.

Saturday May 14th, 8-12noon
Community Yard Sale
Make room for summer fun or find a hidden treasure at this community yard sale on the Tidal Creek lawn. Please park in the UNCW / Old Cinema 6 parking lot.
Seller space is FREE; seller is responsible for all set-up, break-down, and sales.
No need to register.
For questions please call Bethany, 910.799-2667 ext 214.

Sunday May 15th, 10-12noon
Black River Organic Farm Tour
Join Tidal Creek Co-op’s 2011 Farm Tour Series as we tour the greenhouses and fields of Black River Organic Farm with local farmer, Stefan Hartmann and crew.
Guided tour begins on the farm in Ivanhoe, NC at 10am.
Directions and additional information will be given upon registration.
Tickets available at Customer Service or by calling 910.799.2667.
Family $25, Adults $10, Children under 12 $5, Children under 3 FREE.

Thursday May 19th 6 pm- 8pm
Theater Thursdays ~ Screening of “Food Matters”
FREE film screening on Tidal Creek lawn, weather permitting. “Let thy Food be thy Medicine and thy Medicine be thy Food” – Hippocrates. That is the message echoed in the documentary film Food Matters. A hard hitting, fast paced look at our current state of health and the role of nutrition in healing and wellness.
RSVP at Customer Service or by calling 910.799-2667.

Friday May 20th – Sunday May 22nd
Tidal Creek Co-op’s Local Weekend
It’s all about local this weekend at Tidal Creek. All local items will be on sale at 10% off, starting with our Preview Party @ 5pm on Friday, May 20th. The sale will continue through Sunday May 22nd. We will sample lots of local products and have several of our local farmers and producers in the store at designated times throughout the weekend.

Friday May 20th, 5-7pm Local Beer and Wine Tasting

Saturday May 21st, 11-3pm Meet local vendors and sample local products

Sunday May 22nd, 1-3pm Meet local vendors and sample local products

Notary Service for Co-op Owners
Tidal Creek Store Manager and Notary Public, Allison Callahan, is now offering notary service at $2 per document for current Co-op owners.  Appointments may be scheduled by contacting Ali at 910.799.2667 ext 218 or ali@tidalcreek.coop.  All fee proceeds will be donated to Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, carolinafarmstewards.org.

New Recycling Bins
Tidal Creek is proud to introduce the newest addition to its Co-op Greening Program: collection receptacles for plastic film and bags, dry cell batteries, and used cell phones.  The colorful bins are located in the hallway near the bathrooms.  We hope you will utilize this opportunity to recycle these items that are not readily accepted by municipal recycling programs.

Tidal Creek Co-op Volunteer Recognition
In honor of  National Volunteer Week, April 10 –16, we would like to take this opportunity to recognize the incredible team of volunteers we have here at Tidal Creek Co-op. Thank you for all the time and effort you give to support our Co-op.  Thank You!

As a small token of our gratitude, we will be hosting a Volunteer Celebration Party to show our appreciation to all of you who have volunteered and contributed so much to Tidal Creek Co-op this past year. Keep an eye out for your invitations and more information to come soon!

Though the volunteer program has changed in recent years, due to laws restricting the jobs volunteers are allowed to perform in Co-ops, there are still plenty of opportunities to support Tidal Creek through our Volunteer Program. Volunteer applications are available at our Customer Service Desk and can be downloaded on our website tidalcreek.coop.

If you are interested in volunteering or have any questions concerning Tidal Creek’s Volunteer Program, please contact our Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator, Bethany Rogers at 910.799.2667 ext 214 or bethany@tidalcreek.coop.

Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.  ~Elizabeth Andrew

by Justin Murphy

“Ordinary, regular people are the ones that make the biggest differences in the world every single day”

Meet Danielle Richardet. She is a wife, a mother of three, and like many of you, an owner at Tidal Creek.  Lately, she has been receiving some extra attention for a film collaboration, inspired by her blog, that garnered honors in the Brita FilterForGood Film Project and was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. If you ask her, however, she’ll tell you that she is simply a UNCW student who started recycling because it was “awesome on campus” and became “contagious.” She soon realized she wanted something more. “When I started looking at my recycling bin like I looked at my trash can and saw it overflowing, I decided, I wanted to get rid of that too,” Richardet said. “It turned into: the first ‘R’ isn’t recycle. The first ‘R’ is reduce, so I’m going to reduce what I buy and reuse what I already have.”

