Author: Tristan Klesick

Joelle and I have a rhythm to our cooking. I love to make food and then she loves to make it taste great! She could never work at Panera or IHOP, where the only ingredients seem to be sodium and sugar.  Joelle has a unique ability to discern what is missing, and how much to add or not. I, on the other hand, tend towards lots of veggies and texture and then leave the final pass to Joelle. 

Speaking of the “Pass,” I have been watching the Netflix show called The Chef’s Line. In this series, there are 4 home cooks who cook against a restaurant’s team of chefs.  Each series features a different culture, and the home cooks are either from that culture, or love to cook that cultures food. I don’t have a significant amount of time to watch shows, but these 22-minute episodes are a nice break to decompress and get inspired at the same time. 

I would never qualify as a home cook on this show, because I love to cook all the cultures from Indian, to Italian, to Vegan (smile), to Mexican. It sort of belies the fact that American cuisine is truly a melting pot of cultures and flavors and, well…there really isn’t any one thing that I gravitate towards. I just love to cook them all and eat it. 

I do gravitate towards simple cooking, and I usually make 6 to 9 loaves of sourdough bread a week. I recently added flour tortillas to my rotation (I hate all that plastic that comes with purchasing flour tortillas). I love to bake sourdough bread. It is an unsophisticated art, where the results vary, and the outcome is always devoured. Last night, I set out my starter and fed it. Then, at 5am, I mix 200 grams of starter with 1000 grams of water and 1200 grams of flour, mix all of them together, let it set for 30 minutes, add 24 grams of salt and mix again. 

Flour is where I do become a local-vore. At our farm we sell Cairnspring Flours, and I exclusively bake with all local flours from Skagit county. I want to see local flours with regional integrity and flavors make a comeback. Cairnspring Mills is the connection to incredible flavor, and locally sourced nutrition. 

But I digress. After shaping bread and heading off to a Volleyball match in Snohomish, I called ahead on our way home and asked Joelle to heat up the oven to 450 degrees so I could bake off a loaf. And, much to my surprise and delight, our evening fire had burned down to coals, and the upper bake oven was at 475 degrees. That is a perfect temperature to bake bread, so I slid another loaf into the fireplace oven and will be taking them out at about the time I finish this newsletter, 45 minutes later. 

Tonight’s bread will truly embody the definition of hearth baked bread! And, as a side benefit, since all the kiddos are off to bed, the bread has a chance to cool down and last longer than 25 minutes before it is devoured! Okay, as much as I want the bread to last a little longer, it is satisfying when your family is eagerly waiting for several slices of fresh, out of the oven, baked bread!  

Time to go! The timer is beeping! 

-Tristan

I should have known that as soon as I mention the word “Flood” last week in my newsletter, we would get a little teaser of what might happen. As of writing this newsletter, the forecasted rain event will cause the rivers to elevate, but not reach flood stage. And to NOAA and the National Weather Service’s credit they have been fairly accurate on their projections.

If it does flood, we will be updating our Instagram and Facebook pages as it unfolds. For me, boring is beautiful! My kids, on the other hand, love it when it floods! Something about no school and watching the river come over the banks. Mind you, we live in a part of the valley where the water rises slowly and, thankfully for us, our home is on a higher piece of ground. 

Let’s switch topics!

This week we are featuring a few items from 3 of my close farming friends. Anne at Blue Heron Farms in Concrete is supplying mustard greens. These will be a mustard mix that will be excellent in soup or stir fry. The beautiful thing about greens is, if you love them, you can’t get enough, and if they aren’t your favorite, adding them to soup helps them disappear, literally, because greens cook down quite a bit. 

We are also buying a Carrots and Green cabbage from Ralph’s Greenhouse. I have been working with Ralph’s Greenhouse for two decades. All of their produce is incredible, and we love to share their bounty with you.

The other farmer isn’t so local, but I have been buying Benzler grapes for just as long as I have been in business. Thomas and his family have been farming for 3 generations, and the fourth is on their way. It is interesting, when you talk with multigenerational farmers, how there is a deep sense of a need to pass on the farm. This week we will be featuring their red grapes and soon it will be their Navel oranges. 

Farming is about feeding people and caring for the land. I have been blessed for the better part of 25 years to be able to grow food, but also connect you to the bounty of others who are just as committed to healthy food as I am!

I am really excited to try the cabbage recipe this week. Roasted veggies are my favorite!

