Author: Tobin Fekkes

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In Convenience We Trust

I have a favorite sweater that is head and shoulders better than any other sweater, and so much so, that I point out to Emily anytime I see another version of my sweater on a stranger out in the wild. It’s a little game I play. It’s similar to when someone in my family starts driving a new vehicle, and suddenly I start recognizing all the other people in our town that also (apparently) just started driving the same vehicle! Of course, people have been driving that vehicle for ages, long before I paid attention to their choice of transportation. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

There’s another area I play this game, although much more niche than sweaters or vehicles. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the popular saying, which states that the three most important things in real estate are “Location, location, location”. However, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend where this does not hold up. As I started to catalog more and more instances, a curious truth revealed itself. Just like I catalog and point out sweaters to Emily, now I catalog and point out locations that are in seemingly prime locations, but are instead either dead, or a revolving door of attempts to not be dead. Do you ever see an empty lot, or an abandoned building, or a space boarded-up, yet it’s right on a busy intersection? Or it is just next to the offramp of a highway? Despite having all the signage, all the visibility, all the access, it still cannot catch a breath of air for more than a few months before shuttering. Then a new tenant comes along, perhaps after being told by the property broker that “location is everything”, yet  a year later, it’s gone. Why is that? There are many locations off the top of my head that fall into this category, on Camano Island, Bellingham, Smokey Point, Seatac, Everett, Burlington, Stanwood, Lynnwood, etc, etc, etc. The actual city is not important, since it is not isolated to any specific legislation, ordinances, tax codes, or county laws. It’s much deeper, and more fundamental than that.

In addition to trees and mangoes, one of the things I love most in life is Bell Curves. And these abandoned storefronts and restaurants in primo locations follow a bell curve also: the bell curve of convenience. They were choked by the excess convenience. On the left side of the bell curve of convenience, it is very difficult to start a store, restaurant, or business in the backwoods, way off the beaten path. As you approach the middle of the bell curve, it is very valuable to be in a visible, convenient, accessible location where your mere presence does the talking. However, “more” is not always “better”, and increasing in convenience starts to have diminishing returns as you roll down the backside of the bell curve. A one-lane intersection with a roundabout or a four-way  stop is very accessible because there are natural breaks in traffic. When an intersection becomes so crowded that it needs a turn lane in the middle, or two lanes both ways, or a median down the center, things go downhill quickly. Now the road has become so popular, so convenient, that it has become very difficult, even dangerous, to get in and out. Perhaps you can only get in one direction and go out in only one direction? Perhaps you can only enter one way but exit through another place? Perhaps, like the grocery store near me, there’s a high chance of dying anytime you go near any of the entrances! When a location becomes too convenient, it cuts off the air supply of the nutrients it needs to survive, and it either becomes increasingly expensive to maintain, or it simply starts to wither away. The oxygen it needs, namely people, are unable to access it any longer. Pay attention to the overly convenient real estate near you. Maybe you’ll notice some that die from excess convenience.

How similar our food supply has become as we have sacrificed the essential nutrients our bodies need in exchange for convenience stores, fast food, easy bakes, quick mixes, and instant pots. Fresh, local, organic, and un-processed food is the “slow food” we need to keep the supply of nutrients our bodies need to be healthy, active, and long-lasting.

Tobin

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Consistently Variable

Discovery 

Emily and I spent Father’s day with her family perusing around a used bookstore, and not just any used bookstore. The kind of bookstore where you must be careful where you walk, and keep your arms in tight, lest you knock over piles of books. I was not successful at this, as simply brushing one stack of books created a domino effect with the nearby stacks of books. And trying to fix that stack inevitably knocked over another stack. Thankfully, the owner was all too familiar with the commotion coming from my corner of the shop, and I did not get a talking-to. Every ledge, every nook, every spare inch on floor is covered with stacks of books, and only loosely organized or categorized. One block away, there is a very well-known bookstore that gets plenty of publicity, is centrally located on the main street, and is very organized. The aisles are clear, the signage is prominent, and the books are categorized, new, and neatly facing outward. And I find it terribly sterile, and even a bit boring. The books are exactly where you would expect them to be, the titles are about the same. I can easily find exactly the book I’m looking for, but it’s unlikely I’ll stumble upon an even better book that I wasn’t looking for. A book I wish existed for my little niche of hobbies, but didn’t know someone else had that hobby too, and enough to bring it to print. Often, the joy and connection we have with something has less to do with the actual content or substance, and more to do with the way we discovered the thing. 