Richardet started blogging in November of 2009 after an enlightening experience on a camping trip with some friends. After a friend’s husband exited a gas station toting drinks in a plastic bag, she spoke up: “You can say no thank you,” Richardet said. “They are three easy words, and it’s not a big deal.” After the trip, her friend suggested she start spreading the word about environmental consciousness, as her husband had taken Richardet’s words to heart. “Whatever you say works,” she told her.

The blog, entitled It Starts with Me, started as sporadic tidbits of advice on how Richardet reduces waste in her day-to-day life: choosing not to use plastic produce bags, purchasing music digitally, using reusable shampoo travel tubes. The key to reducing consumption, she explained, is to stick with a waste-reducing habit once she has picked it up. “I take everything step-by-step,” she said. “I don’t want to overwhelm myself.”

After taking a family vacation to California and helping a friend pick up litter on Santa Monica beach, she created the Our Daily Ocean section of her blog. “We do Surfrider clean-ups and Big Sweeps at Wrightsville and we pick up hundreds of cigarette butts,” Richardet said, “and in the twenty minutes we were on the Santa Monica beach we picked up zero.” Smoking is banned on Santa Monica beach and the Santa Monica pier provides “bait tanks” that house butts and feature information on the dangers cigarette butts can pose to marine wildlife.

In the Our Daily Ocean section Richardet chronicles twenty-minute beach walks that she takes with her children, husband and friends while picking up litter. In the first day alone, they picked up 346 cigarette butts. Since that day, Richardet and friends have picked up 15,572 cigarette butts in 52 twenty-minute walks. In the film, also entitled It Starts With Me, director Destin Cretton and crew follow her as she collects butts and presents her evidence to the Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen. “I don’t think it’s a new problem,” Richardet said, “but to have somebody break it down to 20 minutes helps bring more awareness to the problem.”

There hasn’t been much of a response from the Board of Aldermen as a result of the film, as they wish to wait until September to address the problem. (There is talk of a beach ambassador program where members of the community could sign up to educate people on the beach about the effects of litter.) Over the summer they are encouraging people to do their own twenty-minute litter walks in order to get a gauge for how bad the problem is. Tidal Creek will have a sign-up sheet at customer service for those wishing to pledge twenty-minute litter walks at Wrightsville Beach.

Danielle will also be volunteering in the store in order to educate shoppers on the benefits of, and ways they can save by, shopping in bulk and reducing waste.  As stated in her blog, “When we stop accepting the products that litter our streets, our beaches, our parks, our world, then we effectively start changing a system that isn’t working.  Plastic pollution is a global problem, but in order to fix a global problem, we have to start local.  And it doesn’t get more local than your own home.  I encourage everyone to take the Show Your Plastic Challenge on myplasticfreelife.com.  My thought process: if we don’t like something, we need to stop talking about how much we don’t like it, and actively work to change it.”

Danielle Richardet moved to Wilmington in 1999, to attend UNC-W and because her family loves the beach and everything about this area.  She moved from St. Louis, Missouri, the number 8 most toxic city in America.

Jones Family Farm
Jones Family Farm is located just outside of Burgaw, North Carolina, 25 miles north of Wilmington.  The family includes Jeremiah, JoAnn and their five, young daughters.  Their farm encompasses an area of seventy-four acres.   In 2001 the Jones Family purchased this land from their relatives.  Recently, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services along with the North Carolina State Fair presented a certificate to the Jones Family Farm recognizing them as a North Carolina Century Farm.   This rare certification states that the farm has stayed in their family for a hundred years or more.

The current branch of the family operating the Jones Family Farm has been growing their own food for over thirteen years.  Tidal Creek Co-op has been carrying their products for three years.  Jones Family Farm items that we carry include: free-range poultry and eggs, pastured beef, forage-fed pork, and many varieties of pesticide-free fruits and vegetables.    Another unique service they offer is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes for meat as well as CSA boxes for produce.  You can also find their products available at Wrightsville Beach Farmers Market as well as the Carolina Beach Farmers Market.   If you are interested in learning more about the CSA opportunities, you can visit their website at JonesFamilyFarmNC.com.

Black River Organic Farm
Black River Organic Farm is a small family farm, owned and operated by Stefan Hartman.  Located in Ivanhoe, NC in the Sampson County area, the sixteen acre farm is certified organic under the USDA.  Stefan has been providing fresh produce to Tidal Creek Cooperative for over twenty years.  The crops that Stefan grows include:  broccoli, butter lettuce, elephant garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, arugula and much more.  As an Organically Certified Farm, Black River uses sustainable growing methods that minimize impact on the environment.   The farm also uses organic certified fertilizers and pesticides exclusively.  They build their soil by using composted material and never use any synthetic chemicals to produce their harvest.