-Tristan

In August of 2003, Joelle and I purchased our current farm in all its glory. Never mind the buildings (where the original barn was lying flat in a heap of timber), or the funky carport attached to the front of a once beautiful farmhouse, or the machine shop/equipment storage barn that was, well, still “standing” for now! 

We had been shopping for a farm for 5 years. We looked at everything from Montesano, to Goldendale, to Rockport, to Darrington, to Tonasket. The worst part was that we knew we wanted to farm; we just didn’t know what kind of farm we wanted to be. 

When you don’t know what kind of farm you want to be, just about any farm will work. Thankfully for us, we stumbled across this previously described gem and got to work restoring “her” to her former glory. What really sold us on this place was not the house, but the equipment shed and the soil.  

About the time we discovered this farm, we had finally settled on growing veggies, and we were now looking for farms with good soil. If you are going to buy a farm and raise vegetables of commercial significance you will need rich deep alluvial soils. That means you are going to be living, or at least farming, in the flood plains. That is where we ended up. About as close as you can get to the mouth of the Stillaguamish river, and a whopping 14 feet above sea level. And every one of those 14 feet matters down here.  

Allow me to close this loop. In October 2003, this valley got blindsided by a rainstorm that just came sheeting off the hills and flooded everything. We were new and hadn’t really been properly introduced to the Stillaguamish River, but during that flood we knew who the boss was going forward. From 2003 to 2011 we experienced several significant floods, and not much since then. 

I know that one day, and possibly this year, the Stillaguamish will remind us who “owns” the valley bottoms. I am thankful, though, that the Stillaguamish River shares this beautiful soil with us farmers rather freely. 

In 2003, it had also been a few years since there had been a meaningful reminder of flooding in the valley, and that October flood caught many farmers off guard. By the time they knew it was going to flood, it was too late. Millions of dollars of corn and potatoes went unharvested in our valley. Literally, months of planning and hard work was left to rot.  

Which is why, 16 years later when the weather switched in early September to a colder and wetter pattern, every farmer was pushing their equipment and working around the clock to make sure that the Stillaguamish wouldn’t lay claim to any unharvested crops. For the most part the valley is ready in case it floods. Down here it is not if, but when it will flood. At least the crops are out!  

-Tristan

Things were growing right along. The summer was a tad colder than desired, but all in all there was enough sunshine and good weather, with a few timely showers, to keep most veggies and fruit crops content. Everything was pretty happy, except for the tomatoes.  

I mean, they were happy enough, but not really happy. Ok, let’s be real, this just wasn’t a tomato year. Yes, we produced some amazing tomatoes, and a decent quantity, but this wasn’t the year to grow all your tomatoes outside, which is exactly what chose to do. 

Hindsight is always 20/20. For the previous 2 growing seasons, the summers were hot and dry, and when you add a little irrigation to hot and dry, you get TOMATOES. When it comes to climate change, we believe that the climate is changing, and the NW is going to be one of the winners, especially when it comes to growing tomatoes on the western side of this state. 

Our decision to grow all of our tomatoes outside was the right one, in light of the warming trend, but this last season was more normal in its presentation, and maybe we should have planted the greenhouses too. If you are thinking, “why not just plant the greenhouses every year?” The short answer is, growing tomatoes outside is more enjoyable for me. But next year, I will probably grow inside and outside. 

We have this new patch of cucumbers that is coming into production right now and, if this was last year, those cukes would be producing like crazy. However, this early start to fall has them a little confused. It is also a tad cold for them, and with the shortening day length, those beautiful plants are probably going to be calling it quits here pretty soon. John and I are talking about covering them with a blanket called Reemay. It will protect the plants from a light frost and extend their season.  

Tree Fruit 

We have been featuring our Conference pears in the boxes lately. I love pears. I could eat a pear every day, especially a firm pear. I like them firm and juicy, and these Conference pears are perfect right now. Our Conference pears are a harvested over a two-week window, and then they’re gone. Thankfully, the Bosc and Comice pears are close on their heels. We should have Klesick pears for the next few weeks, then a gap, and then Bosc and a few Comice pears in early October.  

Lest I forget, look for the first winter squash in a few weeks. I am thinking I will lead with the Delicata, then Carnival, pie pumpkins, and Acorn for Thanksgiving. Look for Delicata to arrive in two weeks.  

The farm recap respectively submitted! 