My wife and I have strong ties to London through family and friends. Emily did her master’s program in London, and my family lived in Manchester for 4 years while my dad got his PhD, so we make it back over the pond to visit as often as we can. The streets of London are perfectly suited to exploring via bicycle, because there is no grid system, it’s mostly flat, and it’s very densely populated. The density allows for many little cities within the cities, where the culture and feel of the place changes every few blocks. This increases the ratio of discovery, as you never know what’s around the next corner, and the streets aren’t laid out in an “expected” formation. There is no point of reference like a mountain or an ocean to keep you oriented, the streets are straight, and the buildings are tall enough to block your view of the one defining feature: the Thames River. But even that is not straight, so it will easily leave you disoriented. Because of this, two of my favorite spots to visit are special to me purely because of how I discovered them. One day, I was riding my Santander bike around London, and I had not looked up where I was nor where to go. I just followed the flow of the streets and what looked interesting up ahead. The worst thing that could happen is I return my bike to the nearest Tube station and find my train back home. After riding for awhile, I stumbled across an amazing outdoor market. A quasi-European Pike Place Market, but with less Starbucks. Amazing food stalls, fresh produce, all the international treats you could ask for. I always return there. Later on, I discovered this incredible collection of little pedestrian streets that all fed into a central hub, filled with food courts, tea shops, alleyways, and little shops you’d never find anywhere else. There was character, there was a sense of place, and there was uniqueness, there was a reason to be there. I felt like I found a little secret gathering place, tucked in the alleyways, away from the hustle and bustle of 9 million people right nearby. 

Some of my most memorable foods, recipes and meals and follow this pattern of discovery, as I’m sure yours do too when you stop and think about them. Emily and I had banana cream pie at our wedding because my grandma made them important to me. We have tea and chocolate at night because my parents did. My favorite meal is Dutch pancakes because my dad made them for us on our birthdays. I’m always on the lookout for a Chinese porn bun because as a kid, my aunt and uncle lived 4 hours away, and we met them in the middle at a Chinese restaurant. My grandpa made nasi goreng because the Dutch adopted it from Indonesia, and he made it for my dad, and then my dad made it for us. There are foods that I think I’m sure I would not like, nor even try, if I had discovered them by myself, or in different circumstances, or with different people (or no people), or different times in my life. But some of my favorite foods are tied to the way I discovered them. This is encouraging to me because it infers that we have a certain amount of control over what we like to eat. We are not simply born with foods we like, and foods we don’t. Sometimes, we like foods because of how they came to us, not because of what they are.  

Some of you already experience this “discovery” when you open your Box of Good without looking at the week’s menu beforehand. Some of you are scared to death when you get an item in your box that you don’t know what it is, why it is, or where it should go. I would only encourage you to create a memory around it; ask a friend for a recipe, have neighbors over and try out your new dish, ask us for some tips and tricks, or just venture out on your own and discover how it works best for you. You just might discover that you like it. 

~ Tobin Fekkes 

 

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Consistently Variable

Consistently Variable 

Many years ago, I came across this lecture on the patterns and styles of architecture through the ages. Of course, I can’t for the life of me find it again, not even with the Mighty Google. The main point of the lecture was that the prominent pieces of each generation of architecture, the ones that stood the test of time both physically and emotionally, were both consistent and variable. The columns of stone had consistent spacing, but they also had offsets from each other to create a sense of depth. Mosaics and frescos had intricate designs with distinct lines to create order, but with sweeping beauty in curves and chaotic color. Windows, statues, paintings, and domes had their own balance of organization with artistic freedom. Order and Chaos, balanced. When the pendulum swings too far to the Order side, things become predictable, robotic, mundane, and we lose interest. However, when things swing over into Chaos, things become tumultuous, confusing, lawless. We like a degree of certainty, but not too much. We like an ounce of chaos, but not too much. The things that hold our attention, indeed, those that give us awe and wonder, are ones that are larger than ourselves, outside of our direct control, but still follow an unpredictable pattern. 

