Category: Newsletters

This morning God’s glory shone bright! The brilliant winter sunrise lit up the sky, while glistening through the frost that settled from the evening before. Given the usual months of gray here in Washington, we should take every moment we can to soak up the sun. Sunlight gives us vitamin D, improves our mood, gives us higher quality sleep, gives us stronger bones, and lowers blood pressure! The sun is so important to our physical and mental well-being! When the sun shines, make the healthy choice to take it in!

It is interesting how many of the benefits of sunshine also come to us in fruits and vegetables. The sun’s benefits are captured in the growing process and released to us when we eat and process them. Fruits and vegetables are packed full of the things our bodies need to fight disease and maintain health.

One of the simplest things we can do for our physical and mental health, besides taking in the sun, is to eat more organic fruit and veggies. There is not a better time to be eating the rainbow than during the NW winter months, and especially with the added stressors of this year. Eating a rainbow of colorful fruits and vegetables every day will help you get the full range of health benefits they have to offer!

Red is a strong color of life which can be symbolic of our heart and arteries. Red fruits and veggies serve as a major source for heart health and can help prevent heart disease. 

Orange as a color represents an abundance of strength and life, and foods with this color can help you feel the same way! Orange fruits and veggies are stock full of vitamin C, another strong antioxidant which boosts the immune system and also protects against cardiovascular disease.

Yellow is another bright color that represents happiness, joy, and health. Yellow fruits and veggies contain carotenoids and bioflavonoids, water-soluble plant pigments that function as antioxidants.

Green represents nature, the environment, and wellness! Green fruits and veggies are packed with fiber and beta-carotene. Green fruits and veggies also contain phytochemicals such as lutein and indoles which help lower your risk of certain cancers, improve eye health, and promote healthy bones.

Blue and purple foods contain, flavonoids, and vitamins D & K. They help promote bone health, can help lower the risk of certain cancers, improve memory, and increase urinary-tract health. 

When you eat a healthy variety of organic fruit and vegetables you not only fill your body with what it needs to stay strong, you feel good about the choices you are making to take care of yourself, improving mental health. So, take in as much sunshine as you can and eat more fruits and vegetables! Doing these two things are two of the easiest ways to serve your whole self: mind, body, and spirit. 

Bringing the sunshine,

Tristan and Joelle

*Consider gifting a Box of Good or one of our beautiful gift baskets, to a friend or loved one. It will nourish their body and brighten their day!  

It just keeps getting increasingly complicated to plan birthdays, weddings, and holiday gatherings. All I know for sure is that COVID is real, it is still rearing its ugly head and we have had to learn to hold onto our plans lightly. 

With Thanksgiving a week away, we are still pivoting at Klesick’s to help our Box of Good community celebrate and have some sense of normalcy during this season. For 23 years we have offered our traditional Holiday Thanksgiving box, a big box of good with all the fixings to feed a small army. And while we are seeing a lot of Holiday box orders, many of you have been asking for smaller portions this year with many of our holiday gatherings being curtailed.  

We have a solution consider ordering “sides” as a good alternative to the Holiday box. You can add-on Brussels Sprouts to potatoes to yams to cranberries to mushrooms or anything else that strikes your fancy.  Adding your favorite sides is a great way to enjoy your Thanksgiving meal. Just log in to your account or contact the office and we will help you order for your meal needs.  

I remember one really busy year with family events, that our family served croissant sandwiches and all the sides for Thanksgiving, still felt like Thanksgiving, even though we didn’t serve turkey as the centerpiece. 

As I write this newsletter, I think that this might be the year of “create and adapt.” With all the moving pieces and challenges we have all had to endure these past 8 months, being creative and adapting has been the more the norm than usual. And for the near future let’s continue to create and adapt and find ways to serve in our communities. 

We have experienced your tangible generosity through your “tips” for our Klesick’s Team and through your continued giving to local food banks. We have delivered over 1500 boxes of good quality produce that you have sponsored. This is in addition to all the number 2 produce that gets sent every week to local food banks. Because of your purchases, many local food banks are handing out nutritious, quality organic produce to our neighbors in need every week of the year, and even more during Thanksgiving. 

If you would like to add a holiday donation box or make a cash donation for this year’s Thanksgiving, call our office, or log in to your account and add it there. We send out tax deductible donation receipts in January, too. 

This connection we have fostered with the food bank community for over 23 years is one of the many reasons we refer to our home delivery service as a “box of good”. 

Check your emails or visit our website to order a food bank box or add on some delicious “sides” for your Thanksgiving meal. 

