Come on out to Klesick Family Farm this Saturday and join us for an old fashioned farm celebration!
Celebrate the season with us by enjoying a fun-filled day with live music, vintage market, wagon rides, pioneer play area, tug-o-war, balloon toss, gunny sack race, raffle prizes, farm walks, BBQ, espresso and produce stand – all set in the picturesque Stillaguamish River Valley.
We’ve recently added a cookbook to our line of offerings: The Kale Effect! Co-written by one of our own Klesick customers, Christina Bandaragoda, this delightful cookbook will have you dishing up your dark leafy greens in some of the tastiest recipes ever! Our article this week is an excerpt from the cookbook. Enjoy!
Every Thursday afternoon the Klesick Family Farm delivery truck pulls up to my house with my weekly Box of Good – a box full of fruits and vegetables that are good for my family, good for my local economy and good for the earth. Thursday has become my favorite day of the week, my sigh of relief, a moment in time when my hope in the future is regularly renewed.
How can a box of fruit and vegetables have this effect? The tangible benefits are obvious. The time I save shopping I now spend with my family. The money I used to spend on fuel driving to the store is now allocated to buying food. The intangible benefits are less obvious and depend on my perception, attitude and meaning I attribute to how these fruits and vegetables made their way to my kitchen. I trust my local businessman. Based on my experience, I know that the produce will be of good quality, fresh, and free from toxic or harmful chemicals. As my family struggles with various allergies and food intolerances, I place a high value on toxin-free food. Why add more unknowns to the chemical cocktail we encounter in our modern industrialized lifestyle?
I also consider the challenge of being introduced to new kinds of foods an intangible benefit. I know that if a vegetable I have never eaten before arrives in my box, I can find a delicious way to prepare it. I also believe that my Box of Good has the benefit of preserving open space.
Knowing that a portion of my grocery budget contributes to maintaining working farms in my county is valuable. I used to think of local farmers as guardians and stewards of our landscapes, soils and water. As each Thursday rolls around I become increasingly aware that it is us, the customers, who are guardians and stewards with each food purchase we make. Those with economic access to sustainably grown food should take this responsibility seriously.
Our buying habits determine the future of the farms in our surrounding communities as well as the health of our environment. The cultural perception that as a society we value nature, open space, clean air and water is an idea that has not been fully realized. This cloudy vision of a sustainable future can become a clear reality one grocery bill at a time.
Enjoy this Everyday Kale Salad from The Kale Effect Cookbook
Christina Bandaragoda
Christina is from Michigan, received her bachelors degree at Wheaton College, and later attended Utah State University where she received her masters and doctoral degrees in Civil Engineering. She now works as a hydrologist and environmental consultant.
When was the last time you went on a picnic? Now that Summer has officially started, why not enjoy it? Pack dinner, gather your friends and family, and head out on a lazy, sunny afternoon for a relaxed picnic.
Picnics are great for groups of all sizes. They feel romantic and intimate with your loved one, or fun and exciting with children. Even if you decide to go on a solo picnic with a good book you will end up feeling relaxed and re-energized.
If you're lucky enough to live in the Pacific NW, the options on where to go for a picnic are endless. If not, set up a blanket and plates in your own backyard!
Here's a few helpful tips from our friends at Table Talk by Rosanna:
– Plan a menu that's easy to pack. Think sandwiches, bags of cut up fruit and veggies, salads – simple no-muss, no-fuss foods that you enjoy.
– Don't forget the beverages! Try sparkling water with chopped fresh fruit or fresh lemonade for a change!
– Remember to pack the heaviest items at the bottom of your picnic basket – no one wants to eat a smashed sandwich!
– Keep one or two cold packs in your picnic basket to keep drinks and other chilled items cool.
– Don't forget the non-food essentials such as a good, heavy blanket (those with a waterproof bottom work best), flatware, napkins, plates, cups, and corkscrews. Fun items such as books, frisbees, horseshoes, playing cards, etc. And don't forget the sunglasses and SPF!
– Make sure to take trash bags – you don't want to leave a mess behind!
Have a great time!
Adapted from Table Talk by Rosanna.
Here is a great equation for national security: Let’s continue to convert over a million acres of farmland every year for habitat restoration or strip malls.
