Tan Your Hide: A Free Skookum-Sponsored Workshop

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Gianni

 

Click the image above to view the full flyer with full details

Hana Turtle Granny and Jacqueline Huddleston offer you FREE Home Tanning Workshops, with the first in the series on Saturday, June 9, 2012!

For hunters, homesteaders, craftsmen, seamstresses & those with a serious intent to learn the basics of home tanning leathers and furs.

Click here to see the flyer with the full details!

  • Part 1 Introduction and Fleshing (June 9, 2012)
  • Part 2 Breaking/Pulling date to be announced*
  • Part 3 Softening/Finishing date to be announced

*We will schedule the subsequent workshops with those who come to the first one.

Participants will get to take home a rabbit skin in their colour choice (we have white, black, grey and grey/brown with a herringbone-like pattern).
More skins will be available for sale to those interested for $4/hide.
To register email Jacqueline Huddleston: jaxhuddleston@me.com

Please note this is a free event open to the general public which will require vigorous participation. Register early to guarantee your space!

 

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Report from Skookum’s 2012 Annual General Meeting

Posted on May 2, 2012 by David Parkinson

President Pete Tebbutt presenting the year-end rundown to our members.

Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative held its 2012 Annual General Meeting on Friday April 27. Twenty-eight of our members came out to hear about what happened during the ten months since our last AGM, hear about our finances, and elect several new directors.

Anyone interested in knowing about Skookum’s finances as of the end of our last-completed fiscal year (April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012) can consult our financial statement. The upshot is that we are $1525.94 ahead of where we were at the 2011 year-end. We paid off the remaining balance on the loan for our cider press, so we have no outstanding liabilities. And we have begun to allocate funds to the Community Fund, which stands at $109.06 at the year-end.

Pete Tebbutt delivered the report from the directors, setting out our accomplishments over the past year and some of the board’s identified goals for the coming year. There are so many highlights that you should just go read the report in its entirety!

The membership then voted for new directors. Because we are now on a system of staggered two-year terms, only three directors were required to step down this time around; however, director Sharon Deane also announced her intention to withdraw from the board, so we had four board positions to fill. Luckily, two directors whose seats were up for election — Jan Burnikell and Jacqueline Huddleston — accepted nominations, and two new members stepped forward: Laura Berezan and Rosemary Bjorknas. As there were four nominations for four positions, these candidates were declared elected by acclamation. Congratulations and welcome to our two new directors; and welcome back to Jan and Jacqueline.

We made it through the AGM in under an hour, and then turned to the evening over to our Event-Planning Team, who organized us into tables and got us talking, eating, making connections, and thinking about what Skookum might do in the future.

Thank you to all the members who came out and brought delicious treats to share! And thanks to the Event-Planning Team (Stacy Fitzgerald, Jacqueline Huddleston, Jean Mackenzie, Alison Taplay, & Connie Thurber) for helping with setup and cleanup.

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Announcing Skookum’s Annual General Meeting: Friday April 27, 2012

Posted on April 12, 2012 by David Parkinson

Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative is holding our Annual General Meeting on Friday April 27, starting at 7:00 PM, in Trinity Hall at the Powell River United Church, located at 6932 Crofton St., Powell River, BC (at the corner of Michigan Ave. and Duncan St.). The meeting will be followed by a social time with refreshments.

At this meeting, the board of directors will report on progress since the 2011 Annual General Meeting, including presentation of the year-end financial statement. Members will elect directors. Membership share certificates will be available for members who do not yet have theirs.

In true cooperative fashion, we are inviting members to bring a small potluck donation of sweet or savoury finger food (Skookum will subsidize the cost of beverages & hall rental; we are suggesting a $2 donation to help defray these costs). We are also suggesting that the musicians among us bring their instruments along. The rest of us can bring our dancing shoes!

We hope that all our members will be able to attend our 2012 Annual General Meeting. We allow proxy voting for any member who cannot attend and would otherwise have to travel by air or water to attend this meeting. If you need to fill out a proxy form, please download one from here or pick up a hard copy at our registered address (Kingfisher Used Books: 4486 Marine Avenue, Powell River, BC, CANADA V8A 2K2).

Please note that the board has decided not to provide printed copies of the agenda and financial report at the meeting to save both printing costs and paper.  If you would like to have a copy of these documents at the meeting, please print them and bring them.