-Tristan 

This might be the craziest season as food company and a farm. We are gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday and please pay attention to your inboxes for information with regards to the holiday menus and delivery dates. 

During the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving we will be planning for your orders. For the last 23 years we have been providing a holiday box with all the traditional fixings and at the same time still offering our regular boxes and add-ons. We are here to help you plan and prepare for your Thanksgiving.

The other change is EVERYONE is going to get their deliveries before Thanksgiving, and it is going to be a little nutty as we cram 5 delivery days into 3. And PLANNING makes it all work. Which is why I mentioned checking your inboxes. We are sending out written and email order sheets and the sooner we get them back the smoother the Thanksgiving Holiday will be. 

We also have a Food Bank Holiday box that we deliver to several area food banks the week before Thanksgiving. If you would like to help us feed the less fortunate this holiday season, you can purchase a box or 10 ? and we will make sure the food gets delivered to the local food banks. Thank you in advance for your giving, it truly embodies what a “box of good” means!

Please get your order forms in early by emailing a picture, going online, calling us, returning it with your next delivery.  

Walnuts

Our 2020 walnut crop is drying in the greenhouse. We don’t have commercial dryers, so we use our greenhouses to dry them. This changes the flavor and texture than store bought walnuts. They taste “walnutty”, but have a softer texture to the bite. I did dry some in our home dehydrator. They tasted great, but I guess after 17 years of slow drying in them in our greenhouses, I prefer them that taste. You can check out the Walnut harvest and drying processes on FB or IG.

As a farmer and produce person, nothing is more rewarding than growing, sourcing and delivering nutritious and flavorful food – I love that!

Bon Appetit,

-Tristan

This might be the craziest season as food company and a farm. We are gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday and please pay attention to your inboxes for information with regards to the holiday menus and delivery dates. 

During the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving we will be planning for your orders. For the last 23 years we have been providing a holiday box with all the traditional fixings and at the same time still offering our regular boxes and add-ons. We are here to help you plan and prepare for your Thanksgiving.

The other change is EVERYONE is going to get their deliveries before Thanksgiving and it is going to be a little nutty as we cram 5 delivery days into 3. And PLANNING makes it all work. Which is why I mentioned checking your inboxes. We are sending out written and email order sheets and the sooner we get them back the smoother the Thanksgiving Holiday will be. 

We also have a Food Bank Holiday box that we deliver to several area food banks the week before Thanksgiving. If you would like to help us feed the less fortunate this holiday season, you can purchase a box or 10 ? and we will make sure the food gets delivered to the local food banks. Thank you in advance for your giving, it truly embodies what a “box of good” means!

On the farm, we are busy reconfiguring our layout to be more efficient and grow more vegetables next year. We, also, just landed our Garlic seed for next year and will be busy getting it planted. We worked up the garlic beds a few weeks ago, but with COVID everything seems to be a little later shipping. But it is here, and the weather is favorable, so we are counting are blessings and being diligent!

We have also managed to sell through all of our winter squash for the season. Next year we will plant a little more and have it available through the Holidays. The same is true for our 2020 garlic, we just didn’t plant enough, and I am a little sad about that. Those are two of my favorite crops. Thankfully, we have deep relationships with other farms and can access their supply. 

We are big roasted veggie fans at our home and serve them 2 or 3 times a week. Last week, I cut up the sweet potatoes, yams, yellow potatoes and a Delicata and Butternut squash. We didn’t season the squash, just halved it, cooked it at 425 cut side down for 45 minutes. It was so good, bursting with flavor. Normally we season our roasted veggies with garlic powder, salt and pepper with some olive oil, but that squash, Oh My Goodness, was heavenly.

As a farmer and produce person, nothing is more rewarding than growing, sourcing and delivering nutritious and flavorful food – I love that!

Bon Appetit,

-Tristan Klesick

It was a light, mild frost reminding us that winter is coming. I love all the seasons, but the last and first frost are like bookmarks on a season.  Peaceful, restful, a changing of the guard as the weather changes so does the farm, its rhythm, its cadence, its pace all foretell a shift is coming.

Rarely, am I ever caught off guard by an early or late frost, the severity of the frost can catch me off guard, but rarely a frost. Now a thunder shower, unlike a frost, can and often does catch me by surprise, especially since our family hasn’t grown hay for several years. Nothing dials in your weather acumen like hay farming! Those farmers could work for KOMO as weather people!

Clear, beautiful skies this time of year are a telltale sign that the first frost is coming. Some years we won’t have a frost until mid-November, mostly because of those gray, drizzly overcast Falls that insulate us from extreme weather changes. Still a mid to late October frost is about normal. 

