Category: apple cider

Fall Fair Fabulousness

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

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;
                          • The final deadline for our order to go in is September 27, BUT the final deadline for members to get their order and payment to us will be 12:00 noon on Monday September 24;
                          • They will ship to us in November or thereabouts;
                          • We need to make a minimum order of $500; Shipping is free
                          • Skookum will be adding 11.11% to each member’s order, so that of each dollar spent, 5¢ goes to the coordinator, 2.5¢ to Skookum, and another 2.5¢ to the benefit of the community.

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.

Just the facts.

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.

Skookum helps press cider for Farm to School lunch

Skookum's Farm to School cider-pressing task force: Coco Hess, Martin Mitchinson, and David Parkinson

On Monday November 28, Coco Hess, Martin Mitchinson, and I got an early start. We picked up Skookum’s cider press from Jan & Gary’s workshop in Westview, and drove up to Wildwood to press apple cider for the James Thomson Elementary School’s second Farm to School lunch. We spent the morning cutting and grinding apples,— with the help of many enthusiastic kids — pressing those apples into beautiful cider.

This all came about because I had been talking with some of the amazing young moms who have been working hard to create a monthly healthy and local school lunch for the schoolchildren at James Thomson. They put together a fantastic salmon lunch for their kickoff event in October and wanted to feature apples for the November lunch. Once they knew that Skookum had a cider press,once the Skookum board of directors had OK’d the donation of the cider press to this good cause, the plan was in motion. Coco and Marty were the lucky volunteers chosen from among quite a group of Skookum members willing to help out,with some extra assistance and equipment from Jacqueline Huddleston we were off and running.

It was a pretty chilly morning, but we warmed up soon enough, what with all the activity and the kids yelling and running around. Just about everyone got a chance to turn the crank to grind the apples to pulp, to throw chopped apples into the hopper, and to help turn the wheel to press the pulp into cider. We had a gas stove and double-boiler so that we could pasteurize the cider for safe consumption. One after another, classes came outside, did their turn at the press and then headed inside for a short video and discussion about healthy juice and sugar content.

The next day I was lucky enough to be able to go to the meal where the kids were served rainbow pasta with local vegetables, yummy coleslaw, bread baked with hand-milled flour by Nancy’s Bakery in Lund, and of course a little bit of apple cider for everyone. It was so lovely to see all the schoolchildren enjoying a delicious and healthy meal with local ingredients. I talked to a few of them and they all raved about the apple cider.

Thanks to Leta, Francine, and all the other parents who worked so hard to make this meal happen. And thanks for inviting Skookum to be a part of it. Special thanks to Coco and Marty for taking half a day out of their busy lives. And of course, thank you to all of the schoolkids of James Thomson who helped make cider.

For more information on the James Thomson Farm to School program, you can check them out on Facebook.

Ça presse!

Cider-making by the letter: Jacqueline Huddleston and Sharon Deane pouring hot cider into bottles.

Members of the cooperative were up at the Fall Fair this past weekend pressing and selling delicious fresh apple cider, using Skookum’s cider press. Thanks so much to all our volunteers and to everyone who dropped by to say hi and enjoy some hot or cold cider. Special thanks to Jan & Gary Burnikell for service above & beyond the call of duty; and to Jacqueline Huddleston for dealing with the permit and creating an organized kitchen. (Click here to see more of our pictures.)

We made a gr total of $129.86 for Skookum. This would have been more if we had not had to buy apples from Bernie — although it’s a good thing we did, because otherwise we would have run out of apples to press. Next year we’ll be hoping for more apples contributed by our members and from the community. We’ll be coming after you!

And don’t forget that the cider press is available for rental to Skookum members only. You can find out the details here, but the basic bottom line is that at $20/day, this is the best deal ever!

Buen provecho!
David Parkinson
Treasurer, Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative