Monday, October 29, 2007

Official: Organic Really is Better

Jon Ungoed-Thomas, Sunday Times, London, October 28.

THE biggest study into organic food has found that it is more nutritious than ordinary produce and may help to lengthen people's lives.

The evidence from the £12m four-year project will end years of debate and is likely to overturn government advice that eating organic food is no more than a lifestyle choice.

The study found that organic fruit and vegetables contained as much as 40% more antioxidants, which scientists believe can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease, Britain's biggest killers. They also had higher levels of beneficial minerals such as iron and zinc.

Read more (The Sunday Times)

Some Things Aren't as Green as They Seem

Eviana Hartman, Washington Post, October 28, 2007

Green really is the new black: Goods from food to fashion are becoming environmentally trendy. The downside? Many products and services appear Earth-friendly but aren't much different from their conventional counterparts. While there are many shades of green -- and it's impossible to avoid consuming the planet's resources -- it helps to know how to separate fact from fiction.

A few tips to avoid greenwashing.

Halloween Candies

Halloween is a notorious time for children to receive quantities of candies containing excessive amounts of refined sugars, artificial colors & flavorings. Scary!

There are healthier options. Giving fruit to the treaters, to some, might be considered as bad as a trick. But, we do have available organic candies available sweetened with grain syrups. Available as lollipops and toffees, they'll please the sweet teeth of the gremlins that come knocking at your door, and appease your conscience of healthier feeding to your little ghosts.

Thanksgiving Turkeys

It's not too early to order your organic turkey for Thanksgiving.

We're offering fresh organic turkeys at the exceptionally special pre-order price of $3.45/lb.

Change of Delivery Days

Heavy customer demand for our Home Delivery service in lower Westchester has created some pressure on us being able to make all deliveries on a timely basis.

So, in an effort to provide timely Home Delivery service to all our customers in Westchester, we are changing the delivery day for some towns.

Effective this week, the towns of Croton & Ossining will now be provided delivery every Tuesday.

Job Available

We have an opening for a part-time or full time chef's assitant to assist with food prepartion in our kitchen. Daytimes and weekend work involved.

Lawsuits Announced Against Nation's Biggest Organic Dairy

Class Action Suits Seek Damages from Sale of Fraudulent Milk

Acting on behalf of organic food consumers in 27 states, class action lawsuits are being filed in U.S. federal courts, in St. Louis and Denver, against the nation's largest organic dairy. The suits charge Aurora Dairy Corporation, based in Boulder, Colorado, with allegations of consumer fraud, negligence, and unjust enrichment concerning the sale of organic milk by the company. This past April, Aurora officials received a notice from the USDA detailing multiple and "willful" violations of federal organic law that were found by federal investigators.

"This is the largest scandal in the history of the organic industry," said Mark Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group. Cornucopia's 2005 formal legal complaint first alerted USDA investigators to the improprieties occurring at Aurora. "Aurora was taking advantage of the consumer's good will in the marketplace toward organics, and the USDA has allowed this scofflaw- corporation to continue to operate," Kastel added.

Law firms based in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri have so far have filed one of the lawsuits in Missouri, with another suit, covering dozens of additional states where plaintiffs live, due to be filed in Denver tomorrow. The attorneys are seeking damages from Aurora to reimburse consumers harmed by the company's actions and are requesting that the U.S. District Courts put an injunction in place to halt the ongoing sale of Aurora's organic milk in the nation's grocery stores until it can be demonstrated that the company is complying with federal organic regulations.

Aurora, with $100 million in annual sales, provides milk that is sold as organic and packaged as private label, store-brand products for some of the nation's biggest chains, including Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, Safeway, Wild Oats, and about 20 others.

Independent investigators at the USDA concluded earlier this year that Aurora-with five dairy facilities in Colorado and Texas, each milking thousands of cows-had 14 "willful" violations of federal organic regulations. One of the most egregious of the findings was that from December 5, 2003, to April 16, 2007, the Aurora Dairy "labeled and represented milk as organically produced, when such milk was not produced and handled in accordance with the National Organic Program regulations."

