A recent cleaning of a West Concord warehouse has produced a fantastic find of some old minute books that date back to Dec. 31, 1912. This was the day of the first board meeting of the West Concord Butter and Cheese Association. In three different minute books, we have the entire history of this association, going all the way to September 18th of 1975, when the minutes stop, without closure or explanation of what happened to the association. This is a mystery that I am sure someone in the West Concord area could help me with, to find out what happened to the West Concord Butter and Cheese Association. Give me a call at the office if you can help me out with this mystery.
At that first meeting, the minutes indicate that articles of association were drawn up and adopted, and this association approved the purchase of the plant and supplies of the West Concord Cooperative Dairy Association. I don’t have the history of that association, but I do know that cooperatives were alive and well, doing a significant amount of business for the benefit of its members, even before 1913. Minutes were a little sketchy at first, but I can tell you that in 1919 the West Concord Butter and Cheese Association received 3,704,641 pounds of milk, the average price paid for 100 pounds of milk was $2.24, and they made 292,934 pounds of cheese. Total receipts that year were $111,934.04.
Why am I writing all of this? Well, it is true, I am interested in history, and I am sure some of you find this interesting. But my thoughts have turned to the history we are writing today. What are we doing today to create the history of tomorrow? Who will read our minutes of this cooperative 100 years from now, and what will they find interesting? What are we doing today to benefit our members, and how will that be perceived through the lens of time? Will the big news be that we built a 37,000 ton fertilizer plant to access a rail market for unit trains of fertilizer, or that we expanded our grain handling capacity in Kenyon and Hayfield? Will it be more interesting that we created Swine Services, to help our local pork producers to compete with large integrators? Or will Central Advantage be seen as the tool that helped our local row crop producers be more efficient and push yields up to new records?
The fact is, we do not know what our future holds, and how what we are doing today will impact our future. But what we do have is a strong commitment to our cooperative members, and the desire to make sure that what we do today assures our members a successful future. We want Central Valley Cooperative to be a part of that future. Our board and management team make the best decisions we can to assure that Central Valley and our members are successful and will continue to be so. Our employee team works hard to do the right things for our customers and the cooperative. This cooperative attitude has served us all well for over one hundred years in this area, and I do hope that we will be healthy and active in serving members in this area for the next hundred years.
