See you at Seedy Saturday on March 8!

seed_savers_logo_large Hey there Skookies-

Powell River’s ninth annual Seedy Saturday is coming up this Saturday (March 8, 2014). Please note the new earlier hours: doors open at 9:30 AM and the event goes until 2:30 PM. Admission is $2 and the Farmers’ Institute is happy to accept Powell River Dollars. Kids 12 and under get in for free, so bring the whole family! This is the annual event that kicks off the growing season in the region, and anyone who’s been there in the past knows that it’s both fun and educational. Inside, approximately six seed vendors and 20 community groups are participating.

Skookum will be there with an info table and Tattler BPA-free, indefinitely reusable home canning lids for sale:

Price List ( remember that your purchase also supports Skookum… for more info on the lids visit http://www.reusablecanninglids.com/ )

Our prices cannot be beaten– do some research and see for yourself.

50 wide lids and rings ….. $40 each
50 regular lids and rings ….. $35 each
24 regular lids and rings …. $17 each
24 wide mouth lids and rings.. $20 each
Regular lid+ring sampler pack.. (6 lids+rings) $4 each
Wide mouth lid+ring sampler.. pack (6 lids+rings) $5 each
Regular rings (8 per pack) ….. $2 each
Wide mouth rings (8 per pack). $2 each

More on the Seedy Saturday event this weekend… there will be lots to do for kids as well!

Workshop schedule:

10:00 AM to 10:45 AM

Kevin Wilson:Three ways to start seeds
Margaret Cooper & Jo-Ann Canning: Surviving the invasion of the Spotted-Wing Drosophila (you will recall we had a blog post on this here)

11:00 AM to 11:45 PM

Julia Adam & Rob Hughes: Soil Health: The foundation for thriving plants
Leonie Croy: Saving seeds that sustain us

12:00 PM to 12:45 PM

Rosie Fleury: Gardening with poultry
Doug Brown: Should or shouldn’t I keep bees?

1:00 PM to 2:30 PM (BIG EVENT!!)

Carolyn Herriot (Evergreen Theatre): At 1 p.m. best-selling author Carolyn Herriot will be presenting on “How to Save Seeds to Grow Local Food” in the Evergreen Theatre at the Recreation Complex. Her talk is to help energize everyone into growing more food, saving seed and getting involved in the Farmers’ Institute Seed Bank . For more information about the event, please contact Wendy Devlin at (604) 483-9268 or visit http://prfarmers.ca/pr-seedysat/.

Thurs. Oct 17: Coop Week Film/Discussion with Tom Shandel

Skookum_CreditUnion_event — Click image for larger version pdf. Please feel free to print a copy and put one up somewhere. OPEN TO ALL. We are asking for $5 donation at the door.

Please join us at the Cranberry Seniors’ Centre on Thursday, Oct 17 at 6:30 PM (show at 7:00 PM) for an evening with Tom Shandel, visiting film-maker, producer, writer, and board member of Duncan BC’s Cowichan Co-operative Connections, for a screening of his short documentary film Civilizing the Economy (read on below) and clips from some of his other work, plus a discussion on building and maintaining cooperatives in our region and beyond.

This event is co-sponsored by Skookum and First Credit Union to celebrate Co-op Week (Oct 13-19) and Credit Union Day (Oct 17). Everyone is welcome to attend; arrive early as seating is limited, plus we will have some delicious snacks conjured up by Chef Jacqueline Huddleston. A $5 donation at the door is much appreciated, as this is a fund-raiser for future Skookum projects.

“Civilizing the Economy

The Corporation documentary showed us how bad they really are. But there is an alternative way to organize enterprise better than no-public-liability en-corporations. And it’s been around for years…and built a lot of western Canada. How come we stopped?

Produced for British Columbia Cooperative Association and directed by Tom Shandel, written by John Restakis with strong support by Robert Williams, CIVILIZING THE ECONOMY, narrated by Patrick Watson, shows there’s another way to do business in a more or less free market: COOPERATIVES!
CIVILIZING THE ECONOMY explores one of Europe’s most successful economies, featuring three interdependent sectors, private, public/state and cooperatives. ” From: http://shandel.ca/?page=Civilizing%20the%20Economy

Sunday March 24 11AM-1PM: Skookum presents Cafe Justicia at the CRC

If you missed Leocadio Juracan’s visit with us last year in May you might be interested in attending our next Skookum mid-day Social on Sunday, March 24, coffee-themed potluck 11AM, presentation noon to 1 PM at the Powell River Community Resource Center (4752 Joyce Ave.)