The agenda for the meeting is available as a PDF here.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Skookum’s Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Club is growing fast

Posted on March 28, 2012 by David Parkinson

The front page of your bulk-buying club

Well, we’ve made it through one test order in February, and another larger order in March, so it looks as though the Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Club is really a going concern. We invite all members of Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative to explore the bulk-buying website, where you can:

Consider joining The Abundant Pantry, where shopping is easy thanks to our online shopping cart system, and there is no pressure to order, because we have no minimum.

Here is some of the progress we’re making behind the scenes:

  • We now have a working Advisory Team meeting monthly to support our Coordinator Wendy Pelton and our web programmer Barry Bookout. Thank you to Skookum members Dan Glover, Pete Tebbutt, and Laura Wallace for stepping forward to take on this extremely important work!
  • Wendy has been conducting a survey of member satisfaction and the Advisory Team is using this feedback to improve the website and the ordering and pickup system.
  • The splits page got quite a workout on the March order. Members are already getting better at working together to split sacks and cases, so that everyone benefits from low prices while still able to buy smaller quantities — a perfect example of cooperation in action!
  • The Advisory Team is hard at work developing policies and procedures to allow us to offer local farm produce and other products from the Upper Sunshine Coast. We’re really excited by the possibilities, so stay tuned for more news.
  • We’re thinking ahead to providing refrigerated and frozen products.

If you’re keen to participate in Powell River’s fastest-growing bulk-buying club — one that benefits your cooperative, your community, and our fabulous Coordinator Wendy Pelton — then find out how to join here. Our next order deadline will be Sunday May 13 at 11:00 PM, and the pickup day will be the following Thursday, May 17 from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

Just one of the benefits of membership in Powell River’s one and only non-profit cooperative!

If you have any questions, you may direct them to Wendy at bulkbuying@skookumfood.ca or call (604) 485-6664 after 11:00 AM.

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Announcing the Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Project

Posted on February 27, 2012 by David Parkinson

Wendy is waiting for you to pick up your bulk food...

Exciting news! After many months of planning and hard work, Skookum’s Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Project is ready for prime time! The coordinator Wendy Pelton and her husband Barry Bookout have created a fantastic website for Skookum members to place their bimonthly orders for bulk food and all members of Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative are invited to sign up and check it out.

Here’s how it works:

  • In the odd months (January, March, May, July, September, & November), Skookum members who have signed up with The Abundant Pantry will be invited to shop for bulk goods, using the new website;
  • Members can work together to split bags or cases, using the splits page;
  • The deadline for each order will be the second Sunday of the month;
  • Once we have closed the website and received the orders for that month, we pass our collective order to Melissa Call at Sunshine Organics/Ecossentials, who acts as our local distributor;
  • Ferries permitting, our order will come in on the following Wednesday and be ready for members on the Thursday of that week to come up to Melissa’s warehouse in Wildwood and get their food.

We currently have access to the catalogue from Horizon Distributors and plans are afoot to get other distributors’ catalogues into our online ordering system. Stay tuned.

The project's mascot, Skooky, created by Giovanni Spezzacatena

Beyond that, one of the most exciting aspects of this online ordering site is that we can list local producers and their products there for our members to buy in bulk quantities. Currently, our only local distributor is Skookum member Mischa Brooks-Thoma, the Powell River Natural Soap Lady, but Wendy is hard at work finding more local food other products for us. If you have suggestions, contact her. (Local producers whom we buy from do not need to be members.)

We’re also thinking ahead to frozen refrigerated products, but we plan to run a few simple orders before we start complicating things.

In February, we ran a small test run, and everything (well, almost!) went off without a hitch. And so we are now ready to try a larger order with more members involved. The order deadline this time around will be 11:00 PM on Sunday March 11, and the pickup day will be Thursday March 15.

You can check out the current catalogue here. (Please note that the full catalogue might take some time to load if you’re on a slow internet connection.) Information about joining The Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Club and getting your own secure online login information is here.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email Wendy or phone her at (604) 485-6664.

On behalf of all our members who will benefit from having a simple accessible online bulk ordering system, the Skookum board would like to acknowledge the contributions of the ‘guinea pigs’ of the pilot order, as well as Melissa Leigh, who has helped with invaluable advice on bookkeeping procedures financial sanity; Mischa Brooks-Thoma, for being the first local producer providing so much useful feedback; and above all, Wendy and Barry, who have given us so many hours of hard work trying to get the website all the procedures in order. Thank you, all!