Note: Organic Connection only offers milk & dairy products from regional farmers, family businesses, farmer co-operatives or small organic companies. We maintain the preference and ability to communicate with real people in business rather than work with faceless corporations.

read more about the lawsuit (Cornucopia.Org)

Rule Requiring Pasteurization of Raw Almonds Goes Into Effect

Despite massive opposition from almond producers, retailers and organic consumers, the USDA has implemented its ruling to require that raw almonds be pasteurized. The rule went into effect on September 1st, and since then, all retail outlets have been forced to remove truly raw almonds from store shelves. Consumers will be misled by this action as there will still be almonds on store shelves labeled as "raw", but they will actually be pasteurized.

One of the FDA-recommended pasteurization methods requires the use of propylene oxide, which is classified as a "possible human carcinogen" by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and is banned in Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.

Since the decision about the rule was made, Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns, has stepped down. He is temporarily replaced by Chuck Conner. This may provide a new opportunity for reversal.

Please contact Conner today to ask that the rule be suspended for 6 months while the public comment period is re-opened.

Note: Organic Connection continues to offer Certified Organic Raw Almonds. We have ample supply from our main supplier.

Read more and Take Action...

Diet for Small Planet may be most efficient if it includes dairy and a little meat

By Susan Lang, Cornell Chronicle, Oct. 4th.

A low-fat vegetarian diet is very efficient in terms of how much land is needed to support it. But adding some dairy products and a limited amount of meat may actually increase this efficiency, Cornell researchers suggest.

The study, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, is the first to examine the land requirements of complete diets. The researchers compared 42 diets with the same number of calories and a core of grains, fruits, vegetables and dairy products (using only foods that can be produced in New York state), but with varying amounts of meat (from none to 13.4 ounces daily) and fat (from 20 to 45 percent of calories) to determine each diet's "agricultural land footprint."

"A person following a low-fat vegetarian diet, for example, will need less than half (0.44) an acre per person per year to produce their food," said Christian Peters, M.S. '02, Ph.D. '07, a Cornell postdoctoral associate in crop and soil sciences and lead author of the research. "A high-fat diet with a lot of meat, on the other hand, needs 2.11 acres."

"Surprisingly, however, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use," said Peters.

The reason is that fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality cropland, he explained. Meat and dairy products from ruminant animals are supported by lower quality, but more widely available, land that can support pasture and hay. A large pool of such land is available in New York state because for sustainable use, most farmland requires a crop rotation with such perennial crops as pasture and hay.

Thus, although vegetarian diets in New York state may require less land per person, they use more high- valued land. "It appears that while meat increases land-use requirements, diets including modest amounts of meat can feed more people than some higher fat vegetarian diets," said Peters.

Read more (Cornell Chronicle)

Complaint against Mushroom Company for Organic Standards Violations

Last week, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) requested that the United States Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program (NOP) initiate an investigation into violations of organic standards allegedly committed by a mushroom production company based in California. A formal complaint from GAP was submitted earlier today against Golden Gourmet Mushrooms, Inc. (GGM) of San Diego County.

According to documents acquired by GAP, the specialty mushroom company may have violated organic standards and public confidence in several ways, including:

  • The sale of conventional mushroom products as organic
  • The manipulation of organic certification documents
  • Making false claims regarding the nature and origin of its mushroom products.

"Every violation of the standards reduces public confidence in the organic label. It is critical that the National Organic Program thoroughly investigate complaints and weed out any bad actors now while the program is still young," says Jacqueline Ostfeld, GAP Food and Drug Safety Officer.

more info (WhistleBlower.org)

Thanksgiving pre-orders

Planning yor organic Thanksgiving yet? We'll have organic turkeys available as well as organic hams and many other items (maybe even organic duck).

Not your turn to provide Thanksgiving this year? Don't do without the superb flavors of organic - demand it.

Herondale Farm Pasture Raised Chickens

We now have available a limited supply of pasture raised organic chickens from Herondale Farm of Ancramdale, New York (Columbia County).

Their chickens roam free in a special protected pasture from the time they're a few weeks old, and enjoy a varied diet combining grass, alfalfa, clover and bugs from the pasture in combination with an organic feed mix.

Home Delivery Area Expansion - New Milford & Kent

We currently have the capability of increasing our Thursday Home Delivery area. So, we're considering offering Home Delivery to New Milford, Kent and nearby areas.

