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!

 

 

Our 3rd Season

We had another busy season in 2013! We harvested just under 3000lbs of fruit and donated to numerous organizations in the city.  A huge thank you to all of the volunteers and coordinators for making this possible!

Of course, a huge thank you also goes out to all of the tree owners for donating their trees to our organization.

We had the opportunity to harvest our first pear tree this year.   It was a welcome change from picking apples!

Earlier in the year we were the succesful winner of the Saskatchewan Waste Minimization award in the Non-Profit Category!

We're looking forward to 2014!

Registration Now Open!

Registration is now OPEN!  Please visit our "Register a Tree" tab to sign up!

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.  

Thank you!  We appreciate your donation!

Coming to a Close

We've been harvesting like crazy all summer!

Registration is now closed but we will continue to harvest into the fall months.  

We had the opportunity to harvest our first cherry tree this year, which was a great and delicious experience!

We've also been busy in the kitchen, making delicious preserves such as Cherry Jam, Apple Chutney, Apple Sauce and of course Apple Crisp. 

Stay tuned for our final tree count and more pictures from the season. 

It’s That Time of Year!

Fruit for Thought is pleased to announce that we are once again accepting trees!

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.  

Please click on the Register a Tree tab above.

Thank you!  We appreciate your donation!

Spring is in the Air!

Hello All!

We've had a busy winter here at Fruit for Thought!  You may have noticed us out and about in the community, recruiting volunteers and raising awareness for the upcoming harvest season!

U of R Volunteer Fair - We recuirted 25 volunteers and awarded some lucky winnners preserves from last summer's harvest!

Seedy Saturday - We recruited 20 volunteers!

We also attended the launch of Regina's Edible Campus and the RPIRG Green Patch - a new community garden on campus!  For more information on this inniatiave please visit: http://rpirg.org/events-projects/reginas-edible-campus/.  Congratulations to Fruit for Thought volunteer Naomi Beingessner on her new role as Garden Coordinator for the Green Patch!.

We're preparing for the upcoming season, and have a number of exicting events on the horizon, so stay tuned!

That's a wrap!

It was definitely a busy summer for Fruit for Thought!

Many thanks go out to our dedicated volunteers and to all of those who provided donations to our organization!  We could not have done it without you!

Fruit for thought harvested over 30 apple trees from July to September and estimates that close to 3000lbs of apples were picked and shared amongst the community!

We have over 20 people volunteer to help harvest and preserve!

We donated baked goods and preserves as well as fresh fruit to The Food Bank, Carmichael outreach, Transition House, Souls Harbor, Daisy’s Pantry, HELP, REACH, Salvation Army and the YWCA Women’s Shelter.

We're already gearing up for next year and are excited for a winter to plan and prepare!  

 Keep tuned to the blog for special features and updates!

We're Full!

Unfortunately, we will not be able to accept any more trees at this time!

Due to high demand and a limited number of volunteers, we simply cannot keep up with the harvest.

For those that were unable to register this year, we encourage you to contact us next year!

Thank you for your interest and support!

In the News...

Check out the recent article on Fruit for Thought published in the Leader Post!


http://www.leaderpost.com/technology/frui+harvests+urban+fruit/5220359/story.html

Updates!

Hello everyone,

Harvest season is fast approaching, and we couldn't be more excited!

If you know of any organizations that could use some fresh fruit donations, please contact us.

We are still registering trees, bushes, rhubarb etc... and it's not too late to volunteer!

A must see video

Eating local is important!

Posters!

We finally have the posters designed and ready to go out!  Have a look:

Fruit for Thought will be on Access Communications Talk of The Town Friday July 8th at noon so be sure to watch! Also we will be presenting at Green Drinks at Abstractions Cafe the evening of Thursday July 7th!  We'd love to have you join us!

Welcome!

Welcome to Fruit for Thought! We harvest unwanted fruit from local trees and bushes around the city. A portion of the fruit goes to owner, a portion to volunteers and the rest to local shelters and food banks! We will also be preserving a portion of the fruit collected to create delicious jellies and chutneys! To donate your tree or volunteer, email fruitforthought@hotmail.com

	Our mission is to create awareness of environmentally sustainable practices while reducing food waste.    We look forward to a fruit filled summer!