It’s likely that, on first glance, we think of things being both Consistent and Variable much like oil and water; they don’t mix. How can something be the same and different? But in fact, the world around us is in a constant state of consistent variability. The waves crash on the beach consistently, day and night, but with varying frequency and intensity. We can’t say whether this wave will be bigger than that wave, but we know the waves are coming. The clouds roll in with some semblance of certainty, but not so much that we can bet the farm on it every day. The wind blows through, and the trees move mostly as expected, generally, but not exactly. We know what wind does, but we can’t know what it will do next. The four seasons come and go with a degree of predictability, but not so much that we can know exactly what any one day will be like. Our galaxy’s stars would be boring if they were laid across the sky as predictable as a city block in New York City, like when you fly to a major city at night and descend amongst a million little stars in a neatly packed grid. How many hours we have wasted invested staring at the flames in a campfire, drawn to the beauty of the current flame, waiting expectantly for what the next flame will do. Knowing the flame will come, but not knowing what form it will take. How similarly we behave around lightning strikes and thunderstorms! Even snowflakes fall consistently, but never the same. We can know that a leaf will fall, but we couldn’t reliably pick where on the ground it will land. When something balances a healthy dose of structure with a hint of uncertainty, we are drawn in.  

Thankfully, our food follows the same patterns of Order and Chaos. We know that too much order in food and too much automation in food production creates “things” that are frighteningly identical in size, color, and shape. When our food becomes too predictable and formulaic, then it’s a good sign that it’s not meant for us. Things like frozen pizzas, cookies, snacks, and pre-packaged vegetables have a heavy dose of “order”, while things at the drive-thru and county fairs lean towards chaos! I love our fresh bread from Rachael because every loaf is just a little different.  

A good rule of thumb to use with the food you eat is to make sure it has both Consistency and Variability. Shout for joy when two peppers are oddly shaped, when squash are different sizes, and bananas are different colors. Be thankful that head of broccoli will take some knife skills, and the carrots aren’t as straight as they could be. That’s how you know your food wasn’t optimized for packaging, nor is it fit for pig food. Right in the middle is food that’s fit for you to eat. 

May we spend more hours gazing at the stars, listening to waves crash on the beach, watching the clouds drift by, following the dance of a fire, and creating and cooking our own food.  

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Stomachs over Storage

A couple years ago, a friend of a friend (and fellow Box of Good recipient!) was moving her small business to Snohomish, and she contracted me to set up all the technology for her new retail store. Before the computers, printers, Wi-Fi, POS station, credit card readers, and receipt printer worked, we needed to get a new internet router. So I went where everyone else goes, and headed to our local family-owned shop around the corner called Amazon. I picked out the right router that covered the appropriate square footage of her store and purchased it on a Thursday afternoon, around 1pm. I only needed it to arrive at her store by Monday to start setting up shop. But later that afternoon, she texted me to say that the router arrived at the new store! I was flabbergasted. 

While this complex system of distribution works great for consuming more and more cheaper items, it’s not such a great system for food that we actually consume. A router is not bothered by sitting on a shelf for a year, or in a container for 6 months, or a ship for 3 weeks. Nor do cell phone chargers, tires, a broom, a book or a rowing machine! My 94-year-old grandpa just bought himself a rowing machine from Amazon on his cell phone, delivered to his nursing-home “studio” in 3 days, because it’s still not too late to start something new! How long was that rowing machine waiting on a shelf for him? Who knows. 

Unfortunately, we’ve made our food system more like our non-food system, rather than the other way around. We’ve pushed too hard on the “convenience” button and tried to make every food item available all the time in whatever quantity we can dream up. Prioritizing food for storage and transport has come at the cost of the very nutrients we should be consuming. Too often, the same nutrients that our bodies desire also make food expire, but those are replaced with items that enhance their shipping and storage lives. If we were blindfolded and released into a grocery store and told to grab a handful of items, it’s more likely that your shopping cart would be full of items designed for the shelf, not for yourself. The main intention behind the shape, color, texture, presentation, density, price, and ingredients of each product is that it needs to be in a truck, freezer, cooler, warehouse, or storage for an unknown amount of time. It’s made to sustain the temperature changes, shaking, and squishing, rather than sustain our stomachs. 

