Yesterday, we made our first visit to the Oklahoma Food Coop warehouse.
It was delivery day.
That means that producers’ goods are checked in at the warehouse by volunteers in one of five areas: frozen foods, produce, refrigerated foods, eggs, dry goods.
Then the items are sorted by delivery route, where each customer has a bag (or more) that is filled with the items they’ve ordered over the internet. The people who brought the producers’ items then make the return trip, delivering the items to customers at a delivery site. All this happens in one day.
Yesterday was the largest order in the five-year history of the coop – around $90,000.

It is an amazing operation and an inspiring and soul-filling experience. It’s always felt good to participate as a customer, buying Oklahoma-grown and processed foods that have no chemicals in them. It’s felt good to know that the beef and the eggs and the buffalo all come from farms where animals are treated justly. We know they are because the producers say so on the website and because coop leadership visits the farms to inspect that the claims are true.

We are signing on as producers because we’re beginning to have items to sell. So yesterday was our orientation, which meant we were volunteers for the day too. Being there, witnessing this group of people dedicated to sustainability and learning the ropes of this complex and highly-organized process gave me greater appreciation for and made me more committed to the coop. I’m going to order more, volunteer more.

Buying local, fresh, organic, just food, supported by community, is a gift and responsibility. It’s a real-life, already-happening example of the Yes!-We-Can-Era.