The conversions are great for a few landowners and the developers who profit from them, but what is in it for the rest of the community? For starters, eventually food production can now join oil as an imported control piece, a piece that is controlling us. Sure we have lots of land in this country, but most of it is going to the highest bidder and if crops don’t pay as well as something else, most farmland goes on the block and out of production.
Recently, the City of Arlington received an application to develop a piece of farmland at Island Crossing. Dwayne Lane’s Chevrolet has been fighting to move to this location before Congressman Rick Larsen was a congressman. At that time, the Growth Management Act was able to hold the line on preserving this prime agricultural land from going into development. Eventually, the City of Arlington was able to annex this noncontiguous piece of land and all of Island Crossing, and in the process doom agriculture and the ability of that land to feed the Puget Sound region.
The most valuable land we have in this country is our resource lands: timber, mining and farmland. These types of land provide the bedrock for our economy and our national security. We should do everything possible to ensure that these lands are converted as a last resort. I would contend that land closest to the cities is the most vulnerable land and also the most valuable. 75% of our dairies, fruit and vegetable farms are located near urban populations.
If we need more of anything in this country, it is more fruits and vegetables, not less. We need to expand fresh fruits and vegetables reach to the inner cities, hospitals and schools. We need to expand the reach of organically grown foods and foods grown without synthetic chemical fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides. We need to stop coddling mega food corporations, mega chemical corporations and mega farms, and change our national food policy to feed our people healthy nutrient-rich food.
I got an idea: Let’s make the quality of food a priority, not the size of a campaign contribution or the shareholder’s profits.
The farmland at Island Crossing is all but lost. Unfortunately, the loss of this piece will inevitably doom the land next to it and the land next to that and so on, until Arlington reaches from I-5 to downtown. Then all that beautiful productive farmland will look like the Kent Valley; all because Chevrolets sell better on cheap farmland at Island Crossing then at the better situated, commercially zoned and serviced, non-floodplain Smokey Point exit. Really?
Oh baby, has it ever been warm. Of course, the one year I decide to skip sweet corn (our other local farmers are growing this crop) the weather is perfect. There is some corn in the valley that was waist high by the fourth. Shoot, most farmers are ecstatic with knee high corn by the fourth. For us, the raspberries are on, the peas are on, summer squash is on, the cucumbers and peppers are on. The tomatoes are just turning, the potatoes are already the size of baseballs and soon we will be picking green beans.
I have been thinking to myself why am I so busy? The other day, I finally came inside at 11 p.m. and realized that I was as hungry as a bear waking up from a long winter’s nap—I had skipped dinner. But the real reason, I am so busy is because we are two to three weeks ahead in most crops. Having that rainy, sunny, rainy, sunny weather cycle has been good for almost everything.
I am a little nervous, though. Strange thing about weather in the NW, last year once it stopped raining at the end of July, it didn’t rain for another 80 days. Most crops appreciate some moisture. And because of the spring and early rains, most crops were able to catch up when the hot August nights rolled around. This year they are early, but will the rains come to carry them to harvest? I think it will work out. But in the end, I can’t change the weather, but I can work with it.
I just planted our last crop of green beans for September harvest and we are now in the process of mostly weeding and harvesting, as opposed to weeding and planting. I love this stage, when we begin to harvest. You get to see the fruit of your labor and, more importantly, you get to start paying off the fertilizer bill, fuel bill and the labor bill, and, hopefully, at the end of the season in November, there will be some $$bills left for the farmer ☺!
We also managed to get a few hundred bales of hay in the barn. Feels good to have some feed for the beef cows put up in case this great weather holds. When it comes to raising beef, I mostly focus on the grass. My goal is to manage the grass so that the cows don’t overgraze it. I want it to bounce back and get growing again. Rarely does a day go by that the cows are not moved to a fresh pasture. Yes, it is absolutely way more work for us to move our animals daily, but it is way better for the pasture to move the cows daily. And in a year like this…August grass will be a premium if we have another glorious summer with little or no rain till October.
I know, from 15 years of running this business, that many of you will soon be off to your favorite vacation spot; loading up the “station wagon,” piling in all those kiddos and heading to the mountains, rivers, beaches, etc.
