Skookum – Page 14 – Skookum Food Provisioners' Cooperative

Catching (and Wrapping) Up

xmas2012 — Happy Holidays and thank you for helping to make local food happen.

It’s been a very busy Fall for Skookum so far this year; and as we head into 2013 it’s ‘whiplash time’ as we look back to see what we accomplished, and forward on how we can do more and better. 2012 was the UN-designated Year of the Cooperative and we are working on airing a 5-program series on cooperatives on CJMP 90.1 FM Community Radio before year end. Keep your ears (and eyes, as we will be promoting it) peeled.

You may remember seeing some pictures on our Facebook page from our last event of 2012, as several of us helped press apple cider for James Thomson Elementary School’s Farm to School program. We had another successful Abundant Pantry order (next order will be mid-January 2013, check the site in January to order), and we’re just about ready to distribute over 500 lbs of dried fruit/nuts/confectionery from our second Rancho Vignola order that just came in.

Skookum is more than bulk buying, though, and we’d like to increase our workshops and other hands-on projects in 2013. That said, one great reason to have a cooperative is to be able to generate some buying power as a group, and in doing so, also help the community and the cooperative grow and increase self-sufficiency.

Buying seed together.

Last year just after Christmas, I started thinking about and then planning a bulk seed order. A dozen or so members got together and I coordinated an order from our local Eternal Seeds company, who gave us a 20% discount overall if we collectively bought 10 packets of any of their seeds (about 5% was allocated to Skookum and the coordinator). This year, the feedback indicates that we need to order earlier than the February 14th deadline we had last year, by at least a month.

If anyone out there would like to manage the seed order (and the project can be as different as you like), please drop us a line or fill out a short proposal here. Deadline for a proposal or indication of interest in managing this project is EXTENDED to Dec. 30, 2012. The deadline to order should be by Jan 14, 2013.

Below we have a list of our completed projects for 2012, and in addition to these, we have an on-going Abundant Pantry bulk food order every two months. All our past projects are listed on our past projects webpage.

January 2012:

Skookum held a potluck members’ social event to celebrate 2012, the UN International Year of the Co-op. Read the story here.

March 2012:

Bulk seed order from Eternal Seeds

June/July 2012:

Skookum held 2 home tanning workshops

August 2012:

Bulk purchase of fruit/vegetables and dehydrating work party at the Community Resource Centre

September 2012

Skookum’s second Tattler lid bulk order
Bulk purchase of Sausagemaker dehydrators
Skookum was at the Fall Fair, pressing cider and raising funds

October 2012

Second Rancho Vignola Fruit and Nut Bulk Order

November 2012

Skookum helps the local Farm to School project press apples for James Thomson Elementary School for a second year.

The joys of helping with The Abundant Pantry

By Christine Dudgeon

Christine & Zoe — Christine and Zoe working on the September food sort

In September I helped at The Abundant Pantry pickup day. I arrived at 1:00 PM to help sort the stack of cases and bags into separate piles of each member’s order. I wasn’t doing it alone, Zoe was there to help. Wendy was also nearby but was sorting paperwork.

It took a while to get into a rhythm but we had fun. Zoe and I tried to each pick one member’s order and pull out the products for that order, then move on to the next. That wasn’t working well, as there was a stack of about ten 10-kg bags of wheat, quinoa, and oats to dig through. So instead we would pick up a box or bag and try to remember which person’s list we had seen it on. Part puzzle and part memory game.

The best part was seeing the variety of products ordered. It is much easier to get ideas of things to try from seeing them: Ground Chipotle Peppers – I never saw that on the website list but it sounds intriguing. Two separate people ordered Bob’s Red Mill Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal. That seems like a good endorsement, I may have to try it. There were about five bags of quinoa. I can see it has become a very popular staple in many households. I may have to get more serious about finding recipes for it. There were also the sacks of dried beans, cases of tomatoes and salsa and ginger ale, boxes of rice penne and kamut linguine. And the Camino cocoa—a 5 kg box—I wish I was bringing that one home…

As for my own order, I now have enough oats (11 kg) to last through months of granola and apple crisps. And my wonderful smelling cinnamon sticks and cloves arrived just in time to make a new batch of my chai tea concentrate.

