The Neighbourhood Small Grant allowed a small group of volunteers to contribute an apple processing workshop to Prince George’s first Fall Fruit Fest. Our small group joined 16 partners that worked together to make the Fall Fruit Fest a successful community event. The purpose of the Fall Fruit Fest is to have fun as a community while improving local food security, minimizing waste, and protecting bears and people by removing fruit that encourage bears to stay in neighbourhoods rather than just pass through.
The workshop was promoted widely and was open to anyone in the community for free. People of all ages came to help and to learn.
In the juicing/saucing workshop we demonstrated how to:
- easily transform massive amounts of apples and other fruit into juices and sauces.
- transform the juice into apple jelly.
- can the products made for long term preservation
Participants were able to use the equipment to practice and took samples of products home. Many dozen jars of juice, jelly, and apple sauce were made and what was left over after workshop participants took a jar home was distributed to food insecure people through various associations. Some of the apple sauce that was made was given to another group of volunteers who, the following day, demonstrated how to make fruit leathers.
The equipment purchased through the Neighbourhood Small grant was donated to the Everyone At the Table Canning Circle and continues to be used often to process damaged fruit (mostly apples) gleaned from the Salvation Army food rescue program. All products made continue to be donated to food insecure people through the Canning Circle partner associations.
The original proposal was for a stand alone workshop. We were thrilled by the opportunity to broaden the visibility of the workshop by joining the Fall Fruit Fest and in turn to enrich the offerings of the Fall Fruit Fest. We look forward to doing it again in 2025!