If you're interested in getting weekly home delivery from us, please drop us an email to let us know.

Organic Harvest Celebration

Come to CT NOFA's

Organic Harvest Celebration

In New Haven

Saturday November 3, 2007

More info...

Contractors Wanted

As we enlarge our Eco-Home department with the range of Bio-Shield natural paints and wood finishes, we do get enquiries from customers looking for contractors who would like to have an eco-orientation.

Contractors are welcome to place their business cards or leaflets at the front section of our store.

Job availability

Organic Connection has an opening in their superb culinary team for a kitchen hand to assist with food preparation and cleaning.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

A Tale of Two Counties

In the farm belt, a look at the extremes of agricultural production

By Tom Philpott, Grist, Oct. 10.

At first glance, Hardin County, located in the central part of the state an hour north of Des Moines, is just another rural county. It's blanketed in corn and soy, and houses what's become the sine qua non of rural Iowa: an ethanol plant. But Hardin isn't just another rural county: it's arguably the state's Confined-Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) capital. The county's farmers have kept hogs for as long as anyone can remember, but CAFOs didn't start popping up until the early 1990s.

I drove through the area with three farmers who have been fighting the CAFO explosion. As we moved along country roads, every few miles a set of low-slung buildings would break through the monotony of corn and soy fields. Sometimes there would be two together; sometimes as many as six or eight lined up in two rows. You can't just walk up to a hog confinement and look inside. CAFO operators are justly terrified that a trespasser could infect the hogs; animals raised this way have little in the way of immune systems. So the lawns in front of most CAFOs display "no trespassing" signs.

Each building, I learned, houses around 2,500 pigs. Often, a kind of big black pond separates the rows. The CAFO industry favors the word "lagoon" to describe these open repositories of feces and urine; I prefer "cesspool." Newer CAFOs, I learned, can no longer utilize open cesspools. So they plunk the confinement building on top of the cesspool: 2,500 hogs standing over their own several-months' accumulation of waste.

Read more... (Grist)

Genetically Engineered Corn Study Shows Potential Harm To Stream Wildlife Near Farms

Earlier this month the Center for Food Safety voiced concern regarding a study issued by a team of researchers on the potential harm posed by the genetically engineered (GE) Bt variety of corn. The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, establishes that pollen and other material from Bt corn is washing into streams and river headwaters. The study further found through laboratory trials that Bt corn material is toxic to insects that play an important role in aquatic ecosystems. As a result, Bt corn may pose a serious threat to our nation's waterways and the plants, fish and animals that inhabit them.

"This is yet another example of a government agency granting clearance for a GE organism without requiring meaningful or stringent testing," said Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director of the Center for Food Safety. "Bt corn is planted widely throughout the U.S. Had a study like this been done prior to the government's approval, we would not be looking at a popular crop that has the potential to broadly disrupt the environment."

read more...(Center for Food Safety)

Crops are getting less nutritious and farming methods are partly to blame

Today's farmers raise more bushels of corn, pecks of apples, and pounds of broccoli from a given piece of land than they did decades ago. But those crops are often less nutritious, according to a new report released from The Organic Center, "Still No Free Lunch: Nutrient levels in U.S. food supply eroded by pursuit of high yields."

"Our crops are more abundant [i.e., per acre yields are higher], but they are also generally less nutritious," said report author Brian Halweil, a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and a member of the Organic Center's scientific advisory board. Historical records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that everyday fruits and vegetables-from collard greens to tomatoes to sweet corn-often have lower levels of some vitamins and less iron, calcium, zinc, and other micronutrients than they did 50 years ago.

read more (The Organic Center)

Green Chimneys Fall Harvest Festival

Saturday, Oct. 20th 10:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Pony Rides · Hayrides· Games · Food Sales · Vendors · Live Music by Shrdlu Trio & More!

Children $5 · Adults $10 · Family Pass $25

Doansberg Rd, Brewster.

Organic Connection will be displaying at this Fall Festival and selling hot soups and chili.

Green Chimneys

Two Angry Moms

You're invited to a Hometown screening of Two Angry Moms in Weston, CT. Meet the film's producer, Amy Kalafa of Weston!

