Author: Skookum

Another year, another AGM

On June 22, 2011, Skookum held its second Annual General Meeting to report on the accomplishments of the past year, let members know where we st financially,elect a new board of directors.

Thank you to everyone who came out on a sunny summer evening,special thanks to those who brought foodrefreshments…

... like this delicious buttery bad boy, contributed by Jonathan van Wiltenburg: an authentic Dutch boterkoek. Yum!

Treasurer Sharon Deane presented the financial report, which showed that although we’re just over one year old, we’re doing pretty well so far. It is the board’s hopeexpectation that our membership will help develop more ongoing sources of revenue for the cooperative, permitting us to take on larger projectspurchase common equipment. The first year was a solid foundation on which to build.

As you can see from the Report from the Directors, the year from June 2010 to June 2011 was a remarkably busy one: we took on management of Skookum Gleanersran a number of smaller projects; did some successful publicityoutreach into the community; raised a respectable amount of money;signed up a good number of new members. The overall message is that we got a lot done,that we can get a lot more done, but only with help from our membership. The board has been working on procedures for taking new projects from idea to plan to results,we need members to start proposing ideas that they would be willing to spearhead — with board assistance, of course!

As outgoing President, I want to sincerely thank my fellow directors Jan Burnikell, Sharon Deane, Nola Poirier, Giovanni Spezzacatena, Julie Thorne,Jonathan van Wiltenburg for their hard workall the delicious food they have brought to our board meetings. This board has accomplished a huge amountdone some important work behind the scenes to define policiesprocedures so that we can start to manage member-driven projectsensure that they generate value for members, for project coordinators, for the broader community,for Skookum. It has been a pleasure to meet with this group every month ( then some!) to do the hard work of defining goals, vision, values,principles;to take on the responsibility of being accountable to a membership of 84.

JulieNola decided to step down from the board to focus on other projectswe will miss them. However, we have two new board members: Jacqueline HuddlestonPete Tebbutt. We’ll post something soon to introduce these new directors to the membership.

The new board of directors will meet shortly to determine which directors will hold which offices (President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary); as a result of the term limits which our Rules impose, Sharon Deane will step down from the office of TreasurerI (David Parkinson) will step down from the office of President, as both of us have held those respective offices since our incorporation (two terms, which is the limit for a director to hold a particular office).

After we got through the election of the new board, we had a roundtable conversation about two Skookum projects; one in its second yearanother very much in the planning stages. First, Giovanni Spezzacatena talked a bit about Skookum Gleaners, formerly the Powell River Fruit Tree Project,what went on last year. Gleaners volunteer Gayle Morton talked about some of the exciting plans for this year. The fruit-picking season will soon be upon us, so the Gleaners Team is busy getting the word out, creating posters, flyers,notices to go into people’s mailboxes. This year we hope to gather much more fruit than in previous yearspreserve as much of it as we can.

Then Wendy Pelton presented Skookum’s very early plans for a bulk-buying project. Stay tuned for plenty more about that, since we need to find a couple more people to sit on the advisory committee,we need to sort out some questions about how the bulk-buying project will operate.

The theme for the coming year will be more member involvement, so watch out for that!

Skookum Gleaners up and running for 2011… join us!

Very young apples… a long wait, but worth it!

Skookum Gleaners (formerly known as The Powell River Fruit Tree Project) is ramping up the planning cycle as the fruit is visibly forming on the trees. Who knows whether 2011 will be a stellar fruit year (like two years ago) or a not-so-good fruit year (like last year)? We can’t wait to find out! Seriously. We cannot wait.

The Gleaners Team meets at 9:30 AM on the second and fourth Monday of every month upstairs at Quality Foods (in The Step Above coffee shop) for our planning sessions that this year will include:

  • more promotion, and for a longer period;
  • more door-to-door flyer drop-offs at homes with fruit trees;
  • more outreach to community groups;
  • more feedback and coordination of pickers & picks;
  • more follow-up on picks (how they went, where the food went and how much, the variety and the quality of fruit picked and donated, the state of the trees, etc.);
  • more education about picking, preparing, and preserving fruit — we hope to get lots more mileage out of our cider press this year!;
  • more fundraising activities, including a new Skookum 2012 local growing calendar out in early August!; and
  • A Fall Fair fruit-themed festival!