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Last Call for Cooperative Seed Order

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Gianni


This is the last call for joining in our Skookum Bulk Seed Project for 2012. More information can be found in a post I put out on January 15th.

I Heart Seeds

IMPORTANT: FEB. 14 at noon is the cut-off for Skookum’s Seed order for 2012!

  • Please note that we have 29 types of seeds available at 25% discount if we manage to get 10 packets of any particular variety. These are seeds you will likely NOT find at Seedy Saturday (except from seed vendors at full price).
  • We need to cooperatively order at least 10 packets of any single kind of seed to proceed with the ordering of that seed variety. If we have fewer than 10 orders of any variety, we will not get the 25% discount from our local supplier (Eternalseed.ca),and we will not order that variety.
  • I know that many of you have already made plans to buy seeds using your usual method, but it would help a lot if you considered buying even a few seed varieties through this service Skookum is offering, as an order of fewer than 10 packets will not go through, thus affecting others’ orders.
  • See which seeds have been ordered by clicking here. If you can possibly contribute to this project by topping up the seed varieties that are close to 10 packets right now (maybe an investment of $3-$5), this would be helpful (plus you do get the seeds after all, at a 25% discount over retail)
  • Want to order some seeds? Look at the varieties and descriptions on offer here.  Email Giovanni(at)rabideye(dot)com with the variety name and number of packets you want, and I will get back to you.
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Skookum’s Celebratory Social

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Gianni

A look at the Skookum Social (Jan 31, 2012)

The members of Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative gathered at Trinity Hall in Powell River on January 31 2012 to celebrate our first public gathering for 2012, the United Nations International Year of the Cooperative. The salad/dessert pot-luck event attracted over 30 of our 101 members. The meal was centred around Jacqueline Huddleston’s delicious risotto and quiche dishes, and graciously emceed by member Alison Taplay. A special gift basket was awarded in absentia to Nansi McKay and Nancy Tyler (members #100 and 101), and presentations by Wendy Pelton, coordinator of The Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Project and by directors David Parkinson and Giovanni Spezzacatena provided lots of news about what’s going on with our cooperative.

Here is some of what we talked about:

    • Alison talked about 2012 Year of the Cooperative, and set up an informal agenda for the evening, ending with a call for ideas on new projects and for helping hands to organize and implement existing ones;
    • Wendy Pelton gave us a major update on The Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Club, which is about to be launched;
    • Giovanni Spezzacatena talked briefly about the Bulk Seed Project (deadline Feb 14, 2012), and on Skookum Members’ Survey Results;
    • The Skookum Community Bookshelf was introduced: this is a Skookum Cooperative initiative by Director Sharon Deane and Melissa Leigh where members may donate books that they feel would be appropriate to cooperative member use to this project housed in Kingfisher Used Books. A dedicated bookshelf will be set up letting only Skookum members borrow these materials. Contact Sharon at the store for more information;
    • David Parkinson reported on the Skookum Gleaners project. The upshot is that key Skookum members have devoted a lot of time and effort to this community project, to little benefit to the cooperative, while other projects more in tune with our purposes have suffered. The board of Skookum has voted to let this project go, but encourage members to reach out to us if they want to pursue this project outside of the cooperative;
    • David also briefly introduced the concept of a Community Orchard that may prove to be the evolution of Gleaners. Please reach him if you have an interest in this up-coming project.

A couple of items that got a little lost in the fray, but we’ll pick up on these in future posts and gatherings:

    •  Skookum co-presents the feature documentary film How to Make a Farm) at Powell River Film Festival;
    • Skookum’s board wants to set up a Project Selection and Development Team to help in selecting viable projects from member proposals, and guide the process;
    • We want to set up a crack team that will be focused on Fundraising Events, to help fund Skookum projects, and to engage members; contact Giovanni if you are interested.
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Posted in bulk-buying, bulk-food buying, group purchase, local food economy, meeting, members' social, membership, orchards, presentation | Leave a comment

Skookum co-presents the film “To Make A Farm”

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Gianni

Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative is happy to co-sponsor (with Transition Town Powell River) the feature documentary, To Make a Farm (Canada, 2011) On Saturday February 18, 2012 at the Powell River Film Festival. See below for details, and a clip from the film.