Black River Organic Farm offers CSA boxes starting in April of every year.  These boxes contain a fresh and diverse selection of the farm’s produce.  Occasionally, Stefan has been known to put some lesser-known items such as Kohlrabi in the box to expose customers to great tasting produce they may not yet have tried.    You can also find Black River produce at the Riverfront Farmers’ Market on Saturdays and the Poplar Grove Farmers’ Market on Wednesdays.

Q:  Can we carry a biodegradable trash bag, like Biobag kitchen trash bags?  The Seventh Generation bag is recycled but not biodegradable.
A:   We will work room in for this.  Thanks!

Q:  Could you find out if the reusable Co-op shopping bags can be recycled?
A:  Our purple and green reusable Co-op bags are 100% non-woven polypropylene (plastic #5) and are recyclable in locations that accept plastic bag recycling, like Tidal Creek’s new plastic bag recycling bin!

Q:  I was referred by a friend to Tidal Creek to find locally grown rice of the Carolina Gold variety.  Could we consider stocking it?
A:  We haven’t found an organic source for local rice.  It is also very expensive.  We will try to bring it in if we can find it at the right price.  Thank you!

Q:  Have you ever considered selling fresh cut flowers?
A:  We carry fresh cut flowers for certain holidays, most recently for Valentine’s Day and likely in the near future for Mother’s Day, even though we are often subject to profit loss.  As for regularly carrying them, we just don’t have enough demand.

Q:  I love that you have more gluten free bakery items, especially the GF corn blueberry muffins!  They are great!  Thanks!
A:  Thank you very much!  We can see the interest in GF items.  The muffins are a strong seller, so we hope to be able to keep making them.

Q:  The chocolate nut bars that are gluten free and vegan are outstanding!  Please make them again!
A:  Thanks for the feedback!  We had a problem with consistency.  After many experiments we have discontinued them.  They are too hard to make and get to come out the same.  We’re sorry!

Q:  The gluten free and vegan chocolate cake with vanilla icing is the best GF/vegan cake you have ever made!  It rocks!
A:  Thank you for the feedback!  We will try to keep it on the shelf so you can enjoy it when you want.

Green Goddess Essentials (GGE Organics)
The more you learn about Green Goddess, Allie Leatherwood’s products, the more you’ll love them. At Tidal Creek, we carry Allie’s line of lotions, salves, and bath salts. She has been making these products, mainly for herself and her family, for the past 13 years; only last year did she begin to sell them as a business. Boy, are we glad she did! Her products blend her love of organic gardening and chemistry beautifully.  In fact, Allie often infuses the oils used in her products, with herbs she’s grown in her own garden! Her two sons, ages 11 and 13, get in on the action too, learning chemical principals as they go. Allie’s business is based on goodness: her ingredients are fair trade and organic, honesty is the policy, and she will only sell what’s good enough for her own family. In addition to the shelves at Tidal Creek Co-op, Allie can be found at the Riverfront and Poplar Grove Farmers’ Markets. When asked about her favorite product, Allie had a hard time choosing. Arnica balm is hard to beat for arthritis, she says, and the baby lotion’s soothing blend of lavender and chamomile is a great help with stress relief. All Green Goddess Essentials products will be 20% off during the month of April.

Koni Hawaiian
It’s starting to feel like summer in Wilmington, and we have the perfect local vendor for the season. Koni Hawaiian’s handcrafted whipped coconut Shea butter creams (great for post-sun skin) and tropical aromatherapy sprays help welcome the heat in comfort. Toni Saleeby started Koni Hawaiian in early 2009. The business brings together Toni’s many passions and experiences: her love of Hawaii, where she has visited since 1985; her respect and admiration of the Polynesian culture; her years as a massage therapist, where she learned the benefit of aromatherapy; and her desire to protect and nourish her skin. She personally loves the Shea butter creams for sunburn relief, and they’re popular among her surfer friends, as well. “They love the creams for treating surfer’s rash as well as most other skin irritations,” she says. As for her favorite product, Toni remains loyal to her 808 aromatherapy spray, which she crafted to evoke the aromas of Hawaii. Most of all, it is clear that Toni loves what she does, and she always spreads summery cheer when she comes by the Co-op. “I love blending new scents, not only for the great aromas but for the holistic benefits as well,” she says, “I hope everyone who uses the products will enjoy them as much as I enjoy making them.” All Koni Hawaiian products will be 20% off during the month of May.