Tired of finding the Weshop produce aisle ransacked on Sunday? Is the onion and pepper medley offered in the Campus Center burrito the only source of fiber in your diet? Sally Smyth ’07 and Joanna Tice ’07 have an answer: join the Organic Fruit and Veggie Cooperative.

For 13 to 15 points a week the co-op provides its members with organic fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices as a weekly supplement to Weshop’s offerings.

“Gary [Krikscium, Weshop Food Service Director] is active about sourcing from local growers but the weekly ordering process is complicated and expensive,” Smyth said. “The variety and quality isn’t as good either.”

Every Tuesday a different group of five to six members places order en masse, for the entire co-op, online at Albert’s Organics, Inc., a nationwide organic wholesaler offering a vast array of fresh fruit and vegetables. Whether you are looking for a Michigan Tangelo or a plain old Granny Smith, the co-op puts the produce at your fingertips.

Group members are quite diverse in terms of their experience with cooking and with fruits and vegetables in particular.

“Ordering for the whole group can be tricky, because some people will get something like kale one week and think, ‘What do I do with this?’ while others are into the more exotic stuff,” Tice said.

Smyth always tries to strike a balance to make sure group members get what they desire.

“I usually order one fun fruit, one fun vegetable and staples like apples and bananas for the people just looking for produce at reduced price,” she said.

The order arrives at Weshop every Thursday and each week a different group of volunteers picks it up and brings it to the garage behind Outhouse at 132 High Street, where members pick up their produce. Depending on the week’s order, each member usually gets about five to six pieces of fruit, five to six vegetables, and some herbs or spices.

Any food remaining on Saturday at 12 p.m. is donated to Food Not Bombs, another Wesleyan student organization that cooks donated food for Middletown residents in need. Members of Outhouse have been known to “borrow” the leftover produce.

“I think we may have had a few freeloaders last semester,” Smyth said.

The co-op’s strength lies in its total membership: the more people who join, the less the produce costs each member.

“People don’t realize the more people who participate in the co-op the cheaper the co-op becomes,” Tice said.

At the beginning of last semester the co-op had about 150 members. So far membership is down to about 20 this semester—a reduction that Smyth and Tice attribute to the winter break and lazy seniors.

“We lost a half to two thirds of our members over the break,” Smyth said. “As a member you need to make a weekly commitment to getting food.”

Tice added that another benefit of the co-op is that it can lead to more healthful eating habits.

“It makes me more conscious of what I’m eating,” she said.

The routine of ordering food every week should not scare anyone away. Members may participate on a weekly basis or for the entire semester. Joining does, however, include ordering from time to time and helping to cart produce from Weshop to Outhouse.

To join the Organic Fruit and Veggie Co-op, go to Weshop and ask the cashier for the Organic Fruit and Veggie Binder or e-mail Sally Smyth at ssmyth@wesleyan.edu or Joanna Tice at jtice@wesleyan.edu.