Investing
in the Co-op: Jim & Zoe Cooley
By Pat Vaughan,
from the March newsletter
One of the
investors in the Co-op’s upcoming move actually
once lived on the site of the new store. On a cold February day
that belied the apparent early arrival of spring, I learned of
that coincidence from Jim and Zoe Cooley, and was warmed by their
wood-burning stove and homemade whole wheat bread and pumpkin bread
(from Co-op wheat berries that Zoe mills herself). The Cooleys,
having made their home for thirty years in the west fork of Little
Bear Canyon, between Troy and Kendrick, graciously welcomed me
and talked about why they support the Co-op’s move.
Jim is originally
from New York City. He attended graduate school in Minneapolis
and came to the University of Idaho in 1957 to teach
organic chemistry. For a few months in 1959, the young professor
and his family rented a home on the location upon which a Safeway
store was built the next year—the very same storefront that
the Co-op will move into this year.
Zoe grew up
in the Midwest, attended school in Ohio, and moved to Pullman
the same year Jim moved here, although they didn’t
know each other at the time. She worked at Neill Public Library
until 1978. After previous marriages, Jim and Zoe met in 1973 as
members of Parents Without Partners. From their two families, one
in Moscow and one in Pullman, they made a new one.
In 1974 they
purchased 99 acres of land between Troy and Kendrick. It had
been homesteaded by a Norwegian family in 1902. The father
in the original family was a woodsman and walked along the old
railway to work in Troy. That same rail bed, deep in the canyon
and adjacent to the Cooley’s acreage, may one day be part
of a biking and hiking trail complex.
“My
pre-conception was that we would build out here. His was that
we would live in town and come out here on weekends,” says
Zoe. They stayed late into Sundays developing gardens and working
on the land and in the forest. Zoe recalls picking wax beans by
moonlight during harvest time, then going back into town and getting
up and going to work on Monday.
Eventually
Zoe says their visions of the property got merged into one, and
they moved into a home on the canyon rim in 1979.
Jim
says with a grin, “I’m not sure if they have merged
yet or not.” Over the years they built a new home down in
the canyon. They grow all their own vegetables and fruit. Their
home is surrounded by vegetable gardens, asparagus and raspberry
beds, grape arbors and a green house. They keep sheep (which may
soon birth lambs), chickens and geese. Zoe cans a great amount
of their harvest. Jim now has his own sawmill, producing lumber
from their forestland for their barn and outbuildings.
Long-time
members of the Co-op, Jim and Zoe remember the first time he
took her to the Co-op soon after they met in 1973. They
bought a big bag of brown rice at “this little cubby-hole
place.”
Zoe was first
exposed to whole grain baked goods at a little bakery in Yellow
Springs, Ohio. She was inspired and tried to bake
whole
grain bread herself. She says she found out that it’s not
easy. She kept at it, and obviously she learned. Zoe mills her
own wheat and corn flour (from corn that they grow and dry) for
all their baking.
“I
would feel bereft if I couldn’t buy bulk and the kinds
of foods that they have at the Co-op”, says Zoe. “There
are so many people over the years who have put in so much time
and effort at the Co-op,” she adds. “That’s a
tremendous non-dollar commitment that reflects dedication to the
idea of keeping the Co-op going. We haven’t been able to
volunteer that time but wanted to be part of the support.”
Jim agrees: “We ought to support things that are good, and
pull our support from things that aren’t, like some of these
big stores that exploit their employees.”
Jim and Zoe’s
country home reflects their love of place and their values of
hard work and self-sufficiency. And in that same
spirit they want to support the future of their independent Co-op
store.
Pat
Vaughan is moved by the common thread of families marking the land
and being marked by it, over generations, in places like Little Bear
Canyon. |