JusticiaPostersmall — Click for large poster

11AM is the starting time for those able to participate in the coffee-themed potluck luncheon or we’ll see you at 12 noon if you’re coming just to hear Leocadio and Francisco’s talk. Feel free to bring a guest or two as we can accommodate up to 60 at this location. Don’t forget to bring cash if you want to buy coffee (we are trying to get unroasted beans too, for you DIYers). Please let us know if you can attend. There will be a small fee of $2 to offset the cost of renting the CRC.

Click here for some ideas on cooking/baking with coffee.

Leocadio is the driving force behind a Mayan indigenous NGO called the CCDA based out of Guatemala whose concerns are social justice and agrarian reform. The Comite Campesino Del Altiplano or CCDA now owns 3 beneficios and are exporting organic beyond fair trade coffee exclusively to Canada. Cafe Justicia is a high elevation, shade grown, organic coffee produced in the Highlands of Guatemala by indigenous campesinos. Individual local cooperatives operate through the CCDA to process and market their coffee, thus avoiding many of the middlemen keeping the people in poverty. The CCDA is also very active in restoring civil rights and educating communities, providing medical care facilities, some micro financing, schools and libraries, educational scholarships, and the redistribution of lands for agriculture and homes for the landless poor. For more on the CCDA and their work see: http://www.justuscoffee.com/producers/our-growers/ccda-guatemala

The coffee, Cafe Justicia is marketed from Vancouver by BC CASA (more about them at: http://cafejusticia.ca/ ) and we are getting very close to being able to distribute their outstanding product through The Abundant Pantry our own bulk buying club.

Leocadio will be in Powell River on Sunday, March 24 and we’d like to invite you to come hear him speak, share a potluck themed around coffee and taste some of their fabulous brew (you’ll also be able to buy some if you can’t wait for the next TAP order. The event, spoken through Steve Stewart as interpreter is most interesting. Steve established BC CASA in the 1980s to support positive social change in the Americas. From the outset they had a strong connection to the CCDA and helped introduce the coffee to Canada in early 2000. He has been a good friend to Leocadio for many years and the translation flows accordingly. This year Leocadio is bringing Francisco Coz as an added guest, an elder of the organization; Francisco was born in 1947 and he began organizing peons on the coffee plantations in the 1970s, like Leocadio he is a Kakchiquel Maya and lives in the village of Nueva Vida in Solola province.

Thanks,

Jacqueline Huddleston

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.

Mark your calendars! It’s a members’ social!

skooXmas — Skooky Greetings to all our members!

Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative is in the beginning stages of planning a members’ social at the United Church in Powell River at 6:00 PM on Tuesday January 31, 2012.

The idea is to bring our members together to enjoy a meal, share ideas, and generate some plans for the new year. The Board will take care of the main course, while we ask members to bring a salad or dessert. Members will be asked to jot down the ingredients and if you’d like, the recipe for your dish.

So, this is a call out to you – our members – for a theme or activity for the evening. We could host a talk, a show–tell, a video, a digital slideshow, a discussion, music, puppet show, etc.; as long as it will increase access to or knowledge about food, cooperatives, or some other aspect of our vision and mission.

Once we get a clearer picture of what’s in store for the evening, sometime in early January, we will reach out to members to help with organizing and running the event.

Also, you may recall our Skookum Members’ Survey? (Click here to take it now if you haven’t done so already; it expires on December 21, 2011.) Well, this will be an opportunity to hear the results and to develop a better understanding of Skookum’s skills, assets, interests, goals,concerns. We have some exciting new and recurring projects in 2012*,we want you to take ownership of these.

2012 is the International United Nations Year of the Cooperative — let’s ring it in, in style.

* Hint: that little squirrel in the greeting will likely be involved!