Skookum Food Provisioners' Cooperative – Page 15

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.

The What, Where and Why of Dry

As you may have noticed in our recent Facebook posts, Skookum members are drying up a storm this year, preserving the local (and local-ish) harvest of peaches, plums, squash, tomatoes, peppers, apples, pears, berries and more.

david_brownie — David and Brownie cutting up apples to make applesauce that was then dried into fruit leather.

A crack team of 6 members have been buying, picking and sharing in-season produce from Bernie’s Fruit Truck (a.k.a Vitamin Express), and attending dehydrating work parties at the Community Resource Centre (CRC), which houses two food dehydrators. Part of the bounty is always put aside for CRC client use, thus fulfilling our community share. Additionally, Skookum’s newest project is a bulk order of dehydrators, where members of our cooperative got together and saved on shipping/ brokerage fees to have five Excalibur dehydrators delivered, making at least five local families more food secure.

Black Diamond plums, dehydrated and delicious.

What is the buzz on drying food?

What can you dehydrate?
Does it replace canning, pickling, or freezing?
What are the advantages and drawbacks of drying?
What can you dehydrate and what do you do with the dried food anyhow?
How long does it take to preparea and dry stuff?
How much does it cost?
How do I get started?

Despite being an ancient form of food preservation, dating back to biblical times, dehydrating is coming into its own in our less-than-arid climate, through simple technology: a dehydrator. At its most basic level, this is a vented box with heat elements, fans and porous shelves upon which to place sliced, diced, shredded or even select whole fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, meat, fish, etc. The ‘devil is in the details’ though, as uniformity of dehydration and the ability to set accurate drying temperatures and lengths of time are attributes that only the better machines offer.

Why dry?

Dehydrating foods provides “living ” or uncooked foods. If done properly, only the water content is extracted, leaving much of the flavour and nutrients behind
They are easy to digest, rich in vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, and are highly nutritious
Many modern methods of preserving foods through refrigeration, freezing, canning, pasteurizing, and chemical or even natural additives like sugar, salt, pectin, Sodium Bisulfite, etc. reduce the nutrient content in food, or provide unwanted extra calories/sodium
Easily stored in air and light-proof containers, dehydrated foods weigh considerably less than fresh or food preserved any other way (useful in camping and backpacking: easy to carry!) and can sit on your shelf for up to 20 years making them excellent for disasters and hard times (think food security here!)
It’s cheaper than freezing, in the end: a few hours of drying at a few cents per hour, and you’re done. This frees up freezer/pantry space for other goodies that must be preseved in other ways.
See some seasonal food on sale or have a glut of local food? Pick it or buy it and dry it during any season. Dried pineapples and mangoes make great (if non-local) snacks; autumn is a great time to ponder dried chanterelles…
And you can mix and match your foods to create dried culinary delights like pear-apricot leather with embedded walnut pieces, a mixed dried vegetable soup mix (with a different vegetable on each tray of your dehydrator), an entire dehydrated spaghetti dinner, stews and chile, even jerkies of all kinds (salmon, chicken, turkey, beef); think of it as gentle ‘cooking’, in slow motion
Using dried food is a dream: either use it as is (as in fruit leathers) or mix it with wetter foods or soak to rehydrate dried food in water or broth to create flavourful concoctions with super-concentrated flavour
Dehydrators can be used to raise yeasted bread doughs, make yogurt, teas (out of leafy herbs or bits of fruit), cheese, seeds for planting, and even dry flowers and leaves for crafts – anything that can benefit from a low, sustained, dry heat (this includes me—Swedish sauna, anyone?)

Drawbacks?

As in freezing or canning food, there are some upfront costs, namely for the dehydrator (here is a review of some of the more popular types; they range from about $80 to $2,000+) and for containers in which to store the food (plastic bags, and even glass jars preferably with the air sucked out via a vacuum sealer); add to this the electricity use in the actual dehydration process
Time is of the essence: you need to be able to collect or buy food at the peak of freshness and ripeness to get the best results, and it does take some time to peel, pit, check (drop briefly in boiling water to remove some of the waxy coating on things like blueberries or grapes) and slice certain items like pears, peaches or cherries to prepare them for dehydrating. Also, getting the dried food off the racks and in air-tight containers is best done sooner rather than later because the dried food will act as a sponge and collect ambient moisture!
Certain foods just don’t dehydrate that well, such as:
1. whole items (be it fruits, vegetables, etc.); this reduces access to the moister parts; sliced or shredded food works best and fastest
2. fibrous food like sliced artichokes or carrots (unless they are sliced really thinly)
3. high-moisture foods like watermelon and cucumber that take a long time (but they are interesting just the same!)
4. foods with lots of fat/oil in them that can go rancid without other preservatives like salt/sugar, etc.
You need to make sure that foods are dried and stored properly, to avoid mold and spoilage, so home-made dehydrators are not recommended in our climate
You need to pay attention and respond to your dehydrating foods as needed; factors such as the type and variety of fruit/vegetable you are dehydrating, its ripeness and sugar level (both increase drying time), and ambient humidity, all factor in the final drying times. While you cannot really over-dry things at the recommended low temperatures, you don’t want to be wasting energy either or producing food that is overly dry for no reason; some moisture content is okay, depending on what you are drying.