But fresh local produce and grocery items flip the tradeoffs in our favor, so the nutrients we crave are left in the food, and the costs of a complex storage system are removed. The single-use plastic is eliminated, the gas and electricity are minimal from storing and moving items around between distribution centers. The fresh bread in your Box of Goodis baked by Rachael the morning that you receive it. The raw milk in your delivery comes from Tilly the day before you receive it. The bar of chocolate is made by Kevin the same week you receive it. The kale and carrots are grown by Ray and John, picked a day or two before you get it. The blueberries from Karen are picked a day or two before you eat them. That’s why I can’t eat just one pint! 

A famous person once said, just because it’s possible, doesn’t mean it’s beneficial.  

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Life of Pie

The Food and Drug Administration publishes the changes to our nutrition laws on their website, and it can be a dull read sometimes. Each year, the FDA makes changes to the National Register, which makes them part of the Law across the Land. I don’t know many people that keep up to date with the FDA regulations, so you’d be forgiven for missing the FDA alterations amongst other things like Twitter changing their name, or the Paris Olympics memes, or any other Very Important News®. Most years, the FDA makes a dozen or so updates to the food regulations, but so far in 2024, there have only been 3. We are 1) reducing sodium use, 2) updating “health” claims on yogurt, but the most riveting one is 3) revoking the standards for frozen cherry pie. What?!? 

In 1967, the FDA made a proposal to regulate the Standards of Identity for frozen cherry pies, meaning that the public was confused about what was and was not a frozen cherry pie. More specifically, the public was not sure whether the sweetener in the cherry goop was artificial or not.  A solid four years later, the proposal was finalized in 1971 and ever since then, we’ve had nothing but perfect frozen cherry pies. In 2020, the American Bakers Association (who else?!) petitioned to revoke the Standards of Identity around frozen cherry pies, asserting that “that non-standardized fruit pies have been sold throughout the country for many years without any evidence of public confusion”. So in March of 2024, the FDA relaxed the rules on frozen cherry pies, saying “the standards are no longer necessary to ensure that these products meet consumer expectations, and revoking the standards will provide greater flexibility and the opportunity for product innovation”. Keep an eye out for some innovative frozen cherry pies coming to a retailer near year! 

As we head into fall, we’re entering peak pie season. The usual pie suspects make this season go ‘round. The classic apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie and chocolate pie are never far from reach. Or you can go the savory route and make sausage pies, delicata squash pies, turkey pies from Thanksgiving leftovers, cheddar pies, chicken pot pies. Quiche is even a pie! And don’t forget custard pies, meringue pies, or sweet potato pies. You name it, you can make a pie out of it! A pie is like the soup of the oven: throw all your extra ingredients in a pie crust, cover it with something, and bake it off! No one will be sure exactly what is in it, but it will taste good! 

If pies are not your thing or you need to be pulled away from the pies, Box of Good will begin offering nutritional classes In October. The class will be once a week for 5 weeks, and it’s a combination of 1 part nutritional education, 1 part sugar detox, and 1 part support group. Laura Conley is a Functional Nutritionist and will be leading the class through education around digestion, healthy fats, the impact of sugar and refined carbs, and how to fight back with whole foods, preferably local and organic when available. To register, look for more info on our website and the space will be limited. We will offer both daytime or evening classes to fit flexible schedules. 

A quick way to summarize the class is a great quote from author Michael Pollan: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” 

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Too Big To Follow

Every once in a while, a phrase makes it into our global lexicon. These phrases are usually tied to an event or time that we all collectively associate. We can often remember exactly where we were and what we were doing. I remember learning a new phrase shortly soon September 11th, 2001, where all the newspapers and TV shouted “Shock and Awe” on repeat. I’d never heard that before, but suddenly, it was everywhere!  

Shortly before that, we added the “Dot-com Bubble” to reference the fall-out from very speculative tech companies after reality settled in that they may not be as important as they thought. Then we added “Great Recession” and learned all sorts of fun new financial words like derivatives, credit default swaps, and subprime. Without wasting time, we quickly added “Occupy Wall Street” and “Top 1%”. Then we moved on very quickly to “Black Lives Matter” and “Cancel Culture”. Finally, we’ve rounded out the last four years with a plethora of phrases regarding “Social Distancing” and “Flattening the Curve”. 

One interesting thing reading these phrases is that you can often recognize feelings, images, thoughts, or memories surrounding those very phrases, without me providing any further context whatsoever. With just a few words, we can all remember a singular season of life and where we were or who we spoke to. I remember exactly where I was for the first videos of 9/11, as well as when Washington went into lockdown.  

