Our Dime in Time recipient for April, Buy Local Moscow, received $440.60, thanks to all the people who used their reusable shopping bags last month. Keep up the good work!

I’d like to challenge our members and customers to get our Dime in Time monthly total up past $450 during June. Have I told you before about the grocery stores in Ireland where they charge you 25 cents per shopping bag? Or about the ones in France that simply don’t provide bags at all? Nada, rien, zip? Just pretend we’re one of those stores, and see if that helps you remember those bags.

The Dime in Time recipient in May was Rendezvous in Moscow Kids Art Program, and our June recipient is the Palouse Land Trust. Read about their plans for the funds elsewhere in this newsletter.

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What kinds of things has the Co-op been doing lately to strengthen the Co-op community and to reach out to those who haven’t yet joined us?

• We now cooperate with Backyard Harvest to make it possible for people to use food stamps at the Tuesday Growers’ Market, every Tuesday from 4:30-6:30 p.m.

• We recently debuted our new Essential Cookery and Essential Living classes, offered through the City of Moscow Parks and Rec Department, featuring teachers from the Co-op.

• We celebrated BikeFest in April and gave our members free bike maintenance classes.

• We set up a booth at the KLEW Inland Northwest Green Fair in Pullman in May.

• We have a volunteer that maintains our excellent community calendar, The Scoop, on our website. To contribute a listing, submit information to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

• We will be sponsoring another Inland Northwest Blood Center blood drive on June 24.

• Our free Tuesday Night Music program continues through the summer, moving outdoors when the weather warms up (hopefully in June!)

• Our Deli Gallery will be part of Moscow’s ArtWalk this summer.

• Co-op Kids! continues through the summer with free educational and arts-oriented activities for toddlers and preschoolers taught by teacher extraordinaire Rebekka Boysen-Taylor.

• We recently joined Rural Roots as an organization, in order to support their important work (see www.ruralroots.org for more info).

• We co-sponsored the Empty Bowls fundraiser in April, along with the Palouse Potters Guild and Heart of the Arts. This event raised $1,700 for local and international hunger relief, and we’re proud to have provided much of the publicity, the soup, and the bread.

• The Good Food Film Series continues every month (see the schedule elsewhere in the newsletter, or check the calendar on our website, www.moscowfood.coop).

• We worked with the Palouse Earth Day Association to help produce their new guide and directory for “Living Sustainably on the Palouse.” When it comes out in August, check out the articles contributed by our staff, volunteers, and some of our members! Look for the link to the electronic copy on our website this fall.

• We joined the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute as an organization, to help support their essential work in our community.