All this in an effort to increase the number and quality of picks, resulting in:

  • more food picked & preserved for the community;
  • more donated fruit for people (not bears) in need;
  • better disposal of spoiledwindfall fruit for farmers to feed pigs, use as compost, etc.;
  • a healthier treehuman population.

But we need your help to make this all happen. Skookum Gleaners is a project of the non-profit Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative, and is run by volunteers. The picked fruit is divided equally between the volunteer picker, the tree owner (if they want any fruit) and charity.

Some of these might grow up to be cherries.

Yes, it’s a great idea and it really deserves widespread community support. The Gleaners Team needs people with all sorts of talents, experience and some time to devote to the project, as well as any money you can donate to make this year’s project the best ever.

Interested? Contact us at gleaners@skookumfood.ca.

You may donate via PayPal or Credit Card by clicking here, and noting “Gleaners” in the Purpose box or you may drop off a cheque for Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative (or ‘SFPC’), noting your Gleaners contribution in the memo field, to Kingfisher Used Books (4486 Marine Ave., Powell River, BC, V8A 2K2 CANADA) in care of SFPC.

Nola’s Mushroom Log Workshop

Just a little window into Nola’s special Skookum-sponsored Mushroom Log Workshop that happened within the last month or so. Nola bought the spores online in quantity (to reduce the cost for all) and presented the workshops. It was a BYOL (Bring Your Own Log) affair. Images of the oyster and shiitake mushrooms coming soon. Many thanks, Nola! Do you have a project you’d like to lead? Propose it here: http://skookumfood.ca/our-projects/suggest-a-project/

Opportunities available

Hey there Skookum members (and other interested folks)! We want to let you know about some opportunities to get involved with a few projects that we will be working on this summer. If any one of these projects looks interesting to you, please contact us and we’ll hook you up.

Skookum Gleaners

Once again this year, we’ll be managing the local fruit-tree gleaning project. One of the tasks for this year is to figure out how we can combine gleaning with activities for members of Skookum such as canning, dehydrating, cider-making, and other processing. The basic model is that 1/3 of the gleaned fruit goes to the pickers, 1/3 to the homeowners, and 1/3 to the community; but we might need to look at ways that this project can generate some revenue to pay a coordinator and return some tangible value to Skookum. Interested? Contact us!

Bulk-food buying

As we mentioned at our recent public meeting, we’re planning to start bulk-ordering non-perishables, as a way to increase people’s individual and household food security. Food storage, along with production and preservation, is one of the three pillars of food security, and it’s an activity that works well when people work together. We’re getting this project up and running and looking for someone interested in coordinating this project. There will be some payment in the form of food or money. Interested? Contact us!

Preserving food

Last year we set up a half-day work party to get people in the kitchen together canning tomatoes. This year we plan to do a lot more to help our members set up a well-stocked home pantry full of preserved food of all kinds.  We’ll need to plan more work parties to learn and do canning, drying, freezing, pickling, and other preservation techniques. Interested? Contact us!

And of course, if there is a project that you would like to see happening — especially if you’re interested in leading that project — contact us. We want our members to step up and start running things!

Members’ meeting on April 13, 2011

Calling all members and friends of Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative! We’ll be holding a public meeting on Wednesday April 13 at 7:00 PM at the Community Resource Centre on Powell River to talk about our plans for 2011:

  • Projects: What do our members want to see happening in 2011? The board has been hard at work on a project proposal form and procedures for going from a great idea to a workable project. We want to share that with our members and start getting everyone thinking about how we can all become project leaders.
  • How projects work: We’ll discuss some of the ins & outs of projects; how we remunerate a project’s coordinator(s); and shares of the proceeds that go to benefit Skookum and the community in general.
  • Ideas for new projects: The board has started to think about how we might go about bulk-food buying among our members. Another project idea is for more collective food-preservation work parties, like the tomato-canning bash we did last summer. We still talk about a community potato patch, but we need a coordinator/champion for that one.
  • Getting ready for our Annual General Meeting: Our AGM will be in June again this year, and our term limits force our President (David Parkinson) and Treasurer (Sharon Deane) to step down from those offices. We’ll be looking for members interested in becoming directors, so we’ll start talking about what that involves.
  • And more? We want to hear from you. If there is something you think we need to talk about a members’ meeting, please contact us.

Please note that this meeting is primarily to talk amongst our members. But of course it’s open to anyone interested in knowing what we’re all about. And we always welcome new members!