Skookum got all artsy and decided to host a 50-Mile Challenge-themed Haiku contest. Many poets responded, and from these (read them all here: http://pr50.wordpress.com/haiku), we selected the five best and now it’s time for you to VOTE on who gets to win the Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative gift basket full of great stuff donated by Skookum members and The Powell River Literacy Council! It is one of our awareness-raising activities planned this autumn.
The deadline for voting is this Thurs, Sept 23 at 5 pm. Please click here and rate each haiku along the scale shown there on the site.
The highest scorer will win the prize. You can only vote once and you cannot re-vote once you click the “done” button at the bottom.
Just before the harvest: Skookum’s Experimental Oat Patch.Oats ready for transportMakeshift oat drying area.
It has been a pretty busy September for Skookum, and it’s not letting up. The BPA-free canning lid order is complete, and a dozen or so members have some of the tools we need to get canning! If anyone has extra canning rings, please consider donating them, as the new lids don’t come with these metal rings. Skookum collected an extra $25 from members donating to the cider press fund.
Stay tuned for the new Cider Press Rules to be published on this blog any day now, detailing the fees, conditions, and tips on members’ use of our cider press.
We are still collecting prizes for the Skookum 50-Mile Eat Local Challenge Haiku contest (read the amazing entries (and submit one yourself!) at: http://pr50.wordpress.com/haiku) Please contact Giovanni Spezzacatena at Giovanni@skookumfood.ca if you want to donate a gift! Thanks!
Three of our Board members (Sharon, David, and Giovanni) managed to get together — despite the rainy weather we’ve been having — to pick our oats from the borrowed patch of land in Wildwood. We used scissors and a scythe to collect what we could, and we’re drying them for a few weeks in another borrowed space. Then, we’ll figure out what’s next. We figure we will use the harvest as seed for next year’s larger plot. If you have a patch of land available (especially in town), let us know! (skookum@skookumfood.ca or call us at 604.485.7940.)
But there’s more! This Sunday, Nicole Narbonne and Will Langlands will host a Skookum members-only Tomato-Can-A-Thon work party!
We are also planning some exciting activities for Co-op week (Oct. 17-23), which will involve community access to the cider press!
And even more! We’re hoping to make a bulk purchase of nuts from Rancho Vignola!
Calling all Skookum members!
Does this early fall weather have you squirreling away food for winter?
If so, you might want to get in on a once a year opportunity to bulk order fruit and nut products from Rancho Vignola.
Each September, the BC-based, family-run Rancho Vignola offers bulk purchases of dried fruit and nuts at wholesale prices.
We thought we’d put this out to the membership, and see if there was interest in doing an order. If we put our orders together, it should be easy to exceed the $500 minimum order limit.
But … there is a catch, we have to act FAST. All orders HAVE TO be submitted to Rancho by September 27, no exceptions. And what that means for us is that all orders have to be submitted to me ABSOLUTELY NO LATER THAN NOON ON SEPTEMBER 26.
Interested? Read on… Here’s how it will work:
HOW TO ORDER:
View the attached Product Description form and Wholesale Price List from Rancho Vignola. Select the items you want (by case or 5lb bag only), and let me know via email (nolapoirier@gmail.com) the items you would like to order. Please write the name just like it appears on the order form (or email me a filled out form), so there is no confusion. I will reply with a confirmation email.
Important! When working out your costs, you need to add 15% to each price.
5% of this will go to Skookum,
5% to the community (this is part of Skookum’s mandate),
5% to me (Nola), as an incentive to members and Board members to coordinate efforts like this.
For example: A 5lb bag of raw, organic almonds (second item on the list) is $51.50 on the price list. So your cost is:
$51.50 + 15%, which is: $51.50 + ($51.50 X 0.15) = $51.50 + 7.73 = $59.23
But, Rancho Vignola will ship our order to Powell River for Free! So you don’t need to worry about an added shipping charge. Remember to get your order in to me on, or ideally before, noon on Sept 26.
If we don’t get to the $500 minimum, we won’t be able to do an order. I’ll let you know if this is the case, ASAP.
HOW TO PAY:
Our order must be prepaid, so please drop payment off at Kingfisher Books at 4468 Marine Ave. no later than noon on September 26. Please pay with cheques or cash (no credit card payments, sorry). Make cheques out to Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative or just SFPC). Ensure your name is together with the payment (i.e., in an envelope or paperclip).
Don’t forget to add 15% to the listed price of each item.
Any questions about the products that aren’t answered on the product description attached? Contact Rancho Vignola @ info@ranchovignola.com (note they don’t answer their phone).
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PRICE LIST (again, add 15% to these prices) (158 KB): CLICK HERE
As I mentioned a while ago, we’re planning a day to get some folks together in the Four Square Gospel Church’s kitchen to can tomatoes. The wonderful Nicole Narbonne and Will Langlands are going to be the chefs de cuisine for the day, since they are old hands at canning tomatoes.
The purpose is partly to learn how to safely can tomatoes, but also to do it together, have fun, and really blast through a lot of tomatoes for winter storage.
Details are being worked out, but it goes something like this:
We get going in the morning, around 9:00 or so;
We work together to can as many quarts of tomatoes as we can do, all working together;
Everyone pays equally for a share of the final product (payment covers cost of ingredients: tomatoes, salt, lemon juice);
Will & Nicole get some kind of extra share or payment for their time and expertise;
The Four Square Gospel Church also gets a share of the final product as payment for the use of their kitchen;
Everyone who participates gets to go home with their share: we’re hoping that this share will be at least a dozen quarts, but that depends on tomatoes, time, equipment, etc.
If you would like to participate, please reply to us as soon as you can (email: skookum@skookumfood.ca ). If there are more participants than we can accommodate, we will choose by lottery (fair & square). If there is a lot of interest, we might try to schedule another similar canning bash before the good tomatoes disappear.
We’re hoping that participants can help us get enough jars, lids, funnels, canners, cutting boards, knives, and so on. Stay tuned for more info about that.
If you know of a reliable local source of good canning-type tomatoes, please let us know right away!! Thanks.
Harry Burtonpartner Debbie from Salt Spring Island’s Apple Luscious Organic Orchards visited Powell River for a Skookum-sponsored two-day fundraiser for our new community apple press.
The Zen of apple pruning.
It was about apples, and a lot more. Harry talked about pruning, apple varieties, permaculture and much more, both at the Tuesday night presentation at the Unitarian Hall and the next morning at Little Wing Farm in Lund. We’re hoping to get Harry and Debbie back here again for some more in-depth workshops and hands-on skill-building in grafting, pruning, disease and distress management, and more. Stay tuned for more details.
The new community cider press is unveiled.
If you did not get the chance to attend and would still like to donate to help us pay for the community cider press, please check out our new PayPal ‘Donate’ button at the top right of this page. Thank you! If you would like to see more events like this (or different ones), please add your voice by using the comment box below, and together we’ll make it happen.
