Grist Mill Pantry Share

What’s a Pantry Share? It’s like a farm box, but for preserves. Sign up today and let us help you fill your pantry with delicious scratch-made provisions including pickles, jams, jellies, chutneys, mustards and more.

What will I get with my Pantry Share membership?

Every season, we make a wide range of preserves and related food products (including Christmas goodies!) and you’ll have access to all them as part of your share. For every $100 in your share, you can expect to receive an average of ten jars (110mL jars for jellies, 375mL and 500mL for pickles, and 190mL for almost anything else) of product across all of our kinds of products. Last year we made about 15 varieties of pickles, about 30 varieties of jams and jellies plus an assortment of BBQ sauces, salsas, mustards, chutneys and more.

Below you’ll see some of the many products we made in the last few years…

Benefits:

  • A pantry full of products made from peak-of-the-season ingredients
    Because the ingredients come from our own heritage gardens or the gardens and orchards of our neighbours, there’s no need to pick soft fruit early for shipping or to store produce for long periods in a cooler. It’s picked when it’s ripe and processed right away to preserve its flavour and essential goodness.
  • We love to share no-longer-familiar ingredients in wonderfully old-fashioned recipes
    We have a large seed collection of rare and unusual heritage veggies as well as more than sixty heritage apple trees on site, and we love to use each ingredient to its best advantage. We also know where to track down hard-to-find items like quince, sour cherries and more.
  • A discount from our retail prices
    In appreciation for your up-front contribution, we will extend a 15% discount off the retail price of our products to share members. This discount is provided to you as added value to your share. For example, if you purchase a $200 share, you get $230 in share value.
  • Access to exclusive small-batch products
    Every year, we experiment with all sorts of unusual and old-fashioned recipes. Pantry Share members will get exclusive access to these treasures. (In 2020, those small-batch products included tomato bacon jam, pumpkin chutney, cherry olives, and more.)
  • Supporting the preservation of agricultural heritage and small local farmers
    Getting your money before the growing season starts allows us to properly invest in our own gardens and contract with local farmers to grow and harvest exactly what we need while they’re still planning for their season. It reduces their costs (and stress level) and helps us ensure we get exactly what we need, when we need it. Best of all, we aim to be as transparent as we can about the farmers we’re working with and the positive impact our pantry share has on their operation.
Pickles
We made the following different kinds of pickles:

pickled beets
pickled carrots
pickled peppers
cowboy candy (sweet pickled jalapenos)
classic dill pickles
pickled beans
pickled onions

pickled radishes
pickled watermelon rind*
pickled spiced crabapples
pickled cherry tomatoes
pickled green walnuts*
pickled asparagus and more…

(Products marked with a * were small-batch, limited edition items and were not sold to the general public.)

Jams & Jellies
We made the following jams and jellies:

three cherry jelly
apricot jam
peach jam
crabapple jelly
quince jelly
quince jam
tomato jam*
nectarine jam
horseradish jelly
onion jam
oregon grape jelly

blueberry jam
black current jelly*
elderberry jelly
dandelion marmalade*
damson jam
lilac jelly*
mint jelly*
santa rosa plum jam
prune plum jam
staghorn sumac jelly
rowan berry (mountain ash) jelly

carrot jam*
golden plum jam
rhubarb jam
pepper jelly
garlic scape spread
coronation grape jelly
plum conserve
wildberry jam
chokecherry jelly
ambrosial jam* and more…

(Products marked with a * were small-batch, limited edition items and were not sold to the general public.)

Relish, Salsa and Chutney
We made the following relishes, salsa and chutneys:

apple chutney
carrot relish
crabapple chutney
garden salsa
poblano pepper relish
onion relish

garlic scape relish
smoked salsa
sweet cucumber relish*
tomato chutney
pear relish* and more…

(Products marked with a * were small-batch, limited edition items and were not sold to the general public.)

Misc.
We also made a lot of products that don’t fit into any of the other categories, including:

apple sauce
mustards (wholegrain, maple, raspberry-apricot)
cranberry sauce
traditional mincemeat
heritage apple juice
Christmas baking

BBQ sauce
candied citrus peel
canned fruit (cherries, peaches and pears)*
our own fresh-ground flour
dried herbs
heritage candy

(Products marked with a * were small-batch, limited edition items and were not sold to the general public.)

Anything Else I Should Know?

  • This Pantry Share program is inspired by other CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs, particularly the farm box programs here in the Similkameen Valley, as well as Skipper Otto’s Community Supported Fishery in Vancouver. We firmly believe in connecting people with where their food comes from.
  • Buying a share gives you a voice when we’re planning our preserves for 2024; if there’s something in particular you think we should make for your pantry, you’ll have lots of chance to give us your input. If you have a favourite recipe, we’d love that too!
  • If you find you’re going through your share faster than expected, you can always top-up your share with more money at any time. Please note that share top-ups will only get a 10% discount off retail instead of 15%.
  • The preserves available at each pick-up will be determined by what has been seasonally-available up to that point. You won’t see peaches or apples until fall, for example. See the chart below for a rough idea of what’s available to us when.

We’re really excited about our 2024 Pantry Share  and hope you’ll be a part of it!