-Tristan

We grow two types of cucumbers here at the farm. We grow an old and trusted standby called Marketmore, and a newer up and comer called Sliver Slicer. We interchangeably mix and or match them as they come out of the field and find their way into your boxes of good.

Cucumbers are sneaky little plants. One day you think you have harvested all the ones that are ready to go, and the next day you come back and there is another 200 lbs. How did that happen?!!?!!!?!!

The farm season is especially challenging for the Klesick team. You may have noticed that the aforementioned cucumbers have been a staple for the last several weeks, as have the green beans. It is really hard for smaller farms like us to get the harvest quantities right. The quality is easy, but trying to figure out how many pounds of cucumbers are going to come off a week in advance is pretty tough!

With lettuce it is easier, just count them. Lettuce harvest does get tricky because they can ripen at different times and can also look ready when they are not.

But I think green beans are the trickiest of all. This year we switched back to another old and trusted standby in the green bean world, called Jade. I think they are a little happier planted in Mid-Summer, but the early May plantings did just fine. When you talk about Jade in the midst of farmers who have grown it for 30 or 40 years, their eyes light up and their voices get noticeably quieter. There is a reverence when it comes to Jade that is hard earned, and deservedly so. They are absolutely beautiful and tasty green beans.

Even within vegetable classes, some varieties are happier planted earlier, and some later. When it comes to Jade, it seems to work well as an all-season winner! I actually try to plan for a “gap” on cucumbers and green beans, but this year the harvest rolled from one planting to another to another and the harvest kept coming. Now I am not complaining, but we try to have variety in the box of good menus and not put an item in every week.

This year, the green beans and cucumbers have been prolific, and I must say… so, so, so fresh and delicious! We are literally picking one day and delivering the next day. For us, it is so rewarding that we can pick it, deliver it, and you can be eating cucumbers or green beans within a day.

That is best kind of fast food!

-Tristan

Many of you are getting your kids ready for back to school and thinking about school clothes, supplies, and LUNCHES!  I’d like to take a few minutes to share some ideas that have made our school lunches healthy, simple, and environmentally friendly!  

First of all, I like to use reusable storage containers.  We go the whole year without throwing out a single “sandwich bag.”  Ziploc makes a divided container that is spill proof and pretty durable.  Ours have lasted the whole year long.  If you’d rather steer clear of plastic, there are similar divided containers made of stainless steel.  We purchase cloth lunch bags that fit our containers perfectly, then add a freezer pack to keep things cold.  When using the divided containers, sometimes the items fit better with the addition of a large size silicone muffin cup.  This adds another “section” to the container.  

One thing I like about the containers is that it helps me think through what to send in their lunches.  One section we put in veggies, one section fruit, one section holds the protein, and the smallest section might have a healthy cracker, chip, or small homemade treat.

Most importantly, make sure you have a good supply of healthy foods that your kids will eat!  When ordering your weekly produce, remember that you can order “add-on” items to guarantee that you will have the special items that your kids like most.  For vegetables, I always have cucumbers, carrots, and peppers on hand, because I know my kids will eat these.  If available, my kids also enjoy raw sugar snap peas, green beans, and some even love shredded cabbage or raw cauliflower. 

Choosing fruit is easy! They all like cut apples and oranges!  Melons, grapes, kiwi, nectarines, pears, and berries all make a great addition to school or work lunches.  

For protein, sometimes we’ll send a half sandwich with organic cheese and veggies on homemade sourdough bread.  But there are so many other choices besides sandwiches.  We might send yogurt with chopped fruit and homemade granola, or a nut/seed/dried fruit mix, or a whole grain, honey-sweetened, zucchini or carrot muffin. One of my kids loves it when I send nut butter in one of the compartments along with chopped carrots, celery, and apples for dipping.  Some of my kids enjoy creating their own salad wraps, and I send the ingredients in the separate compartments.  Don’t forget you can send things like a quinoa salad or even dinner leftovers in a reusable soup thermos.  

We stay away from pre-packaged individual serving products.  With the divided containers there’s just no need, and the environmental impact with these items is just too high! 

We’re happy to bring you quality lunch supplies for your kids!  Take a few minutes to think through how we can best help you meet your nutrition goals for your kids this year, while simplifying the process!  

