While spinning fibers in the Oak Knoll Angoras' Acorn Studio in Amboy, Lisa Lindberg fell in love with a 1928 cottage-style gas station across the street. It had been unoccupied for years, and in 1999, bulldozers came to tear it down. Spontaneously, Lisa, with help from her community, saved it and resuscitated it into The Amboy Cottage Café, where she serves both familiar and adventurous food, including vegetarian and vegan fare, all home cooked from scratch. Now lovingly referred to as "the little café that could," Lisa's aspiration for her cafe is to support and sustain her community.
Lisa knows that one way of sustaining a community is through using local, sustainably-grown food. "Using free-range, low chemical, local food is very important to us," says Lisa, a former nurse, who brings her healthcare sensibilities right into the kitchen. She uses produce and herbs from the restaurant's garden, ingredients from various local farms, and butter from Hope Creamery, emphatically stating, "My relationship with butter is a very firm one and that's not going to change."
Located in Hope, Hope Creamery is one of the only independently owned creameries in the state churning butter the old fashioned way, in small batches. The creamery is over 100 years old and used to be a farmer-based dairy co-op. Victor Mrotz purchased the building in 2001 from Hope Cooperative and Gene Kruckeberg works as the head butter maker, producing nearly 300,000 pounds of "always fresh" butter a year. Victor, who is also a farmer says, "Sustainability is not a new economic or environmental idea for farmers. You have to be sustainable or you won't survive very long."
