Kid versus Wolf River apple. The kid definitely won!
We’re busy with organizing our sixth-annual Heritage Fall Fair on Sunday, Sept 22nd, and could use some extra volunteer assistance with pulling together our amazing heritage apple display for the event. That means helping track down orchards in the Okanagan-Similkameen with heritage and other non-market varieties, helping set up an informative display, helping run some apple-related activities on the day of our Fair and more.
If you can lend a hand or maybe have a lead on someone with heritage apple varieties in their orchard in the Similkameen or South Okanagan, please drop Chris a line at chris@oldgristmill.ca as soon as possible.
If you’re curious about the sorts of heritage varieties we’re interested in, here’s a list of many of the kinds of apples grown historically in the Okanagan:
a couple drops of your favourite flavour extractor 1 tbsp of lemon juice.
Instructions
Heat all ingredients until they reaches 310F on a candy thermometer and then remove from heat.
Pour into a buttered baking sheet and cool until it can be handled, then cut into shapes or roll pieces into sticks. (Or, if you have access to metal candy molds, you can use then instead.)
Store in an air-tight container.
Enjoy!
Notes
Traditionally, this candy was made by boiling barley in water and straining, then adding the sugar. Any real (not artificial) flavour extract can be used instead.
Before you start, gather some supplies you’ll need later: butter a baking sheet, cut out wax paper squares and butter the blades of a pair of kitchen scissors.
Heat all ingredients except butter and baking soda until it reaches 255F on a candy thermometer and then remove from heat.
Stir in butter and sprinkle in baking soda, stirring as you add (to avoid clumps).
Pour onto a buttered baking tray and let cool until you can pick it up. (It’s easier to work the hotter it is, so don’t wait too long.)
Cover your hands in butter and then pull taffy by twisting and stretching it, and then folding in half. Repeat this motion until the taffy becomes lighter in colour. (If hot enough, the taffy will want to sag and stretch on it’s own.)
When ready, form into a rope 3/4″ wide and cut into chunks with kitchen scissors. (Make sure you butter the blades beforehand!)
Wrap in squares of wax paper and twist both ends to close. Store in an airtight container.
Share Your Dirtiest Cookbook Page For A Chance To Win
One-Of-A-Kind Grist Mill Experience
We love cookbooks, especially the kind that are passed down from person-to-person. There’s something wonderful about a well-loved, dog-eared, grease-stained cookbook. A mint-condition cookbook suggests that it’s just a status symbol, not an oft-referenced resource for culinary adventures.
Frequently, the best recipes look like they’ve survived a food fight and have notes in the margins unlocking the secret adjustments that make them perfect. And, of course, the binding is broken from being held open on a favourite recipe one-too-many times.
Real cooks have dirty cookbooks.
And cookbooks can also be so much more; for many families, the passing down of a cookbook from one generation to the next can be a significant emotional milestone, like the passing down of closely-held traditional knowledge. Once opened, the recipes inside might bring back memories of special festive gatherings, or funny reminders of epic kitchen failures, or even the warm comfort of the go-to recipe for a regular family dinner. Every well-loved cookbook has a story (or ten).
We would love to see your most abused pages in your own cookbooks and hear their stories.
How to Enter
(entries can be made via any of the methods outlined below):
Take a picture of your dirtiest cookbook page(s) and post it on our Facebook Page. Be sure to share a story or two about that particular cookbook or the recipe(s) on the photographed page.
Post a photo of your page on Instagram with the hashtag #DirtiestCookbookPage and tell your story in the caption. Be sure to tag us (@old_grist_mill).
Tweet a photo on Twitter and include the hashtag #DirtiestCookbookPage. Be sure to tag us (@old_grist_mill).
You’re welcome to post as many photos as you’d like, but you’ll still only have one chance to win per each of the three methods listed above. A short list of the dirtiest pages / best stories submitted (as selected by our team) will be posted on April 2nd for public voting. The one with the most votes on April 9th will win the grand prize. Secondary prizes will be randomly drawn from all entries recieved on April 9, 2018.
Rules & Regulations
There are 4 prizes available in total including an Experience Package worth $400 that includes a private dinner for six in our lovely garden, a basket of Similkameen preserves from our gift shop and more. Lesser packages of event tickets and specific products from our gift shop will also be available.
The contest is open to any legal resident of Canada (excluding the province of Quebec) who is at the age of majority in his/her province or territory of residence or older at the time of entry, except current employees of the Grist Mill and Gardens or their immediate family members. The odds of being selected as a potential winner are dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.