-Joelle

When I was a kid, the strawberry bus would come by every June down to South Everett. The bus would pick up middle schoolers and high schoolers and haul them off to Marysville or Mount Vernon. As the season went on, the same bus would pick up mostly the same the kids and haul them to Mount Vernon, and they would harvest cucumbers.

Of course, machinery and/or a crew of professional seasonal migrant pickers eventually replaced kids at those jobs. I don’t remember those buses coming much after 1980 or so. Whatever caused the shift, the shift was here to stay. Many of those crops (cucumbers, berries, sweet corn) are not a major part of the acreage being farmed today.

Agriculture is not much different than other businesses. We have to deal with market changes, labor shortages, rising inputs, mechanical and technology issues. We are really not so different when it comes to the business climate. There are three areas where Agriculture diverges from many other businesses, and that is the issue of habitat, critical areas, and natural resources.

Unlike a store front, our business model is dependent upon having land to farm, and the best farmland in Snohomish County was in Marysville. The next best soils, although “heavier,” were in the valley bottoms from Monroe to Snohomish, and Arlington to Stanwood. The only farmland left in Marysville is what is north of town, and it is getting wetter by the year as the hillsides fill with houses, the water sheds down the mass of asphalt, and zero lot line houses stack up like cords of wood.

Why did we lose all that prime farmland in Marysville? We lost it because we don’t care about the long-term future of feeding people. Essentially because, Marysville was flat, didn’t flood, and relatively close to Boeing. 

Today, Snohomish County still has lots of farmland, but it is in the valley bottoms where flooding makes building houses harder (not impossible). There is another pressure facing Agriculture today, besides poorly planned communities that shed their water to next parcel below them and eventually into the valleys. The pressure today comes from the Natural Resources/Restoration community. This is a well-funded group, mostly by taxpayers, who work to restore the valleys to their pre-European functions for wildlife or, more specifically, Chinook salmon.

I am all in favor of clean water and healthy functioning watersheds. I have spent 21 years of my working career farming with nature. I have tallied many a month of 40 hours or more volunteering on salmon and farming boards – working on solutions for farms and fish. It is frustrating that almost every person working on the salmon issue is paid by a Salmon Grant to be at those meetings, and all those meetings are during the day. How many working people have time to participate in government???

So why do I continue to stay at the table and be engaged? Because I believe that we can have both a vibrant farming community, and healthy ecosystems. As a local community, we are going to have to decide that Farming and habitat/Chinook Salmon can coexist. The natural resource community may not be paving over the valleys like the Development community was encouraged to do in Marysville, but the outcome will be the same without a shift in public policy. No farmland, no farmers and, quite possibly, no Chinook either.  

I came across a quote from W. Clement Stone. He is attributed to have said, “Little hinges swing big doors.” Let that sink in for a moment. “Little hinges swing big doors.” What size hinge is necessary to swing the doors in our lives that are blocking progress? One needs the appropriate size hinge, the appropriate number of hinges, and the appropriate placement of hinges to swing any door. Small hinges can swing large doors. 

I am no hinge expert, but this is what I do know. Hinges facilitate the movement of the door. A door, by definition, must be able to open, or it would be a wall. Ironically enough, a door is also a wall, but a wall is not a door.

Alright Tristan where are you going? Thanks for asking. When we moved to our farm and farmhouse there were two front doors kitty corner to each other on the same porch (still somewhat of a head scratcher to me???). One of those doors was a door with a window, much akin to a back-porch door. The other door was this really ornate, cool, solid wood door on the adjoining wall. Both had doorknobs and both looked like doors, duh! They were both doors.

The really cool old door didn’t work, and the half-glass back-porch door did work. What couldn’t be discerned from the outside is that at some point in this farmhouse’s 127-year history, someone took off the hinges of that old door, nailed it to the wall, and then paneled over it on the inside. True story 🙂

Sometimes, when it comes to making life changes, we try the wrong door. It might even be the coolest door, or even what appears to be the correct front door, but if that door has no hinges, it is not going to open. When you locate the door with hinges, you have a chance to pass through it, and it will open rather effortlessly. This can either be a good thing or not, but for the most part, if you can open a door, it is at a minimum meant to be opened. If not, it would be locked, or in the case of our old farmhouse, nailed shut and paneled over on the inside.

When it comes to eating healthy, we complicate it. Eating healthy is not complicated, we are! The door to eating healthy is relatively well-oiled and placed in the open where you would expect a door to be. The door to fresh fruits and vegetables, the one door that moves the needle on health and longevity like none other, isn’t nailed shut, hidden, or hard to find. But sadly, for some reason, most Americans rarely open it up and walk through it.

