Dinner event helps with Keeping It Livingv

Project Watershed and our guests had a wonderful evening at 40 KNOTS on September 11th, 2021. The Keeping It Living Dinner was spectacular. We changed up the menu and format from previous years when the dinner was a salmon BBQ and received a lot of positive feedback on the food, presentation and structure.

This dinner was extremely well supported by our community as over 90% of the ingredients were donated and almost all of those ingredients came from local growers and producers. Our menu featured Natural Pastures Beef from Beaver Meadow Farms, Natural Pastures Cheese, Comox Valley Mushrooms, Estevan Tuna, Tannadice Farms pork, Harmony Acres Farm eggs, as well as fruit and veggies from Lentelus Farm, Shamrock Farm, Island Grove Farm, Eatmore Sprouts, McClintock’s Farm and Seiffert’s Farm Market. Seeds Food Market chipped in by donating a few of the items we could not get otherwise. Drinks also came from local vendors with Royston Roasting Company donating the coffee, Heavenly Libations donating the shrub and club soda mocktails and Zen Moment donating 24 bottles of Green Tea Kombucha. We are awed by the abundance and generosity of our Valley and thankful for every donation.

Our Chefs Stephanie Noel, from Cheffanie, and Yolanda MacLaren, from the Custom Gourmet, took the donated ingredients and prepared a meal that was both beautiful and delicious. Being supporters of our work both chefs donated their time to this event. If you have an event or want to host a dinner at home, we highly recommend them.

In addition to the food there were brief speeches regarding our work and the work at Kus-kus-sum and our annual reverse 50/50 draw. The winner of the draw was Frieda Home, who kindly donated half of her winnings back to Project Watershed. Anela Kahiamoe provided music for the evening in lieu of Luke Blu Guthrie.

The event was sold out and raised over $6,500. On top of this, 40 KNOTS donated $1,446 at the event from Safe Haven wine sales. We also received a few larger donations in the week following the dinner. We would like to give another big thank you to our event sponsors CNB Chartered Accountants, who also help us with our accounting issues.

At the event we explained that we have confirmed about 60% of the funding necessary to complete the restoration of the Kus-kus-sum site and are still actively writing grants and fundraising. If you were unable to attend the event but would like to donate to Kus-kus-sum or other components of our work please click the donate link below.