2016 Season is Complete!

The harvesting season is officially finished for 2016. We had a great season with plenty of apples, crab apples, rhubarb, cherries, pears and grapes! 

We harvested 30 yards of fruit trees and collected approximately 2400 pounds of fruit for donation and preserving. This year, the fruit was donated to Chili for Children, YWCA, Four Directions, Transition House, Food Bank, My Aunt's Place, Carmichael Outreach, Salvation Army, Rainbow Youth Centre, North Centre Family Centre, All Nations Hope Network, Street Workers Advocacy Project, Reach, Soul's Harbour, Canadian Mental Health Association, Street Culture Kids, and Inuit Metis Christian Fellowship.

We also partnered with The Backyard,  a farm-to-table pop-up restaurant showcasing the best organic and seasonal ingredients Saskatchewan has to offer who used some of our apples, grapes and pears in their meals.

Check out all our photos on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter! @FFTRegina

Thank you to all our amazing volunteers at harvests and preservation sessions. Thank you to the staff and friends of Affinity Credit Union and Farm Credit Canada for helping us preserve lots of fruit that we will donate in the winter months!  We especially want to thank our dedicated harvest coordinators - without them this would not be possible! Thank you to our homeowners who donate their trees. And thank you to Regina Public Interest Research Group, Affinity Credit Union and EcoFriendly Sask for their support.

We received an Action Grant from EcoFriendly Sask this year to help us develop a composting plan so look out for that next year.

Have a great rest of the year and we look forward to seeing everyone next summer!

Please contact us if you are interested in being on our volunteer list!

fruitforthought@hotmail.com

@FFTRegina

http://fruit-for-thought-regina.blogspot.ca/

Apple Recipes

Here are some tried and true recipes for all those excess apples in the summer. Freezing apple pieces (use lemon juice first!) to use in the winter for crisps, pies etc and dehydrating them are other great ways to eat nutritious, local fruit all year! If you have any great recipes that you've used, share them with us!

The start of the 2016 season is upon us! This is an exciting year with some new changes!

• Fruit for Thought is now an incorporated non-profit organization! We have grown over the years and are now able to register officially. We can now do some fundraising and receive donations (although we cannot issue charitable tax receipts at this time).

• With generous funding from RPIRG and Affinity Credit Union, we were able to hire a part-time summer coordinator for the first time - welcome Alicia Miller! She will be in charge of coordinating among volunteers, tree owners and organizations receiving donations. 

• You can now check out photos updates on Twitter and Instagram @fftregina 

• We have a new logo thanks to some beautiful graphic design by Alysha McEachern. Thanks Alysha!

With great weather in the spring we are expecting a large harvesting season. Therefore we need a lot of volunteers for both harvesting fruit and preserving fruit. If you or someone you know is interested, please email us at fruitforthought@hotmail.com to get on the list! It could be 1 hour a week or 1 hour the whole season, but we can't make a difference without your help!

We are always looking for fruit picking boxes (about the size of case of wine) and we are also looking for some plastic containers (e.g. ice cream pail) to collect more delicate fruit like cherries! If you have any to donate, please email us at fruitforthought@hotmail.com

Looking forward to a great season and hope to see you out there!

Here are some photos of our first couple harvests - rhubarb and apples.