Blogs

We're hosting Wednesday Workbees to gather volunteers who want to help out at the Food Hub space!  Every Wednesday in May we welcome volunteers between the hours of 10am-7pm who want to help us put the finish on barn board, put up shelves, and any other things that will help our co-op Food Hub get built.  If you're interested in joining in for a Workbee Wednesday, send Lynn a message at lynn@westendfood.coop.  It's a great way to volunteer for WEFC, and to also get a sneak peek at our new home.

Workbee tips:

• Bring clothes that you don't mind getting a little dirty.
• Bring work-shoes that are tough and can get handle getting grimy
• Come with a willingness to help, but experience/expertise is not necessary
• Bring friends!  Get ready to have fun!

Food Hub Construction Update: we have more walls going up!  And lots of plumbing challenges are being met to be able to properly build a kitchen down here in the lower level of the Parkdale CHC.  There's never been kitchen-appropriate plumbing in this space before, and that even meant drilling into the concrete floor to be able to put in the proper piping! 

Also, with the help of some lovely volunteers, we've cleaned up some barn board and have even put up a few shelves.  Things are beginning to take shape, and you can start to envision what the Food Hub will look like.  It's so exciting to see each incremental step, and even the little things make a big impact at this point.

More construction updates coming your way in the next few weeks!

And in case you hadn't already heard, we've launched our Open the Store Doors Bond Campaign where we hope to raise the remaining funds to open the Food Hub, bring in our first batch of inventory, and start up our Community Kitchen.  All of the money we raise during this Bond Campaign will go towards our goal of opening this summer and, as you can see from the photos, we're well on our way to finishing the space.  We are aiming to raise $80,000 and we've already raised $13,000 in the past two weeks alone!  Help us keep up the momentum by getting involved, spreading the word, telling your friends, tweet it, facebook it, buy a bond, find friends to go in on a bond purchase together, and let's make this happen! 

It's officially un-official!  We have a (temporary) sign!  Is this a sign that we're destined for great things here at WEFC?  Perhaps.  It mostly just means that now we have a more distinguishable place for people to recognize where we are.  This is particuarly helpful for our volunteers and workers who come to help out with our various construction projects.  And for passerby people who may not have otherwise known that there's something pretty great happening down here at the lower level of the Parkdale CHC (Queen Street Entrance). 

Soon we will have lovely, beautiful, luscious signage that will be in many of the windows along the length of the building.  But until then... at least you know where we are. 

The walls are going up.  Earth-plaster now covers some of the concrete.  The floor has been sealed.  Each of these steps brings us closer and closer to the opening date of our beloved Food Hub and Co-op store. 

This photo (courtesy of Nathan Payne) shows our Co-op Coordinator, Lynn, hard at work at her 'desk', while Brent Bird of Backup Electric does some electrical wiring.  Brent has been hard at work for the past few months doing the electrical work to ensure that our space will be able to properly handle the outputs of both a fully functional kitchen and store. 

Last weekend, Fourth Pig collaborated with PARC's Silver Brush Painting Company and George Brown's Women Transitioning to Trades program to do a carpentry workshop in the Food Hub.  People from both of these programs were mentored in hands-on carpentry skills, and worked together to do some of the building for the store.  These kinds of unique partnerships have been a wonderful way for WEFC to support community skill-building programs, and at the same time beneficial for the participants to gain experience in valuable trade fields. 

Next steps for our Food Hub: using that upcycled Baba Link barn board for shelving units, painting drywall, and working on appropriate signage to let the public know that there's something exciting and fruitful in the works down here. 

         A small crew of four went out one day this week to gather a few more promising boards.. this is a blog in pictures. Thanks Pat and Ernie of Baba Link Farm! Thanks gatherers!
 

It wasn’t until the end of the day that I realized my double entendre for the workbee we had last week, pulling out, sorting and de-nailing barn board at Baba Link Farm (http://www.babalinkfarm.ca/).

Baba Link are a producer member of the co-op and vendor at the market through much of the year. Their lovely aged barn was on its last legs, and Pat kindly offered the salvageable wood for use to use for shelving in the store.

We put out a call for volunteers on a short timeline and true to form the WEFC community responded.  8 people left the city in cool -3 degree weather last Saturday and drove out to Babalink Farm in the Flamboro area. The day started out cool, but it wasn’t long before we were taking off our coats and hats due to the physical nature of the job. Pulling sheet metal off strapping, moving gorgeous beams (at least the ones we could lift!), and gathering up some lovely old planks that were used on interior walls. We’ve started to put together a nice pile of lumber for our carpenters to work with.

For lunch we treated ourselves with a hot bowl of squash soup prepared by our own Ayal Dinner (what were those secret herbs and spices??), a warm cup of tea and enjoyed getting to know each other. That is when I realized this was more than a workbee, it was indeed a gathering.

A Barn Board Gathering.

With chalk in hand we've consulted chefs, planners, architects and engineers, staff, volunteers, and friends of friends. A big white square here, a blue rectangle there, a little erase over, here a little more chalk on the floor over there and finally, we have come up with a plan. Thanks to David Oleson of Oleson Worland Architects for his architectural expertise our blue prints have been submitted to city hall.  The final layout allows both the kitchen and the store to work in a complementary way and includes:

• an accessible washroom
• a “mop room”
• a veggie prep room
• a cafe sitting area/workshop space
• an office
• a walk in cooler

all in just over 2500 sq.ft.. oh yes, and there is even room for a pantry for the kitchen!