So if you are ordering through The Abundant Pantry and want some inspiration, volunteer to help on the pickup day. You’ll find food you never noticed on the website.

Fall Fair Fabulousness

kids_press_pete2 — Pete and ‘the son of Spiderman’, with requisite admirers

Whew! Some 20+ Skookum members and friends were on hand this past weekend for year 2 of our Fall Fair cider-pressing/processing/vending presence, and we provided a very good show indeed! Not to mention delicious fresh, lightly spiced hot and cool cider, sold by the mug ($1) and by the 32-oz bottle ($5).

This Skookum fundraiser raised somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500 after expenses. We would like to thank all the apple donors as well as those folks and organizations (CJMP springs to mind) who let us use their materials and equipment. Very special thanks to Board member/taskmaster David (who organized the whole shebang this year, taking cues/tips from Jax), our president and chief im/presser Pete, Jacqueline herself, Jan (and husband Gary, both working behind the scenes to make sure we had the press, bottles and materials we needed), and former director Sharon!

Members Stacy, Annabelle, Connie, Patricia (and her husband John), Melissa (and her daughter Chelsea), Emma, Lyn, Dan, and many others I met for the first time worked so hard (many on both days of the fair!) and were so generous with their apples and materials/equipment to make the event a success. You can spot some of them on our Facebook page photo gallery (plus videos).

Remember that the press belongs to Skookum members, and as a member you can rent it for just $20/day (see details here).

Goin’ Squirrely

1387196_grey_squirrel — Did someone say “nuts”?

Skookum is all about projects that serve our cooperative, and that benefit the co-op as well as the wider community, too. It’s members helping members to grow, pick, prepare, preserve, store, and share in the bounty of food.

The accent these early autumn days is on ‘store’ and ‘preserve’. With a mega-load bulk purchase of Tattler BPA-free reusable lids (drop by our table at the Fall Fair Sept 22-23, 2012 to buy a sample pack or extra rubber rings; help out with our apple cider pressing event there or donate apples to this Skookum fundraiser: Click here) and Excalibur dehydrators in, several small Skookum work parties where members processed, canned and dehydrated fruits and vegetables, and yet another Abundant Pantry bulk food purchase period under our belts, it’s time for the once-per-year order of this season’s freshest dried fruit, nuts, seeds, plus delicious and decadent confectionery from Rancho Vignola.

Rancho Vignola makes their product list available only once per year, when the nuts and fruit are at their freshest;

What you need to do:

Take a look at Rancho Vignola’s price list click here.
If you have questions, please contact David as soon as possible at skookum@skookumfood.ca;
Otherwise:
- print out the attached price list
- mark the products you wish to order, and
- calculate the total price. Don’t forget to add 11.11% at the very end (i.e., not for each item individually, but on the final total; If you prefer, you may simply email David with the list of products you want and a final tally. He’ll verify the total amount and get back to you);
Get the order form and payment (cash or cheque only) to Kingfisher Books at 4468 Marine Ave. in Powell River no later than 12:00 noon on Monday September 24. No money means no order!
We have a a splits page (click here), as we do for The Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Club. [For example, a member might want to order almonds but might not want the whole ten pound case (which has a better price than smaller units)]. If someone else wants to split that amount, then one of them can order it and then the two members can arrange to split it between them later.
To be clear: The coordinator WILL NOT MANAGE YOUR SPLITS; all splits will be between members, with one member ordering and paying for the entire item to be split.
Any questions? Please get in touch with David ASAP at skookum@skookumfood.ca

As always, members are encouraged to propose and run projects! Interested in running your own Skookum project? Submit a quick proposal here.

Funding our projects (accent on “fun”)

A condensed version of our Mission/Vision/Purposes

Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative is a registered non-profit Community Service cooperative. As the graphic above reads, our goal is to “build and maintain a healthy regional food system”, together. Unlike a Society, our members are part-owners (our one-time $20 membership fee is also one share in Skookum). Our first priority is to help eachother (as members) to achieve our own personal ‘food-security’, and by doing so, increase awareness and local food action in the wider cooperative and community.

We do this in several ways, all of which require supports of various kinds. This includes having the cash reserves to be able to purchase or rent tools, space, land, materials, books, videos, etc. as well as to have seed money on hand to kick-start projects and pay coordinators and teachers to lead workshops and work parties.