My favorite phrase is “Too Big To Fail” because it is accurate enough to cover all sorts of time periods and events. It’s a timeless truth that can apply to the railroads in the 1800s, the oil companies in the 1900s, the car companies after that, then the telephone companies in the 80s, then finally the banks in 2008. Even now, we could still apply it to the tech companies of 2020s, or CrowdStrike in July 2024. We could even apply it to the United States itself across many individual decades. We could also apply it to the Romans, the Dutch, the British, and many other empires in between. The underlying sentiment is that something becomes so critical, so dependent, that even if it fails, it lives on. Very few other aspects of life get to operate in this spectrum. When my peach tree gets too big, too heavy, too far out from its trunk, and I don’t trim and thin it, the roots give out and it naturally snaps and falls over. As it should, since it can’t support its own weight. Last week, a couple of famous arches in the Utah desert collapsed, and we, so far, have not spent a billion dollars to prop them back up to maintain an unsustainable structure. 

Eventually, some companies become a little too big, a little too important, and a little too dependent. The tides slowly turn from producing lots of value for the local economy, to gradually sucking in all the value in a larger and larger radius. When a company starts taking more value than it produces, people are left wondering where it all went, and is it still worth it to maintain it? The cure for this lose-lose situation is to notice these patterns early, get off the train early, and decide that these companies are Too Big To Follow. 

In late 2023, Seattle’s local organic chocolatier, Theo’s, was merged into the massive American Licorice Company. To “ensure the future of the company”, they closed their original Seattle manufacturing plant, laid off 60 of the people that got them there, and moved the operations out east. Meanwhile, our friendly rep who worked with us turned into an automated inbox, our chocolate shipped from the East coast instead of Seattle, and the bars arrived further and further after their production date. They published an eye-opening press release of how they became too big and had to cut ties to their roots. That’s how trees fail too.  

We will always operate “upside-down” and when something gets Too Big to Follow, we’ll go the other direction and look local, look small. Next week, we will begin offering Miodo Chocolate, from our own backyard of Camano Island. Our friend, Kevin Miodonski, has been making single-origin, small-batch, dark chocolate for over 20 years. Our new fresh bread starting this week from Water Tank Bakery follows a similar pattern, from a small local baker using all Northwest ingredients to get bread to your door right after its baked. Stayed tuned for more hyper-local producers of honey, pasta, meat, pizza dough, salad dressing, hummus, even dishware and nutrition classes! We’re gearing up for a full harvest season!  

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Cream on Top

Greetings and salutations from Tobin and Emily! We’re beyond grateful for the opportunity to serve all our local families with fresh local food, and we couldn’t be happier to be “back in the saddle” at Box of Good. 

Between the two of us, we’ve been raised in a long line of gardeners of veggies, herbs, and flowers, even berries and orchards. With all that food to harvest, it also brought with it a lot of canning, pickling, juicing, jamming, pressing, and preserving. I’ve had many late nights with the kitchen windows steamed up from the pressure pot and water bath, preserving that day’s harvest. [Text Wrapping Break] 

My grandparents moved to Camano Island from Kodiak Island, Alaska in 1977. My grandma, Vivian, was an avid gardener, so much so that when she was done managing her own garden in the morning, she would come over to our house and manage ours too! I would race to get my school done early so that I could go outside and join her.  

When my grandparents passed away 10 years ago, I was fortunate enough to acquire their home and keep it in the family. With that came a box of original pictures of them tilling and forming and shaping the barren grass slopes into neat aisles of raised beds. Then they planted a group of saplings for the start of an orchard. Those trees are now so large that I can barely keep up with trimming them! 

A few years before passing, Vivian planted a frost peach tree in the garden, and that has been my favorite and best-producing tree each year. Like clockwork, the first 3 weeks of August will be overflowing with peaches, and I know I need to be in Canning Gear or else I will lose out on that harvest. There are so many fun things to do with peaches, especially when they’re coming out of your ears.  

One of most satisfying things about the canning process is the “click” you hear when the jars start to cool off from the water bath. The lid pops into place. That’s how you know you got a good seal. However, if you have 10 jars on the counter, you can’t tell which one popped, specifically. However, a successfully sealed jar will cause all the peaches to rise to the top, leaving a few inches of peach syrup at the bottom. I think this is amazing! Naturally, the best bits always rise to the top! 

