PepperFest, workshops, and a new website - oh, my!

This hasn't been the hottest of summers, but as September brings the cooler nights, we still find ourselves wiping the sweat from our brows... we've been hard at work!

We've of course been scurrying around getting ready for the 7th annual PepperFest, our serious celebration of local food and farmers on Oct. 5th... and we've got a whole new lineup of awesome DIY workshops underway.

But we've also been really getting down and dirty, crafting a new mission and vision for who we are as an organization, and then manifesting that in the form of a new name, a new logo, and two new websites!

Now you can just call us "Abundance North Carolina," or "Abundance NC," for short... or just "Abundance," if you're feeling friendly. And check out our new online homes: PepperFestNC.org and AbundanceNC.org!

Love and peppers,
Tami, Jenny, Beth and Charlotte

Countdown to PepperFest!

Get your early bird Pepper Festival tickets now for just $25 each! (Kids under 12 are free!)

PepperFest is just around the corner, on Oct. 5th! The food and drink menus have been slowly trickling in, as our chefs roll up their sleeves and get busy with N.C. peppers. Phil Cook and Tender Fruit are rehearsing for their sets on the Pepper Music Stage.

Our mouths are already watering, and our feet are already tapping. We. Can't. Wait.

Don't miss this great deal for endless pepper dishes, awesome live music, mini DIY workshops, kids' activities, and more. Check out all the participating chefs + brewers, and find out about the workshops and other activities at our new PepperFest website!

Never been to Pepperfest? Not sure what it's all about? Learn all about it here!

BUY TICKETS!

PEPPERFEST FOOD + DRINK menus coming in!

FOOD!

We're starting to hear from our PepperFest chefs what they're whipping up for this year's festival! So far, we have delectable treats like:

PEPPER GRIT CAKE with smoked + braised pork (gluten free) - from P.G. Werth's * ROASTED PEPPER SOUP + marinated pepper socca - from Small Potatoes Mobile Kitchen * PEPPER SOUP with sweet corn + shrimp (gluten free) - from Glasshalfull... and more!

Check out the food menu!

DRINKS!

You'll also be able to try these amazingly creative liquid concoctions at any of the drink booths at PepperFest:

HABANERO LIME SODA with habanero cucumber bitters + tobago cocktail cherries - from Crude Bitters + Sodas * PEPPER SHRUBS + tobago scuppernong spritzer - fromFair Game Beverage Co. * HOT PEPPER JELLY PALE ALE - from YesterYears Brewery... and more!

See the drink menu!

Work/trade gets you in free to PepperFest!

We have only 20 work/trade opportunities remaining at PepperFest that will earn you free admission. APPLY BY THURSDAY, SEPT 18 BELOW!

APPLY BY SEPT 18TH FOR A WORK/TRADE POSITION

APPLY HERE

There's thousands more where these came from... PepperFest means an endless supply of delectable pepper dishes!See you on Oct. 5th!

Upcoming DIY Workshops:

KEYHOLE GARDENING build + feast

SEPT. 20, 2-7 PM

The keyhole garden provides a self fertilizing, self watering walled compressed garden that can produce year round. It's like a 7 foot wide walled pie with a keyhole notch on one side...

$55

Learn more + register!

INTRO TO AQUAPONICS grow your own fish!

OCT. 18, 10-3 PM

Aquaponics is gaining considerable attention lately as a serious sustainable farming practice... Mike and Rachel will show you how to build your own backyard system. Just add plants, fish and water...

$50

Learn more + register!

DRINK 'N THINK:

cocktail alchemy

OCT. 19, 4-6 PM

This session will enact a comparative religious history of the alchemical traditions implicit in the distilling of spirits and mixing of cocktails. The very word "cocktail" originated in 1803...

$35

Learn more + register!

Featured Workshop:

Keyhole Garden Build & Feast!
with Deb Tolman * Sept. 20, 2-7pm

The keyhole garden provides a self fertilizing, self watering walled compressed garden that can produce year round. It's like a 7 foot wide walled pie with a keyhole notch on one side for you to stand and poke in your kitchen scraps and "lasagna" greens and browns to maintain the composting nutrients.

You won't have to weed this, you won't have to bend over, you will use far less water than a conventional garden, and you will learn how to use it as a self-watering, self-fertilizing garden, and it only gets better with age.

After building the garden, we'll prepare a gourmet feast and enjoy drinks from Fair Game Beverage Company, Pittsboro's new micro-distillery.

Deb Tolman is an incredible instructor, pioneering this super-sustainable and ingenious gardening technique. She doesn't come around these parts often, so don't miss out!

Featured Story:

Good news for the Chatham food system!

The very first official meeting of the Chatham Community Food Council (CCFC) convened in late August in Pittsboro. The goal of the CCFC is to identify and strengthen all connections in the food system in Chatham County, serving to bridge the gap between the public and government. We communicate with neighboring NC counties to work together to solve systemic food system issues. Read more.

Our new website is up and running! Check it out at abundancenc.org!

Why the new look?

New logo, new website, new name... it's been a journey.

When we first got started as a nonprofit, we called ourselves The Abundance Foundation, because we believed, and still do believe, in the theory of abundance - that there is enough of everything we need, for everyone, if we all live simply and sustainably, and share what we have.

But because of the word "foundation" in our name, people are often asking us if we are a family foundation with a lot of money to dole out in the form of grants. That's not who we are. We're small (only four employees, some part time!), but we get a lot done with a little. So, we decided to do away with the word, "foundation."

People also often ask us, "So... I've seen your name around a lot, but what exactly is it that you all do?" We decided we need to do a better job of explaining to everyone what we are all about.

So in the spirit of clarity, and in the hope that doing this would make us better at doing what we came here to do, we created new mission and vision statements, a new name, a new logo, and two new websites that better explain what we do and why.

Here's what we do, in a nutshell:

While we do a lot of different things that might at first seem unrelated - DIY workshops, PepperFest, a Climate Change Adaptation conference for farmers, helping get fledgling nonprofits off the ground, kid's sustainability work, movie nights with documentary directors, a small house contest, and the list goes on - all of this stems from one underlying goal: cultivating and celebrating community resilience.

We are driven by the belief that a community that can meet its needs locally (within its own community) and sustainably (without harming the land it depends on) is a strong community.

Read our new mission and vision statements, and check out our new home online and new PepperFest website!

CHECK OUT OUR NEW WEBSITE!

Thank you for being part of the Abundance community!

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