This year John has been able to harvest all the squash before the frost and the farm is mostly put to bed. We are waiting for the garlic seed to arrive and are hopeful for a few more days to plant before it gets any wetter. I remember a few years ago, it rained all October, we just mudded in the garlic! It grew okay, but it was less than desirable planting conditions. Fingers crossed we won’t have that issue. Either way the Garlic is getting planted! 

We are also adding Daffodil’s to our farm. Just a few thousand feet to try them out. Flowers are fun to grow, but we are not set up to deliver bouquets. But Daffodils are different, they can be shipped to you just before they open. Our youngest daughter Joanna (and Joelle) love flowers, and I am thinking that this can be her crop. The daffodils are planted, unlike the garlic. 

Did you know that Daffodil bulbs are planted 6 inches deep and garlic bulbs are planted 1 inch deep, just barely covering the “hat” or top of the garlic? If I had not studied up, I would have planted them just like garlic. 

So next spring look for some Daffodils to show up you can add them to your order. It is fun to grow different crops and adding flowers will be fun.

-Tristan Klesick

I don’t know if it’s because I am a Pacific Northwest grown girl or what, but each year when autumn decides to roll around, I feel like I come alive. Maybe roll around isn’t the right word though – autumn usually appears very fast out of nowhere! And she’s so beautiful, because despite the fact that leaves are dying, plants are being pruned, and there is an all-around passing away, the world feels so fresh and vibrant. It reminds me to look at what habits of mine are not serving me well. That way I can shake them off and try something new. Autumn reminds us that even amidst death, there is also hope and color as room is made for new life.  

I have found that because of covid, and life’s struggles in general, many people right now are experiencing that sense of death, or loss – be it a season of life, a career, or a relationship. There are people in our communities and lives who could use a friend. And just maybe, we are the one equipped to bless and reach out to them! I would encourage you, sage that I am (haha, just kidding), to take a look around you. There might be someone in a season of change who you can share some of that hope and life with.

Speaking of changing seasons, let’s all give another hip hooray for it being squash season. Am I right? Squash is exciting to me for two reasons: it’s delicious and smooth, and it’s easy to cook! Literally. Just cut it in half, brush some butter on that baby and sprinkle it with salt. Then roast it at 425 degrees until it’s golden brown, and BAM. Pure golden goodness. This week, our menu is featuring petite butternut squash from the farm, thanks to Tristan and John’s hard work growing them. Alaina was just cooking one the other day (so yummy). She commented that the butternut squash tasted like a cooked nut, and I thought, “Well, it’s probably called butternut for a good reason, then!”. Kinda funny when you think about it – it’s not often a food is named for how it tastes.

As you probably know, butternut squash is super versatile to cook with. Being a more starchy vegetable option, this makes it very filling to eat. It’s also high in some key nutrients like vitamin B and C, potassium, and beta carotene. Plus, they store for quite some time if kept in a cool, ventilated place. In fact, that’s why our winter squash assortment is such a good deal! It’s 35 lbs. of squash that you can just keep in your garage as you use them over time, all delicious varieties. Check it out on our website! And lastly, as always, know that we so appreciate each and every one of you.

We hope you have a joyful and blessed week!

-Joanna Pruiett

We are putting our celery in some of the boxes of good this week. Celery is one of the most demanding crops I have ever grown. Like any crop, it is incredibly rewarding when it is time to harvest. So many factors come into play from seed to harvest that are outside a farmer’s control, not dissimilar to parenting ?. 

This celery crop has sweetened up nicely and is much darker in color than its California cousins. This crop of celery took its sweet time and is maturing in stages, which is why is it only in certain boxes of good this week. You can always add celery to your regular order as an add on. Our celery will be available for the next few weeks.

Add on sales are a great way to customize your box of good. Roughly 600 families a week are adding on to their orders and we love that. Our system is designed to allow you to shop the way that best fits your family and to have access to the highest quality fruit, vegetables and groceries. Many of you like to set your order and go and other like to log in and buy every week and a whole bunch of you order the box of good that best fits your family and then add on eggs or coffee or meats. We designed our system to give you a lot choices and ways to get healthy food delivered for your family.

For us, we are here to serve you and help you source the best ingredients. I know, personally, having a full refrigerator makes eating healthy a lot easier. I rarely open a cookbook or follow a recipe. I am more prone to search for inspiration online and then start cooking. I, also, hate the current blog format that makes me have to hunt for the recipe, pictures are great, but it shouldn’t be that hard to get to the ingredients!