There are other things that rise this way, as well. Raw milk still has the stuff that conventional milk only dreams of: cream on top! In July, we started partnering with Justin and Katrina Seckel at Camano Creamy to deliver super fresh, local, raw milk. They got into dairy farming because of a similarly long and storied family lineage of dairy farmers paving the way for the next generations. I love seeing all the milk jars come and go with the thick layer of cream, naturally rising to the top. You can make your own butter or ranch dressing or clotted cream with raw milk, because the richest, creamiest part of milk always rises to the top. 

Rising is also the main feature of a yummy loaf of bread. Watching dough rise and rise, over and over, as you knead it into shape. As we prepare to start offering fresh local breads (teaser!), I’m again reminded that natural things rise, organically, without anyone telling it what to do. The best rises to the top. 

Of course, that makes one ponder the reverse: which things in life don’t obey this natural law? Do all the inorganic structures and complex systems and institutions that we humans create follow suit? Does the “cream of the crop” also naturally rise to the top of the systems we’re in control of? Or do we supress the cream from rising to the top of our own systems in order to squeeze out more and more of a quicker, cheaper solution? Perhaps we’d get better results in our diets, districts, or diplomats if we choose to play in arenas that allow nature to take it’s course more often, where there’s space to grow slowly in their own way, rather than dictate an unnaturally quick pace for a subpar harvest. 

When my grandparents moved to little ole Camano in ’77, they barely knew a soul here. But they found a modest home to move into and good community. My wife and I get to enjoy that home 50 years later. A home that was built by a close family relative of Justin and Katrina Seckel. Good things take time. 

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“Welcome” 

                                                              Week of August 1, 2022        

With some of you new here, we’d like to share with you a few things to help you get to know us better, and also give you some important information that relates to your delivery.   

Tristan and Joelle Klesick have been providing home delivered, organic, produce locally since 1998. During the local farming season, they grow vegetables in the beautiful Stillaguamish Valley at their home farm, Klesick Family Farm, as well as source fruit and vegetables from a variety of PNW farms. They see you as partners in the important task of being good stewards of the land, and keeping local farmland viable for the next generation! You will have an opportunity to hear from them, along with our helpful staff, in the weekly newsletter, via recipes, produce tips, and farm and health musings!   In order to meet all of our customers’ produce needs, we also source produce year-round from warmer regions. All of our produce is always certified organic and GMO-free! We also carry a large variety of organic and natural grocery items, including local dairy, meat, pies, kombucha, eggs, soaps, coffee, meal kits and more! We’d love for you to be able to eat healthily and locally, while creating more time for you to pursue the things you love to do!  

Be sure to check out our “How to store your produce” section on our website. We’d encourage you to use reusable produce storage bags or containers. We also have plastic and biodegradable bags available for purchase. Taking care to store items in their ideal setting is key to their longevity. Our aim is to send out only the highest quality produce. If you ever receive something upon delivery that is sub quality or you are missing an item, please let us know and we will credit your account or send out a replacement with your next delivery.  

When you’re done unboxing your produce, fold up your box and put it out the morning of your next delivery, and our driver will pick it up. We reuse our boxes to minimize waste.  

Be sure to follow us on social media, and read our emails for specials and seasonal offers. You may also like to check our website on Friday afternoons to get a sneak peek at what’s coming in next week’s boxes.  

If there are produce items you just don’t care for, or you have food allergies to certain items, no problem. Just call or email to make a substitution to your box, for only $1 extra. You can also add an item as a “never send” to your account; meaning if that item is ever on the menu for your box, we will “never send” it to you and will make a substitution for that item.   

Creating a custom box of items that you know you’ll love is also a great option. You can go to our website, click on “Shop” and simply select the items you wish to purchase and add them to your cart. You can also set that up as recurring, so you can have the items in your cart come automatically each week. The options are endless! You have total flexibility with when and how much produce you receive to best fit your family’s eating habits.  

Please note that from the “Deliveries” page in your account, you can add, edit, remove, or adjust your delivery up until 8am two days prior to your delivery. Please call or email for any late changes.  