Of course, your family opens the door to health every time a Box of Good arrives, ensuring fresh organically grown fruits and veggies are available for you and your family to eat healthy. Thank you for that. 

As a side note, we swapped out that back-porch door with the really cool ornate wood door, then filled the open space with a window. 

Enjoy,  

-Tristan

I’m hoping for more summer, but last week had that Fall feel to it. When I came downstairs, the heater had turned on. I thought to myself: hmm, that is strange. To the thermostat’s credit, it was chilly. Of course, a few cold mornings in early August don’t predict the future, but before we know it, it will be September. And you know what that means, SOCCER season.  

I coach my son’s team, and I already have those boys practicing. I am a coach that believes in practicing with the ball all the time, and we practice at game speed for most of the practice. But I digress. Fall will be here soon enough, but for now there is still lots of work to be done on the farm. 

If I had to sum up the farm season, it was mostly wins. Things were a little slower growing and quality has been really good. Our early apples have that sweet, tart flavor that is reminiscent of another era. The Pristine is a little later this year, even with the drier weather, but it is fun to have an early apple. The trees we grafted from Honeycrisp to Liberty apples have been growing really well, and in 2021 we will have a healthy crop of Liberties. I absolutely love this apple, but our next apple will be the Gravenstein, followed by the Chehalis.  

Soon there will be Conference and Stark Crimson pears, followed by the Bosc pears. Pears are my favorite crop. I could eat a pear every day. You might be wondering how I chose my varieties. I grow what I like to eat, and I grow what grows well on our farm. Some of this is trial and error. You do your research and plant the crop, and then you try to farm them. Sometimes an experiment will take 3-5 years before you can accurately judge whether or not the crop or tree is a good fit for your microclimate or farming style. We have grafted all of our Comice pear trees to Conference Pears, and that was a good decision. The Conference pear tree is much happier on our farm and tastes really good. Pears are still a month away though.  

Switching back to veggies. Cucumbers are coming on, tomatoes are coming on, green beans have been strong with our third planting a few weeks away. This week we are harvesting beets. Beets are one of my favorites. Our French relatives serve, boiled, peeled, and cubed beets with grated carrots and green beans as the first course. I love that dish; I could eat it a few times a week with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Try it this week, you can put all of it on a bed of lettuce or spinach, too. YUM! 

Thank you for eating your fruit and veggies, it is the easiest way to obtain optimal health. 

Cheers,

-Tristan

Commerce has always been the heartbeat of every economy. Let’s face it, if a community has no way, or severely limited ways, to create products or get them to a market, that community is going to be smaller, and possibly not even exist. 

The idea of local means something different to different people. For some it might mean buying Chinese products from a local shopkeeper, or a large one like Walmart???? For others it might be buying only locally made items from nonlocal materials. Others might think that local means buying only items from local producers who use local items, but even the producer might use a plastic or hemp or some other material from somewhere else to package the item. Are we counting the energy from dams or natural gas or big oil in the production of our local items? 

The idea of local is a difficult thing to pin down. Where do we draw the line? American only? Washington only? America and Mexico only? What about customer service, quality, and local jobs? Are those as equally important or more than where the item is produced? Is the size of the company important? Is there anything inherently better about Costco because it is a local company or Trader Joes because it is not? 

One of the most local things is food, but even that is complicated. Local food is almost always raised by local farmers using Diesel to power their tractors and get their products to market. What about the seed and fertilizers? They mostly come from other places too.  

Klesick farms is a local company and a local farm, but we also work with other local farmers and producers from Skagit or Washington, other states, and even countries. We pride ourselves on being as local as locally possible, and also having a high standard for quality and customer service. Quality, not only in the actual produce we deliver, but the internal quality of the organically grown produce we deliver. That internal quality is the real prize, the fact that it’s beautiful is a plus. 

What we are after is the quality that feeds your body, that fuels your body, mind, and soul to be as healthy as you can possibly be for as long as possible. What we eat is important, and I like to think that where it comes from has a little to do with it as well. For the last 21 years, Klesick’s has never deviated from that mission, message, or passion. Your health is important, and growing or sourcing foods that are healthy, vibrant, and nourishing is embedded deep in our DNA.  

Your health matters to this local farm and company! 

-Tristan