When: Tuesday, October 16th @ 7pm

Where: Weston Public Library 56 Norfield Road, Weston, CT 06883

What is happening to the health of our children and how does school food factor in?

The film chronicles what happens when two fed-up moms take on the system and start a grass-roots revolution aimed at establishing programs that safeguard the health of our kids.

Two Angry Moms explores the roles the federal government, corporate interest, school administration and parents play in the feeding of our country's school kids and the impact it has on their health.

Two Angry Moms

Organic Harvest Celebration

Come to CT NOFA's

Organic Harvest Celebration

In New Haven

Saturday November 3, 2007

More info...

Organic Dinner Night - Oktoberfest Theme

Organic Dinner Nights are held every other Saturday (Oct. 20, Nov. 3 & 17, Dec. 1 & 15) at Organic Connection.

ORGANIC DINNER BUFFET MENU

Oktoberfest Theme

Saturday, October 20th

Salads & Soups
· Beet Salad (VV) (GF)
· Cabbage Salad (VV) (GF)
· Barley Salad
· Cauliflower Salad (VV) (GF)
· Mushroom and Leek Salad (VV) (GF)
· Cucumber and Dill Salad (VV) (GF)
· Mixed Greens with Apple Cider Vinaigrette (VV) (GF)
· German Potato Salad (VV) (GF
· Split Pea Soup with Bacon
· Autumn Vegetable Soup (VV) (GF)

Main Dishes
· Potato Pancakes with Sour Cream or Applesauce (VV) (GF)
· Braised Red Cabbage (VV) (GF)
· Sauerkraut (VV) (GF)
· Braised Lentils (VV) (GF)
· Vegetable and Brown Rice Stuffed Cabbage (VV) (GF)
· Kasseler Rippenspeer (Rib Pork Roast)
· Beef Rouladen
· Vegetable Goulash (VV) (GF)
· Chicken Schnitzel

Desserts
· Fresh Fruit (VV) (GF)
· Apple Cake
· Pumpkin Custards

Legend: GF = Gluten-free, VV = Vegan, V = Vegetarian, Soy = contains Soy.

All ingredients are organic with the exception of seafood

All inclusive dinner price is $40 (includes taxes, tips & non-alcoholic drinks).

BYO Wine. We also have a selection of organic beers for sale.

Seating from 7:00 to 7:30.

Call to make your reservation. Phone: (845) 279-2290.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Selecting the Safest Meat

As 27 people in eight states have fallen ill from E. coli exposure after eating Topp Meat's hamburger, the company has issued a recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen ground beef products. Topp advises consumers who've purchased Topp's hamburger burgers to discard them or return them to the store for a full refund. But better choices abound: The Green Guide offers help on sorting your way through the thicket of labels, read on.

Most Reliable Labels

Certified Organic-Animals are fed organic, vegetarian feed, are not administered any antibiotics and no irradiation or genetic modification takes place. They are raised under conditions which provide for exercise, access to outdoors and freedom of movement.

Pastured or grass fed-Cattle are fed on a confined or unconfined system with a grass floor. Claims are not necessarily verified by third party inspectors, though some grass producers do provide independent documentation that their animals are vegetarian (look for the USDA Verified Shield). Grass results in healthier animals with less need for antibiotics. Uncrowded and hygienic rearing conditions also result in lower E. coli infection rates.

[Note: all the beef available at Organic Connection is both Certified Organic & 100% Grass-Fed]

Least Reliable Labels

Free range or free roaming-"free range" is only defined by the USDA for poultry production. Claims are defined by USDA, but are not verified by third party inspectors.

No antibiotics administered, raised without antibiotics or antibiotic-free-The USDA allows producers to label meat and poultry products with the claims "no antibiotics administered" or "raised without antibiotics." The term "antibiotic-free" is not approved for use by the USDA. Claims are defined by USDA, but are not verified by third party inspectors.

No hormones administered, raised without hormones, or hormone-free-Cattle must not receive any hormones during their lifetime. The term "hormone-free" is not approved for use by the FDA. Claims are defined by USDA, but are not verified by third party inspectors.

