We want to update the Lopez Island community about what’s going on with Taproot Community Kitchen. Here are the high points.
- We’ve installed a commercial walk-in refrigerator and, with the help of SJI Food Hub, a commercial walk-in freezer. We also installed a backup generator for WHEN not IF the power goes out.
- We built a CoolBot storage unit. A CoolBot uses an air conditioner to cool a room for storage of fruits and vegetables that require cool storage but not commercial refrigeration.
- Grants and donations have enabled us to invest in a wide range of processing equipment, food preservation equipment, and also to hire staff and jumpstart a mentoring program for start-up businesses.
- The Cook Room addition, fully equipped with gas range and convection ovens, is proceeding with the SJC permitting process. This addition expands our opportunities for both commercial and home use plus a LOT of additional dry food storage capacity.
- Taproot hosts the Lopez Island spoke of the SJI Food Hub.
We are pleased to continue pursuing our goals of promoting food security and economic empowerment, and supporting our local foodshed by providing a facility for processing, preserving and storing local foodstuffs.
Please contact us if you are interested in using Taproot Community Kitchen or in joining us to continue growing this vital island resource.
Jean, Laurie, Jim and Randall, Taproot Kitchen Board
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As Wendell Barry notes in his essay, A Long Job, Too Late to Quit,
“We need to think always more seriously and cooperatively about the urgent need for locally owned, appropriately scaled value-adding industries situated in the countryside.
We need small food-processing and woodworking plants of all kinds, both to serve directly the local communities and to capture for those communities a larger share of the income from local products.
We need to find ways to promote local investment in such local enterprises.”
Taproot Lopez Community Kitchen 