Fruit for Thought has ceased operations

Unfortunately due to a lack of available volunteers to continue running the organization, Fruit for Thought has ceased operations until further notice. We want to sincerely thank all the dedicated volunteers who gave so much of their time and energy to help our organization over the years. We hope that home owners will donate their fruit to one of the many organizations in Regina that take unused fruit.

The 2017 season is all wrapped up!

Wow! That may have been the hottest/dryest season for Fruit for Thought yet!  The poor apple trees didn't like the heat and lack of rain too much so it was a tough season but we did the best we could.

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!

fruitforthought@hotmail.com

@FFTRegina

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

Summer 2017 is here and we are ready for a big season!

Fruit for Thought is looking forward to another great season of fruit harvesting and preserving. Lots of apples of course but also rhubarb, cherries, grapes, pears and who knows what else we will find!

Alicia our project coordinator is back for another season and we are so thankful for her help.  Look for her posts on social media.

We are excited about starting our new composting initiative thanks to funding from EcoFriendly Sask.

We are also pleased to announce that we received another grant from the Community Initiatives Fund to help us do preserving sessions right in the communities we are trying to reach with our donations. We are excited about this new part of our organization.

We are always looking for more volunteers, especially harvest coordinators so if you have a night or two to come out and help us in the beautiful Saskatchewan summer weather, contact us at fruitforthought@hotmail.com and we will get your name on the list for all the info!

Look forward to seeing you out this summer and watch for further updates from us!

fruitforthought@hotmail.com

@FFTRegina

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

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.

Hello 2015!

We're back at it this year!  We will do our absolute best to harvest all registered trees, but based on demand this may not be possible, harvesting dates will be allocated on a first come first serve basis.  

We're also looking for Harvest Coordinators!  If you're interested in getting involved, send us an email at fruitforthought@hotmail.com!