All entries considered inappropriate or offensive by the Grist Mill and Gardens will be disqualified. (Yes, we know that by asking for the “dirtiest pages”, some of you might take certain liberties… that’s not what we’re looking for, and you know it.)
Full Details
Copyright in all entries submitted for this Competition remains with the respective entrants. However, entrants agree that by submitting an entry to the competition, they grant the Grist Mill and Gardens a royalty free, perpetual irrevocable worldwide license to use and republish their entry. This includes sharing the entry through social media and publication by the Grist Mill and worldwide in any of their publications, their websites and/or in any promotional material. (To translate: we don’t want to get in trouble if we share your story with others.)
The winner will be notified by the Grist Mill and Gardens on or before April 10, 2018. The secondary winners will be selected at random from a ballot which comprises all the qualifying entries. Any winner who is not contactable or who fails to return contact within 72 hours of notification after reasonable efforts have been made to contact them will be disqualified, they thereby forfeit their right to the prize, no compensation will be given and a reserve entrant will be selected as an alternative winner.
The prizes are non-negotiable, non-transferable and non-refundable. In the event of unforeseen circumstances we reserve the right to substitute the prize package for an alternative of equal or greater value. We reserve the right to modify, delay, postpone or cancel this contest in the event of circumstances outside of its reasonable control.
This contest and its rules shall be governed by the laws of British Columbia and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of BC courts.
Valdy performing in our Summer Kitchen in summer 2016.
The Grist Mill and Gardens has now started planning our 2018 schedule of events and have numerous opportunities for musicians and other entertainers.
1) Summer Concert Series
The Grist Mill is a 12 acre Provincial Heritage Site in the heart of the Similkameen Valley featuring western Canada’s only working waterwheel-powered flour mill and stunning gardens. Our Summer Kitchen provides an intimate, rustic outdoor venue for folk, roots and world music for audiences of up to 200 from June to Sept.
Over the last five years, we’ve hosted a very successful evening concert series and will be doing the same again for Summer 2018. We love the line-ups we’ve pulled together, from Juno-winning folk legends like Valdy, Shari Ulrich, Lester Quitzau and Bill Bourne, break-out stars like Old Man Luedeke and Pharis & Jason Romero, rising up-and-comers like Sarah Jane Scouten, 100 Mile House and Scott Cook and crowd-pleasers like Tal Bachmann, Mae Moore, The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra, The Sweet Lowdown, and The Eisenhauers.
We love acoustic instruments played with skill. We love stories. We love both original compositions and traditional tunes, performed with heart and soul. In terms of genre, we love anything that suits our rustic venue.
Our annual series typically features one outdoor evening show a week from late-June to early September, timed to coincide with the spectacular sunsets here in the Similkameen Valley. Exact dates are somewhat flexible, but we’d prefer Thursday to Saturday evenings to ensure the largest possible audiences.
If you’re part of a group of no more than four members that might be suitable for headlining one of these shows, we’d love to hear from you.
2) Special Event Days
Shari Ulrich performing in our Summer Kitchen to a full crowd.
Each year, the Grist Mill hosts a number of special event days with our partners including Victoria Day, Father’s Day, Canada Day, BC Day and Labour Day as well as our Fall Fair in September and Apple Day festival (in October). We’re always looking for musicians or other performers interested in being a part of these family-oriented events and we can accommodate amplified performances in our Summer Kitchen, roving or busking style performances throughout our site and more.
These events are great opportunities for us to work with groups that may fit outside of the genres associated with our concert series.
3) Private Events
The Grist Mill often hosts events such as weddings, reunions or private receptions are are often asked for a list of recommended musical acts to play unamplified in our gardens for their event. Classical guitar, wind or string trios or quartets would be ideal for these sorts of opportunities.
Get in touch so we can add you to our list of suggestions, or even book you ourselves.
4) Use Our Venue
Perhaps none of these other opportunities are quite right for you; maybe you’d like to organize your own performance, and just use us as a venue. If you’re a theatre or dance troupe interested in doing an outdoor show, a band looking for an affordable (and memorable) venue or an event organizer looking for a big space that can do many different things at the same time, please get in touch. For the right event, we can help promote your event, sell your tickets and more. We also have our own sound system suitable for audiences of up to 200 people.
