I was a potter in the early 70s, and the state decided to have a meeting of all the craftspeople up in Ripton at the Environmental Center, which is now Silver Towers. And one of the questions was, what do you need? Because nobody was making any money, all the craftspeople in Vermont. And so we said, we need good food. So the Lebanon Co-op asked if anyone would like to start one here.

A few weeks later, I got a one-sheet typed list of food that people could order. And I called all my friends and I said, we can get real good food now. You could get raw cashews, mozzarella cheese, but you had to get the whole thing, like a whole box. So we did that for two months with all our friends. But it was so fast-growing and people needed it so much that we had a showroom gallery in Cornwall. And it was full in two months. So we said, you know, we can't be the distributor for this anymore because we don't really have the space.

So it went from one place to another to another. It went to the Ripton Environmental Center and we would sit around and someone would say, I want cashews. You know, and somebody say, Okay, I'll take two pounds. I'll take one pound. I'll take three pounds. And then we built it up to be a box. And then we said, okay, we can order that. Then we had that in New Haven. We had that in Marshall and Jane Eddy's. And then finally down at the train depot.

And that was with Charlie. And Charlie sometimes had some things left after the distribution. And so he would just sell them, you know, just sell them pretty much at price. And that became quite popular. And so they moved up to the store on Washington Street. I remember Judy Campbell was the manager. And she said, you know, we should try to pay somebody. Everything up to that point was volunteer. And so that started with paying the manager.

And even in those days, you could volunteer. It was started out of a need. And it got bigger and bigger because there was more and more need. And then they built the new building, and now that's pretty full. And today there's still a need. It did start from that pre-order. It was very small, though. I mean, it was just one sheet of paper. But that's where it started. And it's quite fabulous that it has lasted so long. And it's still open to everyone.