Well, our team also knows that a few of you, after getting off the plane in Hawaii and settling into your condo, will slice up a beautiful ripe mango, take a juicy bite and then all of a sudden be gripped with panic. At that moment, you will realize that your box of good is about to be delivered to your home because you forgot to reschedule your deliveries! There is no need to fear, however, because we have a highly trained team to help you mitigate the potential disaster.
Here are our tried and true best strategies to enjoy that stress-free mango:
1. Order an extra box of fresh produce to take with you on your trip.
2. Login to your account online and change your delivery dates.
3. Call, e-mail or Facebook our office and we will make the changes for you.
4. Leave a note for your delivery driver.
5. Donate your box of good to a local food bank during your vacation!
Donating your box of good is a great way to enjoy your vacation (wink, wink). Really, your delivery will be used to help a local family in need eat a little healthier, it will also help local growers and, of course, KFF. Another option is to donate the value of your box to our “Healing through Nutrition” program, where we use your donations to match discounts for other KFF customers who are fighting cancer and heart disease. Please contact our office if you have any questions about these options.
Even if you are not going on vacation this summer, you can still partner with us by ordering a food bank box or donating to our Healing through Nutrition program.
Back to work on the farm,
Our family snuck away to the beach for three days last week and was it ever relaxing. Washington State is so geographically diverse that within three hours of Stanwood you can be in a desert, on a mountain top, kayaking in the San Juans or building sand castles at the coast.
As typical Washingtonians, who are undeterred by the elements, we got to experience getting sand blasted while we were playing at the beach. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and mostly warm. There is just something about the ocean—calming, yet powerful.
And because of its great power, you can hardly escape the thought of tsunamis. Tsunami evacuation signs are everywhere. I can only imagine all the tourists on those rural roads trying to escape. The last Tsunami was about 300 years ago and it did some damage to mostly a forested and uninhabited coastline. While we were visiting Moclips, I asked the museum curator, “How high do you have to be for protection from a tsunami?” His answer, “90 feet”—wow, most two-story house are 30 feet tall. Our farm is 14 feet above sea level. When a major earthquake hits off the coast of Washington again, like it did 300 years ago, Ocean Shores, Moclips, Hoquiam, Aberdeen, etc., will look eerily like Japan did in 2010.
We can’t live in fear of what might happen, but we can live in respect of what can happen. Simple things, like having rope ladders in the upstairs bedrooms and using them once in a while, just in case, will go a long ways to mitigating the “stuff” of life we can’t control.
Oh ya, this was supposed to be about tomatoes…
The day we left on our trip the greenhouse was under control, but when we returned those plants had gone rogue. I don’t know about your family, but around here it is more like tyranny of the urgent. And if it can wait, normally it will wait. If laundry is most pressing, it gets done before tomatoes get strung. But when we got back, it was obvious that the tomatoes required center stage. They are all suckered (a.k.a., “pruned”) and climbing twine now! Of course, I could have done that the week before, but the potatoes, sunflowers, and strawberries all had needs as well and were just a little more pressing. Got to go, the orchard is out of control.
When I arrived at my son Baron’s school today, he and his kindergarten buddies were wearing leis and flip-flops freshly decorated with googly eyes and were eating Jell-O the color of the Caribbean Sea. Their cubbies were newly cleaned, aside from the stray and long-emptied juice box and the scruffed markings of a sticker, as if its removal was done frantically. Tomorrow we take him to school one last time as a kindergartner. He and his classmates will sing us some songs, we’ll celebrate at a nearby park and then walk away heralding in our summer.
In preparation for these long, sun-filled days, we started our list of things we hope to accomplish during these next few months. There are books to read, stories to write and games to play. There’s also the return of his lemonade stand and the hope of a booming business. And then there are the activities that without their presence in the coming months, it just wouldn’t feel like summer.
I can’t wait to feel the dirt under my nails and crusted on my knees while tucked in between the tight rows of lush strawberries. When the warm air sweeps between the plants and carries up a sweet scent, that’s when I know it’s summer. Or when the kids are content to play in the frigid water from the hose for hours, pausing for a quick break to snap off a blueberry from our bushes or a crisp sugar snap pea with its tender tendrils wrapping around the pole tucked into the dirt, that’s when I know it’s summer.