Here is a fast-approaching opportunity to contribute some time, have fun and learn something about cider pressing (p.s. kids LOVE this):

It’s time to help your cooperative raise a little money and tell people what we’re all about up at the Fall Fair again this year.

We could especially use some assistance with getting the cider press and other gear up to the Fall Fair in the morning on Saturday Sept. 22 (around 10:00 AM), and getting it all back to town on Sunday afternoon (after 5:00 PM). Let us know if you’d be willing & able to help with that even for a short while. We need APPLES too! (email us at skookum(at)skookumfood(dot)ca or better yet, sign up or let us know you have apples to donate by clicking here. Did we mention that it’s fun?

It takes active members to make a cooperative truly cooperative.

Along these lines, we have an autumn-budding Skookum Fundraising Committee forming to identify appropriate ways to engage our members, the wider community and funding organizations with an eye to increasing our cooperative’s long-term financial viability. There are crucial tools, equipment and materials that we can cooperatively own that will make our membership more food secure, and seed money —literally for seed and for project start-up costs — without which our cooperative can’t grow. Keep your eye on our website‘s sidebar to see how we will be asking you to donate to specific, targeted funds in the coming weeks.

We’ve already begun to work on some of these aspects (as you will see below) but we need a dedicated member-driven team to develop and maintain fundraising momentum. Interested in joining and shaping a Skookum Fundraising team? Just contact me (Giovanni, Skookum’s Communications/Fundraising Director) and write me with your ideas, talents, time availability, and ideas!

Below are some basic ideas to get your fundraising juices flowing; if you have any other ideas or more specific instances of these ideas working in Powell River but cannot commit to a team right n0w, please include your ideas as a comment on this page (at bottom):

Brownie and Annabelle, Skookum members to the max!

Community Outreach/Newsletters- Newsletters, whether done through the mail or email, are effective marketing and fundraising tools. They are a great way to update our current members or interested people and an opportunity to list events, wish lists, ask for donations, and cultivate volunteers.

At left, you can see the result of a very recent literacy campaign featuring two very Skookum members doing what they love, with some promo for us as well! (Huge thanks to the two lovely ladies pictured here, the PR Literacy Council and to David Parkinson in helping to set this up!)

Garage sales (membership-wide)– Selling some higher end items such as washer/dryers etc. and have people in our group go through things they no longer need and ask friends and family to do the same. Advertise in the newspaper and online at craigslist.org.

Bake Sale– Have members and friends who like to make baked goods for our sale. Have literature about us available and have a sign in sheet for future contacts.

Holiday-related wreath or other sales– Make them at a work party and sell at local events or take orders for wreaths and deliver them to a central location for pick up.

Matching gifts- Collect money within your group to total $1,000 and ask for others in the community to help match it.

Raffles- Raffles can be great tools for fundraising especially if you combine them into an event and have really great items to win. Offer something such as $1.00 a ticket or $13.00 for 15 tickets or $20.00 for 25 tickets. Encouraging people to buy more tickets for the extra “free” tickets is worth it and can generate quite a bit of money quickly. Prizes will be donated by local businesses or individuals.

Store percentage sales- Connect with a local business that would be willing to donate part of their profits for a day or one day a month, and then make sure you let people know to buy there on this day.

Pledges- Have our group gather pledges.

Events- Events give us the opportunity to speak about our organization and raise money. There are many different kinds of events and all are beneficial to fundraising in their own ways. Here are some examples:

Musical or performance events- Ask a local band or improv/theatre/ arts group to donate some or all of the profits from an event to our co-op.
Dinner or Breakfast Events- Informal events sponsored by Skookum can be great PR and raise funds. We can host a special themed dinner and a movie, High Tea, or pancake breakfasts, etc. and charge a certain fee. Or we could host it for free and ask for donations from attendees. Many stores will offer donations of products that can be used in this kind of event. Pledge cards could be used simultaneously with this event.

Create an activity day– focus on the activities of our co-op and create an activity or video that educates the public about our organization and an opportunity to educate people about our mission. Show this at our events.

Auctions- Many businesses donate items to help organizations, we are a nonprofit so more stores will be apt to give. A silent or live auction is a fun way to increase funds and generate interest in your organization. Auctions need a lot of PR and require start up costs, so it is best to build up a following before having one.