Sprout Farms Apple Orchard and Earth's General Store have teamed up to offer people an opportunity to purchase locally grown fruit trees (apples and crab apples).

On May 11th from 10am to 3pm Sprout Farm will be setting up a distribution point at Earth's General Store for those people that have pre-ordered their trees (there may be some trees for general sale but don't be disappointed - pre-order yours soon).

You can pre-order your trees from sproutfarms@albertacom.com or by phoning 780-921-3460.

Please visit the Facebook event page for up to date details.  

Trees will be sold as one year old whips, approximately 40cm -to 100cm in height and have little or no branching.

Price per tree is $24.95.

Quantities are limited so order early!

Cultivars available in 2013

What finer way to mark Earth Day than to have a sale on Rain Barrels. That’s right, Earth’s General Store is having our annual Rain Barrel Truck Load Sale.

We normally sell these barrels for $80 plus GST but we have ran out of space to store the inventory in the store. So the solution – to have a one day sale where the Hutterites drive a whole truck up here to Edmonton and we sell the barrels in the parking lot. It’s like a party. Who know what else might happen – barbeque, samples, hoola hoop demonstration, etc!

For this one day sale we are offering the barrels for $65 (plus GST). You can conveniently preorder your barrel through our event page – EventBrite (you will be charged an extra $2.62 for the service) – or you can come into the store and prepay for one in advance.

Food is grown to nourish our bodies. A lot of labour, energy and financial resources went into getting it to our bodies. Along the way quite a bit of waste was generated (some estimate this to be as high as 40%) but we as the end consumer actually waste the largest percentage – almost 50% of this wastage. This wastage is disrespectful to the growers, the energy that went into growing and producing the food, and to the environment.

The food industry works to provide us with food for our bodies. The farmers plant the seeds, pickers pick the fruit, the machines harvest, transport companies move these products about the world. We are honour bound to respect this chain and the resources that went to produce this food for us by using it for what it was intended – to nourish our bodies.

It is estimated that in conventional about 3 - 10 calories of energy (fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, etc) is used to create 1 calorie of food energy. Not a very sustainable system. Food production is very resource intensive and therefore has the corresponding level of environmental footprint.

Thank you everyone that came out and participated in the first Customer Appreciation Sale of 2013. People saved money (over $1,600 in savings) and purchased lots of great organic products to fill their larders/pantries.

Hope to see you soon :)

Michael and the Staff of Earth’s General Store.

- Posted February 4th, 2013

Whew – whole bunch of great new items!

Just before I leave for a trip to Central America I have added lots of new items to our store inventory.

Penny Pincher Sale – Monday, February 4^th, 2013

In appreciation of our great customers we are having another of our 15% off sales*.

Why is this one called the Penny Pincher Sale? Good question! February 4^th is when the Canadian Mint stops distributing the PENNY! The monetary unit that costs 60% more than it is worth! Smart move.

We want you to save more than pennies though. Since we usually have the lowest prices for organic products in the City of Edmonton and the largest discount on our sale days you will save a whole bunch of pennies.

Another year has passed and I have just finished off sending donations to the last recipients of the Green Acts Rewards programme that we do at Earth’s General Store.

To remind people what the Green Acts Rewards programme is here is an overview:

Earth’s General Store has launched a programme to reward their customers when they do green acts and provides them the opportunity to donate their reward to a choice of three different non-government organisation (NGO) or any organisation that is doing good work in the world.

When a customer refills their own container, brings their own shopping bags, or commutes to or from the store using active transportation they will receive a token that they can use to support a non-profit organisation.

On February 4^th, 2013 the Canadian Mint will cease to distribute the Canadian penny.

Earth’s General Store wants not only to reduce the footprint of these coins, help to eliminate the cost to our government when making them (1.6 cents to produce a 1 cent token – not good fiscal responsibility), and but to channel this currency into doing some good locally.

Earth's General Store has installed a pail in our store to collect pennies and will deposit them to our local Servus Credit Union when full and the funds raised will be donated to the Edmonton Food Bank. We encourage anyone to drop off their extra pennies to fill the pail – get those pennies out of the jars on your dresser, from the depth of your sofa, from wherever people are stockpiling them and put them out into the world to do some good.

The re-launch of the Thoughtful Tuesday documentary screening and discussion has been well received by the attendees and the community. We have watched and discussed permaculture (The Growing Edge), waste stream and demand side management (Clean Bin Project), and diets, the food industry, and animals (Forks Over Knives).

I have put together the Thoughtful Tuesday series for February, March and even some of April. I will be away from February 11 to the end of March and former Earth’s General Store staff member Camille will be hosting the series in my absence. You can see the great line up of documentaries at this EventBtire site.

Due to the sun set getting later in day it will impact this series and it looks like the series will come to an end sometime in April.’t get more 

If you are interested in watching, learning, sharing and embarking on action for positive change – consider coming out to a Thoughtful Tuesday. Please pre-register at the Event Brite site so that more people arrive than we have chairs for.

Enjoy!

- Posted January 27th, 2013

So when Stanley Burroughs first developed the ‘Master Cleanse’ he listed Grade B Maple Syrup as one of the main ingredients. Grade B is a grade designation particular to the USA – Canada (who produces the majority of maple syrup in the world) has a different grading system (Grade 1, 2 and 3) and to confuse it even further there are subcategories and an older grading system. Canada used to use an alpha grading system but moved to a numeric one (probably just to reduce confusion with the USA grades).

The reason why Mr. Burroughs chose this grade was that it had more nutrition value and heavier flavour than the lighter grade used on pancakes. I also believe he used this because the heavier grades (B and No. 3) have more substance and can glom only stuff better for cleaning out the body. What he may have been unaware of is that Canada has a lower grade than the USA Grade B and has even more of the properties that I believe he was looking for (Canadian Number 3 – Dark).