If you still have questions, be sure to check out our FAQ’s page. If you’re just not sure how to best order for your family or would prefer to talk it over with us, we’d love to help you with that. Don’t hesitate to contact us for any reason through email, phone or the address listed below.  

Once again, thank you for choosing Box of Good for all of your produce and healthy grocery needs. Eat well!  

-Alaina Klesick, for the Box of Good Team  

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The Shift is on! 

This has certainly been one of the most challenging starts to a farm season we have encountered. We intentionally started later this year, apparently it wasn’t late enough. We are starting to see crops emerge and get established. Our initial waterlogged plantings have been weathering the onslaught of colder and wetter than expected weather with grace and are starting to respond, to at least, warmer rain! 

The only critter that is really happy is slugs! Thankfully the slugs have not been a problem for our crops, but Joelle’s flower beds have been their primary target. The slug issue is primarily a perennial plant’s nightmare. In the fields we work up large swaths of land that disrupts their habitat, but flowers and berries where they are in same place for multiple seasons tend to create nooks and crannies for them to hide. But I digress. 

From our inception, we have always been a conduit to healthy farmers for you. We consciously chose to work with our neighboring farms and not to grow everything on our farm. Being vertically integrated has its advantages but also its challenges. We run a modified vertically integrated business, with a farm and our home delivery distribution business, but we are primarily a home delivery company.  

I do scratch my itch to farm by growing lettuce, cucumbers, onions, squash, beets and a few other crops for your family. But our primary focus is on being that conduit of good food from farmers who grow organically and deliver their produce to you. 

Every week we talk with our network of local farmers and our suppliers to build our weekly menus. Our focus is always on locally produced food first and then we branch outside our regions to supplement our offerings. We will never be a 100% locally grown company. Bananas, citrus and mangos are some of our most popular produce items, so we source them from organic farmers to add them to the Box of Good. 

With that said, our product shifts as the seasons shift and for the next few months till October-ish the Box of Good will become more local and our menus will be featuring many vegetables and fruit from our network of local farmers. And yes, while this farm season is off to a painfully (wet) slow start, we are seeing more and more local produce coming onboard, which means the shift to local is on! 

During this season we become not only your source for quality organically grown foods, we become your source for a lot more locally organically grown organic produce.  

Enjoy some of the healthiest and locally grown produce, 

Tristan 

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Local Farm Highlight

We are excited to be able to offer local blueberries from Hazel Blue Acres for the next few weeks. This week they are featured in some of the boxes as well as being sold as add-ons! You can purchase extra blueberries by the clamshell or by the 1/2 flat. Just email us or add them online via boxofgood.com. We love being able to support the local farms around us! 

A Quick Storage Tip for Your Blueberries!

Hold off on washing your blueberries until you are ready to eat them. If you wash them and then let them sit in the fridge they will get mushy fast! So be sure to put them in your fridge, unwashed and then wash them off with cold water before you enjoy! 

A Quick Storage Tip for Your Chard!

The chard in your box this week is right out of Klesick Family Farm’s field! Do not wash your chard until you are ready to use it. Store it in an airtight container or bag. When you are ready to use it, run it under cold water, but do not let it sit in the water, as that will result in the loss of water-soluble nutrients!

Meal Kits – Kindred Kitchens

We have worked with Kindred Kitchens to bring you four more meal kits! Our new meal kits are Chicken Enchiladas with Spicy Black Beans, Chicken and Mozzarella Ravioli with Alfredo Sauce, and two types of Spaghetti, one with Gruyere and Garlic Sausage and one with Apple Chicken Sausage. The meal kits come with four generous serving, easy to put together and work great for a busy day! My kiddo’s favorites are the Creamy Chicken Pesto and the Chicken Enchiladas. It always takes the edge off a busy day when we come home to a simple meal kit! You can add one on to your existing order or just order a meal kit by itself!

Issues With Your Order?

Just a reminder that if you happen to have any issues with the way your order was packed or delivered, we want to know! Please call 360-652-4663 or email us at [email protected]. Sammy, Kelsey, and I are more than happy to help resolve any issues. If you receive  an item that is poor quality sending us a quick pic of the product will help us with quality control. Of course, we also love all your kudos! We appreciate ALL feedback and we believe it makes us a better company!

If we can assist in making your ordering process easier, help you create a custom order, assist with substitutions, just let us know!

We are here to help!

-Alaina