Want to get started? Contact us (just comment below or use our contact page) and we’ll see what we can do to get you drying at least some food this year!

We’re a-puttin’ on up!

ant — Ant collecting food for tougher times

‘Putting up’ is a colloquial term referring to the process of canning : preserving foods by packing them into glass jars and then heating the jars to kill the organisms that would create spoilage. But along with canning, other food preserving methods such as dehydrating, pickling in salt, vinegar, sugar or alcohol, smoking food to preserve it, lacto-/wild fermentation and (of course) freezing it are all ways to extend the ’50-mile eat local’ goal year-round.

Growing it yourself is one great way to ensure your own food security and the quality of the produce you eat. And as you learn about your own yard’s microclimate (see here for Powell River details) and develop your gardening skills, you will see what grows best for you, and adapt what you eat to what grows well, or at least to set up a bartering system where you can trade your zucchini for your neighbour’s carrots. Exercise, fresh air, sunshine and the joy and satisfaction from growing your own add to the value of turning ‘sod to salad’.

Flash — Aug 5-Sept 23, 2012: The 50-day Powell River 50 Mile Eat Local Challenge! It all starts with the Edible Garden Tour on Sun. Aug. 5 Click on the snail for more info…

Once again, this year, the 4th Annual Edible Garden Tour (Sunday, August 5; get the guide here) allows you to visit a dozen or so local food gardens to see how others are doing it. Don’t miss this opportunity!

But what about food you can’t easily grow or source locally? Well, that’s when Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative’s The Abundant Pantry project (TAP) comes in. Every two months (the next deadline is September 9, 2012) our hard-working TAP coordinator Wendy Pelton collects Skookum members’ orders of bulk food and two or three days later, she (with some help from members) divides and provide us with our bundles of food we ordered.

The benefits of buying in bulk are many, including:

Increasing your own (and your local community’s) food security in case of any disruption or lack of certain foods throughout the year. For example, the many drought-striken areas in the US will reduce availability and increase costs at the supermarket— like the ant at the top, think ahead!
Buying in bulk can dramatically reduce your costs: the more you buy, the more you save! This means that that you can often buy Organic and better quality food for the same price (or less than) you would pay in stores for conventionally-grown food. Plus, with our co-op structure, you can split orders, and get to meet other members, setting up a network of foodie friends to split orders in the future as well. As Pete Tebbutt recently put it:

“Some of the items I purchased I balked at, at first…..why do I need 12 bottles of Tamari?, for instance. Well, who knew one could turn Tamari into balsamic vinegar or maple syrup into chocolate, which I did by trading with other members.”

With the recent focus on reducing packaging and trash as promoted by our friends at Let’s Talk Trash, buying a larger amount of dry staple foods like salt, flour, sugar, grains and legumes at one time will reduce your use of unnecessary packaging like plastic bags and tubs, tin cans, glass and cardboard boxes. Remember that even if the packaging is recycled, there are serious environmental impacts in the production, transportation and recycling these materials. Find out more on reducing your plastic use here.
Having a store of bulk staples foods means your family will eat healthier by avoiding the temptation of buying pre-cooked frozen or processed foods from the supermarket because of sheer convenience. If you have a bucket of dried beans right there in your home, you will use them. We all know how bad that extra salt, sugar/corn syrup, extra fat and preservatives hidden away in processed foods are for us; it feels good to actually take action and get into the habit of eating better
Having a store of food also reduces your trips to the supermarkets, which is good for the environment and for your own fuel consumption (and the cost of this in various ways including time, gas, vehicle wear-and-tear, etc.)
Buying via our Abundant Pantry project is easy, there is a wide and ever-growing array of foods available (including some local providers of soap and rabbits, and more) and a very small portion of each order goes to help Skookum fund other projects. It’s a win-win-win situation, so try it out! Follow the image (and habits) of Skooky the Squirrel. click here.