If you’re interested in any of these opportunities, please contact us at entertainers@oldgristmill.ca no later than Feb 15, 2018 so that we can start planning our season’s schedule. We’d appreciate some or all of the following information:
Group/Artist Name
Main Contact and contact information (phone #, email address, etc)
Theme/Style of Music or Type of Act
Number of performers in act
Available Dates & Times
A brief overview of the experience and background of the act
The rundown of the equipment requirements for your performance
Compensation expectations
Any other information you think would help us find the perfect opportunity for you
We would also appreciate a sample of you performing, either a video or audio recording. You can email us links or mail us CDs or DVDs, whatever is most appropriate. If you don’t have recordings, we may request an in-person audition.
Please direct all questions or submissions to Chris Mathieson, Site Operator at entertainers@oldgristmill.ca.
To learn more about why we’re asking for your help identifying these apple varieties, visit this post.
Below are photos of each of the kinds of apple we were able to assemble from our orchard this year. In some cases, we’re pretty much 100% sure what they are, but many others are completely unfamiliar to us. We trust that both times trees were planted on our site, there was significant research done to ensure they are historically interesting varieties. It’s even possible that in our older orchard the variety names are all correct, just transposed onto the wrong tree.
Click on the first photo in the top left corner to open a slideshow featuring all our photos. We’ve commented on each one with whatever information or rumours we have; you’re welcome to add your own comments. (To find the comments; just click on the “comment” icon when you get into the slideshow.)
Also, you can scroll further down this page for links to some of our favourite apple-identifying resources.
Orange Pippin – Detailed information on more than 600 apple varieties. Apple Name – This site is presented by a partnership of apple enthusiasts from the USA, Canada, and UK and includes a great set of fruit identification tools. Fruit ID – A community-created catalogue for apple identification.
We adore heritage apples; no store-bought fruit is ever going to have the quirks, the character and the variation we see in old apple varieties. If you want to bake, why use a Granny Smith when you have access to Wolf River, Northern Spy or Caville Blanc D’hiver. Once you’ve picked up a Cox’s Orange Pippin, an Ashmead’s Kernel or Grimes Golden, you’ll never enjoy a grocery store apple quite as much. With the number of known varieties in the *thousands*, there are so many amazing taste experiences to have.
We’re very fortunate that our founding head gardener, Sharon Rempel, collected a number of grafts from an old orchard in Oliver and created a small heritage apple orchard on our site. A few trees died and were regrafted, possibly with other varieties. Then, sometime around 2011, another manager added an additional 20 trees to the site. Unfortunately, record keeping has been exceptionally poor and the map we inherited for our main orchard is clearly not correct.
This year, we’ve photographed fruit from as many of our trees as we can, in the hopes that maybe you can help us identify them, or at least get us in the right ballpark. If you’re interested in a little detective work, we’d really love your help!
Beginning in April 2017, a new company is taking over operation of the Grist Mill and Gardens Historic Site. The details are pretty technical, but we believe that our new corporate structure, combined with a now-granted ten year lease on the site with the Province of BC will allow for more stability than this exceptional piece of BC history has seen in more than a decade.
This new company, Grist Mill CCC, has the same ownership and key staff as the previous operator, Mathieson Heritage Services, but there are many changes “under the hood”. Most importantly, Grist Mill CCC is a new kind of company called a Community Contribution Corporation (or C3).
A C3 is for-profit company that is restricted–by law–in many of same ways non-profits and charities are and, most importantly, provides a real benefit to its community. It is a very specific kind of incorporation intended specifically for social enterprise.
What features make a C3 unique?
Like any other business, C3s are incorporated under the BC Business Corporations Act. Changes were made to that Act in 2012 and this form of corporate structure was made available to register in 2013. By 2015, there were almost thirty C3s incorporated in BC. Grist Mill CCC was the thirty-fifth.
Like all C3s, we are required to have a community purpose written into our Articles of Incorporation, ensuring it is a fundamental part of the company. The community purpose for our Grist Mill CCC is as follows:
Grist Mill C3 Community Purpose Statement
Community Purpose
This company exists to undertake sustainable and community-minded commercial activity in support of the preservation, rehabilitation and public access to the heritage represented at the Grist Mill and Gardens historic site. Further, this company recognizes the important role the site plays in the community, doing the following:
Supporting the development of a strong and integrated local economy
Supporting other socially-minded organizations in their own community purposes
Providing arts, culture and educational opportunities.
How do C3s differ from a typical private company?