Sat. Feb 18 at 12:30PM, PR Recreation Complex. Click to see large version

Synopsis: Starting a farm from scratch takes more than just imagination, but it’s a good place to start. Often considered a way of life from the past, today there is a movement of young people without farming backgrounds taking up this challenging profession. To Make A Farm follows the lives of five such young people through their first seasons on the land, as the joys and disappointments of bringing life from the earth become a quiet manifesto for social change. Documentary filmmaker Steve Suderman searches his own family history in farming to wonder if the mistakes of the past can be avoided this time through.

To Make A Farm – preview 1 from Steve Suderman on Vimeo.

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Announcing Skookum’s Bulk Seed-Buying Project

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Gianni

Buying seed together, locally.

We’re happy to introduce a new project open to Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative members only. It’s a bulk seed-buying club that will start off small with a selection of some 30 seed types from a local provider, Eternal Seed. As you know, the more seed one buys, the cheaper the cost, but seeds don’t keep too well past a couple of years… so stocking up is not a great option. If we buy together, it’s better in many ways:

  •  It’s less expensive to buy seeds this way (if you still have too many seeds, you can donate/barter them at Seedy Saturday, or share with neighbours/friends);
  • With a percentage of the cost of buying seed through this project,  you get to support Skookum, the community, and a coordinator for the project;
  • We can support a local certified organic seed company, Eternal Seed.

If we manage to order 10 packs (or more) of any of the varieties listed here, we get a substantial discount from Eternal Seed. Then we tack on a small percentage to support Skookum projects (5%)the community fund (5%) plus another 15% for the project coordinator. Your seed packet will then cost on average 25% less than buying one packet via a normal retail outlet.

How it works

(Remember, this is MEMBERS ONLY. Not a member, but would like to join Skookum? Click here).

Skookum will not be held liable for the quality of seed or results from use of the seed, although Eternal Seed does have its own guarantee that can be found on their web site; download their catalogue as a pdf file here (please use Internet Explorer for best results). All seed descriptions below are from the Eternal Seed catalogue.

  1. I chose about 30 types of seeds from the Eternal Seed  catalogue (see here) ; In picking the seeds, I tended toward earlier, cooler temperature varieties, as well as a mix of good storage crops in a few cases.
  2. 10 packs of each of the c.30 seed varieties are offered to Skookum members only to purchase (note that you will be able to buy more than just one pack of any one seed variety as well) — first come first served;
  3. The varieties of seeds that do not reach that “10 packet minimum order” threshold by the deadline of February 14 (Valentine’s Day!) 2012, will be dropped;
  4. Click here to see the list of seeds on offer (with prices, descriptions, etc), and instructions on how to order.
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Skookum Celebrates the Year of the Co-op… with You

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Gianni

International Year of Co-operatives to be launched across Canada this January!

We’re 99 members strong, and we’re inviting our members to come out and celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives. Please join us on:

Tuesday January 31, 2012 at 6:00 PM

at the United Church Trinity Hall (6932 Crofton Street, Powell River, kitty-corner to Powell River Municipal Hall at the corner of Duncan and Michigan).

Come help us celebrate the spirit of cooperatives, together. Our much-anticipated 100th member will receive a lovely gift basket at this event, so get a friend to become a member now! Here‘s how to become a member. Check out this great bilingual website on events throughout Canada for the big launch on Jan 12, 2012.

SKOOKUM MEMBERS PLEASE BRING:

  • Your appetite
  • Your partner and kids
  • Your thoughts about what you want to see Skookum doing in the coming year,what you can offer in terms of time, talent, expertise, tools, food, land, resources…
  • A salad, dessert, or other side dish; Skookum will provide the main course (one vegan, one vegetarian) and beverages
  • A musical instrument if you play one (there is a piano in the Trinity Hall)
  • Some books for the new up-coming Skookum Bookshelf (full details to come ; these are books you are willing to donate to a Skookum members-only lending library housed at Kingfisher Used Books  that have to do with growing, picking, preserving, or sharing food. Examples: How to build a greenhouse, How to cook or bake, how to grow veggies, how to prune, etc.

Please let us know if you know you will be attending, so that we can do a better job of planning the food. Just leave a comment on this blog post or email us to let us know how many people will be attending and what food you plan to bring.

Also, please plan to label the ingredients in the food you bring (for allergy/info purposes); we will have small cards on site for this as well.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Posted in 2012, members' social | 3 Comments