This year we were able to expand our offering of locally grown organic produce. We helped The Organic Box out by taking some of their excess produce, we continued our relationship with Sparrow’s Nest Organics and we added a great variety of produce from Mans Organics in Coaldale, AB.
We were just notified that Earth’s General Store was awarded the "BEST SUSTAINABLE GOODS/GIFT STORE" from Vue Weekly readers. Thank you everyone that has voted for us and submitted a response on their survey!
The other week, when a regular customer heard that we were opening up a second store, he expressed a word of caution. He said that many businesses fail when they expand to a second store. We look like a store, we smell like a store, we operate like a store but we are more than a store. The business is just our vehicle to promote a healthier, more balanced, and more respectful way of operating in the world. I am blessed that so many people want to be involved in this journey – staff and customers.
Several years ago someone asked me about this product and I have keep my eyes open for them ever since. One of our supplier started to bring these items in very recently and I am pleased to say – as of today Earth’s General Store is now stocking Butler’s Soy Curls.
Someone asked me to provide her a list of the permaculture books that we carry. When I wrote the list I did not realize we had so many. I thought I would share it with everyone else. This list does not include our books on Organic Gardening, beekeeping, chicken coops, house building and such. AND definitely not including our listing of Vegan, Vegetarian, Plant Based and Raw recipe books which would be about 10 times longer :).
Today we received some new titles (more new titles coming next week). So many people are incorporating more plant based meals into their lives. It is really good to see. The book industry is responding to this shift and we are seeing an incredible number of books being issued. List of books after the “Read More.”
Earth’s General Store has led the way to reintroducing fermentation to our local community with workshops, crocks, organic cabbage, and a large selection of books. Today we have added another tool so that people can make their own fermented foods right in their own home… the PerfectPickler™.
Earth’s General Store tries to offer socially and environmental products at a reasonable and fair price. This is one of the reasons why we started to roast our own Fair Trade Certified and Certified Organic coffee in the store. We could deliver freshly roasted coffee that was ethically/socially superior with minimal environmental impact PLUS being produced by artisans here in Edmonton – adding value to our community. We find that we need to change the prices for our coffee. Since we started to roast coffee in 2004 we have only raised the prices once – to go from $12.00 per pound to $12.50 per pound. It has been over 4 years since we raised our prices, so today we are raising the price to $13.50 per pound ($29.70/kg) for our roasted coffee beans.
A woman was in the store last week who had just come over here from Planet Organic, where she had asked this same question of two of their staff. ‘Do your products contain GMOs?’ One person told her that if it contained corn from the USA it had GMO even if it was labelled organic. The other person said that if it were labelled organic or NON-GMO Project Verified it does not have GMO ingredients. She was confused with their answer and came over to ask me. I think she was pleased with the thoroughness of my answer.
Today we received several calls about dried white mulberries. This is unusual for this product. When one of the staff asked a caller why the interest, they said they saw it on Dr Oz. Yes, we do carry dried white mulberry. We carry the packaged product and we even carry this in bulk at $36.00 per kilogram. Save money, save packaging, and save landfill space!