In the kitchen, it’s summer when a salad of fresh sliced vegetables shimmies up to a grilled piece of fish or chicken. It’s when a bowl of freshly picked strawberries, blueberries or peaches bathing in cream is just about the best you’ve ever tasted. When pasta tossed simply with a heap of freshly chopped vegetables and a bit of soft goat cheese is about as complicated as dinner gets, that’s summer. Even better yet, is a crusty and craggy piece of bread slathered with butter or mayo with flecks of basil throughout and topped with a thickly sliced ruby red tomato sprinkled with salt and maybe a splash of extra virgin olive oil, if I’m feeling fancy.
These months beg for simplicity—days unplanned and toes wet and cold from having spent the afternoon chasing the waves. The food of this season confirms this ease by being naturally sweet, intensely flavorful and bountiful. It’s as if summer has already cooked for us. So let’s enjoy the long days and return the favor by eating simply and well.
by Ashley Rodriguez
food blogger
www.notwithoutsalt.com
Making sourdough bread is fun and with a little planning relatively little work. Last Friday, Joelle asked for dinner rolls. “Hmmm…,” I thought, “I haven’t made dinner rolls before, but all they are is miniature bread loaves—I can do this.” Of course, when the weather breaks in my favor, this hobby will have to go on the back burner ☺ !
What can an apple tell us about nutrition? Lots. Apples are an amazing source of so many good things that nutritionally benefit us. (We are just using apples as an example. The same could be said for oranges, kale, radishes, etc.) Have a look at this list of goodies in every apple. One medium apple with skin contains:
Protein 0.47 grams, Calories 95, and Dietary Fiber 4.4 grams.
Minerals: Potassium 195 mg, Calcium 11 mg, Phosphorus 20 mg, Magnesium 9 mg, Manganese 0.064 mg, Iron 0.22 mg, Sodium 2 mg, Copper 0.049 mg, Zinc 0.07 mg, also contains a trace amount of other minerals.
Vitamins: Vitamin A 98 IU, Vitamin B1 (thiamine) 0.031 mg, Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) 0.047 mg, Niacin 0.166
mg, Folate 5 mcg, Pantothenic Acid 0.111 mg, Vitamin B6 0.075 mg, Vitamin C 8.4 mg, Vitamin E 0.33 mg, Vitamin K 4 mcg, and contains some other vitamins in small amounts.
That reads more like a list from a multivitamin, except the apple didn’t have any added preservatives, food coloring or sugar.
What is even more amazing, is that our bodies are uniquely created to eat, process and put to good use all of the apple’s ingredients. Let’s take a look at the Vitamin C in an apple. Our list says that an apple has 8.4 mg of Vitamin C. The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for Vitamin C is 200 mg. Hmmm… The apple appears to have 25 times less Vitamin C than the RDA. Many people would contend that 200 mg is just enough Vitamin C to ward off scurvy and so they push for higher amounts, upwards of 1500 to 2000 mg per day.
It would appear that when we reduce the apple to its core (pun intended), one would have to eat a lot of apples to get to the recommended RDA. However, some research done at Cornell University on apples and Vitamin C discovered that 1) apples did have about 8.4 mg of Vitamin C, but 2) that the apple produced 1500 mg of Vitamin C-like benefits when eaten. This is incredible! Our bodies are able to magnify the 8.4 mg of Vitamin C and deliver 178 times more benefit. And that is only one nutrient. What about potassium or manganese or iron?
The same body that breathes on its own, circulates blood on its own, and heals cuts on its own, is probably more than capable to mix and match any combination of nutrients based on what the body needs at that moment.
One could start to imagine, that if our food supply was grown on healthy organically managed soils, that weren’t abused by chemical fertilization, herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, how much healthier our food supply would be. If our nation’s soil was rich in nutrients and the foods we eat were grown in that that type of soil, Americans would be among the healthiest people in the world.
Fortunately, in America, we still have the freedom to choose life-giving foods, rich in nutrients that will nourish us and sustain us. So the next time you think your body needs an immune booster, just reach for two apples and let your body decide how it wants to best use all the nutrients.