One obvious difference is that the company must have “Community Contribution Corporation” or “CCC” in it’s name, but the big difference is that C3s are subject to an “asset lock,” meaning there’s strict rules on how profits and assets can be handled–the bulk of a C3’s profits must go towards the C3’s community purposes (or be transferred to a qualified entity, such as a charity). The other major difference is that C3s are subject to a higher degree of accountability – for example, they must have three directors, instead of just one, and are required to publish an annual “community contribution” report describing their activities. Both of these requirements are intended to help ensure the community purposes of the C3 are being properly fulfilled.
The next question seems obvious: Why choose a business model so full of restrictions, without the benefits that come with being a non-profit or a registered charity?
Everyone who establishes a C3 has their own reasons, but here are ours…
Since our team took over operation of the site in 2013, the community has been very clear about the sort of role the Grist Mill can and should play in their community; including a statement of community benefit makes it clear that we respect those values and wish to be held accountable for them. We’d spent the previous three years building strong relationships with a wide variety of stakeholders in the community and wanted to sustain, and leverage, that social capital for the ongoing benefit of the site and the community.
Early during this process to secure a long-term lease, we considered the possibility of dissolving our own business so that we could work with a local non-profit to help them secure the lease, figuring that might provide the ultimate community benefit. Unfortunately, there was no volunteer-led group with adequate capacity to govern and operate a complex site such as this.
No matter the structure, it was clear that the provincial government wanted to see its own role reduced on the site and so seemed prepared to consider a wider variety of business activities here, possibly even ones that might not be preferred by the community. Creating a C3 and securing a long term lease does much to ensure that the core heritage of the site is respected and that it will continue to be operated as a community amenity and historic attraction.
Next Steps
The 2017 season will be the first one for Grist Mill CCC and we will be hosting several stakeholder engagement events through the year as we plan out our next decade of operation on the site. We also particularly look forward to preparing and publishing our first community contribution report in about a year to detail the ways in which we’ve met our community objectives. Hopefully, we can publish less formal updates on the rewards and challenges associated with this fascinating new business model and its suitability for managing community facilities like ours.
If you would be interested in contributing your perspectives or expertise as we explore the possibilities of the Community Contribution Corporation model, please get in touch with us at chris@oldgristmill.ca anytime. We’re also always looking for volunteers to lend a hand on our day-to-day operation of this exceptional piece of BC heritage.
The Grist Mill and Gardens has now started planning our 2017 lecture and workshop series and we’re looking for speakers and hands-on presenters for a wide variety of topics.
We are a 12 acre BC heritage site in the heart of the Similkameen Valley featuring western Canada’s only working waterwheel-powered flour mill (built in 1877) and stunning ornamental, herb and vegetable gardens. History, agriculture and art combine in fascinating ways on our site and here are just some of the sorts of topics we’d love to see:
Lectures – These are offered on weekend afternoons or weekday evenings and are usually no more than an hour long. Weekend lectures are offered at no additional cost to visitors and seasons pass holders. We generally offer an honourarium for these presentations.
Hands-on Workshops – These are generally two or more hours long and run on weekday evenings or during half or full days on the weekend. They often have registration fees associated which are split with the presenter.
If you’re interested in presenting here in 2017 on these (or any other topic that seems relevant), please use the form below to tell us more about what you’d like to propose.
Please direct all questions to Chris Mathieson, Site Operator / General Manager at info@oldgristmill.ca and please share this with anyone else you think might be interested. Deadline to submit a proposal is March 9, 2017 and submissions will be considered in the order received.
[contact-form to=’info@oldgristmill.ca’ subject=’2017 Presenter Form’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email Address’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Phone Number’ type=’text’/][contact-field label=’Presentation Title’ type=’text’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Presentation Description’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’What are the top three things attendees will take away from this session?’ type=’textarea’/][contact-field label=’This presentation would fit best under which category?’ type=’checkbox-multiple’ required=’1′ options=’Food Production,Food Preservation,Food Issues,Plant Identification and Uses,Local History,Gardening,Visual Arts,Fibre Arts,Natural History,Rural Living Skills,Traditional Crafts,Other’/][contact-field label=’How much time would you need?’ type=’select’ options=’1 Hour (or less),2 Hours,3 hours,Half-Day,Full-Day’/][contact-field label=’Preferred Audience(s)’ type=’checkbox-multiple’ options=’Youth (12 and under),Teens (13-18),Adults (19-59),Seniors (60+)’/][contact-field label=’About You (tell us a little about who you are what your interest and proficiency is in this topic)’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Anything Else We Should Know?’ type=’textarea’/][/contact-form]