Natural-Meat must be minimally processed without any artificial flavors, colors, chemical preservatives, or synthetic ingredients. However, the USDA does not exclude meats raised using antibiotics as growth promoters. Claims are defined by USDA, but are not verified by third party inspectors.

thegreenguide.com

UN backs organic farming

The organic food movement has received endorsement from the United Nations leading agency on food and agriculture, the FAO. In a new report, it says that organic farming fights hunger, tackles climate change, and is good for farmers, consumers and the environment.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has come out in favour of organic agriculture. Its report Organic Agriculture and Food Security explicitly states that organic agriculture can address local and global food security challenges.

Nadia Scialabba, an FAO official, defined organic agriculture as: "A holistic production management system that avoids the use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and genetically modified organisms, minimises pollution of air, soil and water, and optimises the health and productivity of plants, animals and people."

The strongest benefits of organic agriculture, Scialabba said, are its reliance on fossil fuel independent, locally available resources that incur minimal agro-ecological stresses and are cost effective. She described organic agriculture as a 'neo-traditional food system' which combines modern science and indigenous knowledge.'

The FAO report strongly suggests that a worldwide shift to organic agriculture can fight world hunger and at the same time tackle climate change. According to FAO's previous World Food Summit report], conventional agriculture, together with deforestation and rangeland burning, are responsible for 30 per cent of the CO2 and 90 per cent of nitrous oxide emissions worldwide.

FAO Organic Agriculture Programme

read more...(peopleandplanet.net)

Organic, and Tastier: The Rat's Nose Knows

By Harold McGee, New York Times, October 3, 2007.

In any controversy it can be helpful to consider the views of disinterested parties. So, on the subject of agricultural policy and practice, it's worth noting that an unimpeachably neutral group has joined the ranks of those who prefer organic foods over foods produced with the help of synthetic chemicals. That group is 40 Swiss rats.

A team of Swiss and Austrian scientists recently concluded a 21-year study of organic wheat production. As an "integrative method" for assessing quality, they gave lab animals a choice of biscuits made from organic or conventional wheat. The rats ate significantly more of the former. The authors call this result remarkable, because they found the two wheats to be very similar in chemical composition and baking performance.

read more (New York Times)

Organic Harvest Celebration

Come to CT NOFA's

Organic Harvest Celebration

In New Haven

Saturday November 3, 2007

more info

International Cleanup Weekend

International Cleanup Weekend is October 13 and 14th. Think globally and make a difference locally by organizing your own cleanup. Choose a spot close to home -- maybe a trail, park, playground, or patch of sidewalk. Find some friends to help. This year, you can use Google Maps to share your plans and get other folks to the cleanup site.

Google Maps International Cleanup Weekend

First Organic Hotel in Wales

The first organic hotel in Wales has opened for business in St David's in Pembrokeshire. The TYF Eco Hotel opened its doors for guests on 23rd August 2007. Based in a converted windmill, the intimate 12-bedroom TYF Eco Hotel has been granted organic certification from the Welsh Organic Scheme. This means that almost all the food and drink served in the hotel is guaranteed organic, and inspectors from the Welsh Organic Scheme will visit the hotel several times a year to ensure that standards are maintained.

How about here in the US? Any of our readers know of hotels or B&B's that provide mainly organic meals?

And stay tuned - there's a B&B opening in Ridgefield with an organic oriented attitude.

read more (TYF Eco Hotel)

Position Available: Organic Baker

We love the idea of having fresh, organic bread and other baked goods available for our customers. We are, therefore, looking for an experienced sourdough baker to help us produce these goods for our store.

Education for Sustainability

Sustainability is more than a catchword - it is a new kind of thinking, a way to pursue environmental stewardship, economic security and social equity as complementary goals.

More and more, as students pursue degrees at institutions of higher education worldwide, they are exposed to the concepts of sustainable development. Long a hallmark in fi elds such as environmental studies or agriculture, sustainability issues now are cropping up in all walks of course work. Degree programs from Business to Engineering are incorporating discussions of the real-world application of sustainability in their curricula. This reality necessitates more discussion of sustainability in K-12 curricula.

The Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation's (CELF) mission is to bring about enduring institutional change to education by promoting sustainability as a core K-12 learning framework. Through early education we can equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will lead to a sustainable future for everyone.

