Tag: organic

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

bags_photoIf 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

 

Skookum Rolls Out Food Library at Kingfisher Books

It’s been in the works for a while, and it’s still a work in progress, but Skookum is very proud to announce that our members-only Skookum Community Bookshelf (a lending library) is now open, and living in Kingfisher Books: 4486 Marine Ave.          Tel. 604.414-4573

The lending library shelves are right across from the cash register. Memberships to Skookum can also be purchased at this location.

Bookstore co-owner Sharon Deane–a former director of Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative–spearheaded the project a while ago and has been instrumental in compiling our burgeoning collection on:

“anything on Organic gardening, fruit raising, subsistence farming, livestock, foraging, preserving, or cooking with home-raised ingredients”

Sharon is being assisted by Skookum member Melissa Leigh, with the full support of Skookum’s board of directors. The goal is to have an automated system of lending out the books, but that needs some work.

Sharon is looking for donations of books and DVDs on the above topics, from Skookum members and the wider community. Cash donations that will go toward purchasing new materials are also accepted. So, dust off those excellent books you’ve been holding onto, and feel you are helping to spread the wealth of knowledge on all things ‘food’. Plus, as an empty-nester, you can borrow your own book again or visit with it whenever it’s in the store.