We had 35 wonderful volunteers that came to harvest apples, crabapples, cherries and grapes!
We harvested 23 yards throughout Regina and White City. Volunteers picked an estimated 2600 pounds of fruit. We had some fantastic volunteers that came out from Regina Open Door Society! This year we collected all the wasted fruit and brought it to the South Zone Community Garden for composting thanks to our grant from EcoFriendly Saskatchewan.
The majority of fruit was donated directly to 19 different organizations in Regina. Some of the apples and cherries were kept for three preserving sessions that we hosted during the season. This year, we received a grant from the Community Initiatives Fund to host preserving sessions in some of the communities that benefit from the donations. The purpose was to work as partners with the community, particularly parents of young children in communities that have food access challenges, to learn how to prepare and preserve fresh fruit to encourage year- round healthy eating. We hosted two of these sessions through the North Central Community Association and the participants had tons of fun! The volunteers made cherry jam, applesauce, apple conserve and frozen cherries and got to keep as much as they wanted and the rest was distributed to the rest of the community. It was a great experience for all involved! Thank you to the staff of Affinity Credit Union who came out to another preserving session and made tons of cherry and pie filling to donate. Check out our photos on facebook and instagram!
As always, a big thank you to our homeowners who donate their trees and to our regular funder, the Regina Public Interest Research Group.
Best of luck to Alicia our volunteer coordinator for the last two years who is off to graduate school in Ontario!
We had a great year and looking forward to next year!
If you are interested in getting on our volunteer list for next year, send us an email!
@FFTRegina