Ultimately, we envision our children and future generations understanding the unique and complex systems that support the natural, as well as the human-built environments, and having the knowledge, the desire and the ability to save the integrity of those systems.

read more (celfoundation.org)

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

King Corn

King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.

In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm.

Read more and watch the trailer

What Makes a Cow Organic?

By Kathie Arnold

What makes a cow organic? The answer has certainly been controversial over the last several years, especially when it comes to grazing cows on pasture. However, I would submit that the National Organic Program regulation, which states that all ruminants must have access to pasture, has been clear right from the start to the vast majority of organic dairy farms and certifiers.

Only a small minority of operators and certifiers took advantage of the absence of a definitively worded regulation to minimize grazing; they also loosely interpreted, if not disregarded, the several citations to pasture requirements in the USDA regulations. This failure to come to the same understanding and application as everyone else seems to stem from a profit motive-to make more organic milk for the marketplace. For example, documents that have recently come to light show that the first operation of Aurora Organic Dairy, in Platteville, Colorado, apparently started out with about 70 acres of pasture for the 5,000 cows they were transitioning. Their self-serving interpretation of the regulation - "all ruminants must have access to pasture" - was that the livestock just needed to have access to pasture at some point in their life.

read more (Chews Wise)

Getting Kids to Eat Healthy

By Amy Linn

Having difficulty getting your kids to eat healthy? Cynthia Sass, a New York City-based registered dietitian, health expert, and author of the book Your Diet is Driving Me Crazy says that by giving kids the information they need they're going to want to eat right.

"What older children need is a basic understanding about this stuff -- about the chemicals and additives and fats and sugars and how it affects their bodies," she says. "Kids are great critical thinkers."

The pickiest fifth-grader and the most eye-rolling teen are equally devoted to taking control of their lives, in the food department and all others, she says. Engage their smarts and their natural sense of outrage -- about the disodium inosinate in those Doritos and the pesticide residue on that peach -- and they'll become allies in the food fight.

"The key is to avoid trying to trick them, or sway them, or force them to clean their plate or eat in a certain way," Sass says. Playing the food cop when they're downing the junky stuff "really pushes them toward those foods."

By sleuthing with your kids instead of for them -- reading labels and finding out together what foods have nasty additives and which fruit juices have no fruit in them and how that strange purple vegetable from the farmers' market actually tastes -- you engage them and bond with them, too.

read more (Grist)

Apple Varieties - Did you know?

I bet you already knew that the Granny Smith apple variety was developed in Australia. Of course you did.

But what about Pink Lady apples? A crisp, sweet, good keeping apple variety - it's a cross between the Lady William and Golden Delicious varieties. And it was also developed in Australia.

About the Pink Lady

What's Happening Next Door?

The owners of the building where Organic Connection is located, have finally received approvals and commenced redevelopment of the shopping plaza. The entire strip will be given a make over with an impressive new facade in addition to a new roof and fitting out of the vacant store spaces. A rendering of the new design is posted in our window.

Organic Connection will be expanding into some of the new space. We plan to use the additional area for restaurant type seating plus the creation of some store within a store concepts including a comprehensive organic clothing, bedding & linen department store, and an Eco-Home store that will be offering natural paints & wood finishes and other eco & health positive home goods.

Additionally, we'll have a community room in which we will be offering workshops & presentations and showing documentaries. The space will also be available for some group events and extra space for our restaurant. The space will also be used as an art gallery showing and offering photography & artwork by John Diamond, M.D. - created for the specific purpose of enhancing our Life Energy.

Organic Architect?

With our proposed expansion we're looking for an 'organic' architect to assist us with our planning.

An Organic & Healthy Living Oasis?

The potential for us to create an "Organic Center" with all the available space in the shopping center is exciting. We would consider having stores within a store at the "Organic Center" or else seek other businesses that would complement Organic Connection and make the shopping center an Organic & Healthy Living oasis.

With this purpose to consider, we are currently seeking input from retail experienced, philosophically like-minded business people. Please contact Ian @ (845) 279-2290.

Position Available: Organic Baker

We love the idea of having fresh, organic bread and other baked goods available for our customers. We are, therefore, looking for an experienced sourdough baker to help us produce these goods for our store.