Most recently we’ve been talking with engineers and HVAC professionals (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) to ensure the co-op is kept at a proper temperature to facilitate the running of all our coolers. We've been looking at equipment, and are starting to get a clear idea of how our budget will meet our needs. Now, this is shopping I can enjoy.. hand blenders as tall as me, and mixers.... well.. as tall as me! and sinks, and ovens, and fridges and stoves. Needless to say Ayal is having even more fun than I am, and is already baking up a storm in his mind.

In other "big news" we received an industrial dishwasher as a donation from the City of Toronto’s Peer Nutrition. In return for the dishwasher we will be running The Peer Nutrition Program in our kitchen, this is a free Toronto Public Health nutrition education program offered to parents and caregivers from ethnically and culturally diverse communities in Toronto. Another perfect partnership for WEFC!

And so, along we go, once our drawings come out the other end of the city hall machine we will be ready to erase those chalk lines and start to build it!

I went out to Tuesday, October 18^th’s AGM precisely because it looked like it wasn’t going to be your average annual general meeting. The West End Food Co-op is known for its alternative approach to… well… pretty much everything, and I was looking forward to getting in on some of the action. The offer of local food combined with “outbreaks of democracy” were all that it took to convince me to attend.

True to form, this AGM wasn’t run of the mill. In fact, it really wasn’t an AGM at all. It turns out that due to some oversights around the governance bylaws of the co-op, they needed a quorum of 51% of members to be able to vote on anything. Thanks to a successful membership drive this year, attendance in the church basement wasn’t quite 51% of the co-op’s 500+ members! They made alternate arrangements to proceed though, such as getting quorum last Monday, October 24th at the Sorauren Market to vote on some key issues…including a move to change the quorum guidelines for future AGMs!

Despite the technical challenges, October 18^th’s event was the best almost-AGM I’ve ever been to. After getting updates on various co-op activities like the store’s renovations, meeting the new co-op coordinator Lynn Bishop, and going through the financials, we were onto the World Café – a lively participatory forum to discuss some of the big questions the co-op is trying to answer right now.

World Café is a dynamic and collaborative approach to hearing from many parties on a variety of issues. Each paper-covered table had a different question printed on it and each group got 15 minutes to discuss the question and record their thoughts and ideas on the paper. After time was up, we all moved to a new table and explored the next idea. I found it was a fascinating way to not only learn about the kinds of questions the co-op is struggling with, but also to hear the myriad perspectives offered by the diverse members in attendance.

Questions posed to us included “How should the co-op store determine its purchasing policy?”; “How can the co-op support small farmer producers?”; and “What are some ways the co-op can continue regular community consultations with all its members?” It was through these discussions that I realized how challenging it would be for the co-op to effectively engage all four types of members: consumers, producers, workers, and community partners.

If anyone is up for this challenge, however, it’s the West End Food Co-op’s incredibly committed leaders and members. If this past year is any indication of what’s to come, I look forward to a year of innovation, great food, and lot’s of fun.

Well, it has been three weeks since my first day as West End Food Co-op Coordinator and it is feeling as comfortable as an old shoe.. well comfortable, if your idea of comfort is being super busy, busy, busy, meeting, planning, thinking, writing, drawing, talking, and learning ever so much! Ayal and Sally have done a wonderful job introducing me to many of our fabulous community partners, other WEFC staff, the current board, and a ton of the many many volunteers that make this organization such an amazing entity. Its been a whirlwind, but it's all making perfect sense!

So, some talk of the big picture, and much work on the next steps. I've been meeting with architects and engineers, plumbers and electricians, as well as Melinda from Fourth Pig who will be our general contractor and will head up the renovation.  The most fun of all has been sketching out the kitchen appliances and store layout with input from various staff and professionals. Most recently two chef friends of Ayal's, Jennifer and Joshna, came to see our layout and gave a few suggestions. It was amazing to get their input, and really reassuring when they didn't have any big changes to suggest! Here is a picture of them "working" in the proposed kitchen.

So, things are starting to take shape and we are beginning to see how this space is really going to work.... and work it is!! So stay tuned, as we move forward in the coming months, I will post pictures of our progress, so you can all enjoy the process.

Originally posted - July 8, 2011

Photo: Emily van Halem  

deFloured's most popular pastries are their
savoury gallettes

Brownies, muffins, cookies, tarts, loaves, and gallettes. They arrive by the boxful to Sorauren Market every Monday afternoon and are gobbled up and gone by the market’s end. You can find them under the deFloured banner; in fact, you might have found your way there already. I’m willing to bet you thought their food was delicious. And the odds would also be in my favour if I guessed you thought it was made with wheat.

deFloured, a fitting name for a company that uses only gluten-free flour, has been delivering sweet and savoury fare to the Sorauren Market for over a year now. Their success is evidence that gluten-free can taste great. So much so that about 60 percent of their customers don’t even know their pastries are gluten-free!

They definitely have a growing gluten-free following though. Many folks who suffer from a gluten-sensitivity (e.g. Celiac or wheat-intolerant) regularly stock up on the gallettes – the ever-popular open faced savoury pies. Vegans, too, can enjoy the pleasures of deFloured’s pastry perfection in their assortment of muffins.