Once I get the ingredients, away I go. This week I wanted to use Cannellini beans in a recipe with a steak from our new locally raised 10# meat packages. I googled Cannellini beans and steak and got some inspiration, and I was off to the kitchen. Now where is my apron?  

You can find the recipe in your weekly reminder email.

Beans are so important to our diet that finding a way to eat them two or three times a week is a goal around here.

Thanks for allowing us to be your partner in good health. 

-Tristan Klesick

New Prices

Before I delve into the world of fall on the farm. Starting the week of October 19, we will be raising prices $1.50 to each of our standard boxes. It has been a few years since our last price increase. We appreciate your continued support as we all navigate living with the Covid cloud that hangs over our nation. 

Back to the farm

We are busy wrapping up a few loose ends on the farm getting ready for winter and for spring. This is the one season where diligence really pays dividends. Every season is time sensitive, but in the spring, you have more good days to get your work done, the weather trend is in your favor. In the fall that script is flipped, with less days to get your work done. 

Like many of you, Joelle and I are busy taking care of those last few home and flower bed projects. It is the same on the farm, just a larger scale. Most of our crops are finished for the year and the winter crops are located together in one section of the farm. After we harvest the last of the cabbages, winter squash and celery we can spread the compost, assuming we get a few good weeks of weather. 

Last week, all my neighbors were as busy as beavers. The dairy farmers are harvesting the corn for silage and the potato guys are digging like crazy. In the Stillaguamish valley, unlike the Skagit, we can get an early flood or if the weather turns wet, you might not be able to get into the fields. A century of faming this valley has taught the local farmers to not dilly dally and last week, a whole lot of harvesting got done. 

Because Klesick Farms is less mechanized, we can get into our fields much later into the season. That doesn’t mean we like to put on rain gear and brave the elements, it just means we can ?. The large farms have really big equipment, and they would get stuck in the mud, we don’t have that issue. 

This week we are harvesting a smooth leafed kale called Red Russian. It has a soft red tint to it and is equally as nutritious as it well known curly green cousin. You might see a few cosmetic blemishes on the leaves, because the fall season imparts a weathered look and a few bugs have nibbled here and there, but it is tasty and healthy. 

We have also harvested the Conference and Bosc pears. The pear harvest was smaller this year. The pears are sweet, but the spring was less kind to pollinators, limiting the pollination windows, which resulted in a smaller harvest than previous years. These two types of pears are my favorite, but I am pear person. I like them firm, crunchy and often. 

Enjoy your box of good,

-Tristan Klesick

In addition to growing food at Klesick Family Farm, we also source organically grown food from eastern and western Washington, Oregon and California and beyond. Our food supply is a network of local, regional, national and international. While there is a local farm system, our community will always choose to supplement from other regions.

This year has it has been made very clear that America needs to have a more geographically diverse food producing system to feed its people. This was never more obvious than this spring when Covid descended upon communities and hoarding ensued. Our farmers were dialed into the rhythms of growing food for a normal spring season, but Covid flipped the script and food scarcity became a reality.

Making matters more challenging was the spring rains in California and Arizona. At that same time Covid was wreaking havoc in our lives, the weather was wreaking havoc on the “salad bowl” of America, making it impossible to harvest and in some cases destroying crops, at a time when we needed that food more than ever.

Thankfully, the American farmers and food producers weathered that season, and we got our bearings to prepare for farming with Covid in our planning. I will confess that I have no idea what is in store for this upcoming winter flu/Covid season, but our farmers and food producers are, weather permitting, better ready to serve the American public. 

Another Wrinkle

The wildfire season seems to be becoming an annual event that the farming community and other food producers need to plan for. Especially, because Eastern WA, OR and CA have increasing exposure to wildfires.

Wildfires not only destroy communities, jobs, homes, and thousands of acres of wild land, they seriously impact farms and our food supply. In many ways the last few weeks for Klesick’s were very similar to early April when food selection and variety were drastically reduced due to a rainy spring and Covid. With so much of CA and OR on fire, sourcing food from those regions was challenging because available trucking was reduced, many farms were on fire or near fires, and extreme smoke made it impossible to plant, cultivate or harvest. 

As farmers, staying inside is not an option when air quality rises to unsafe levels, we work outside.  Our work is outside.  Another interesting, but often overlooked by the media, wrinkle is that a thick layer of smoke and the ash particulates can ruin fruit, berries and vegetables as it falls to the ground causing crop losses. And do you remember how cold it was during the heaviest times of the poor air quality? A subtle, but real impact to our food supply was the weather change and those cool temperatures really slowed down the growth of vegetables and even caused some to “bolt” due to the sudden change, making the crop unusable.

Because here at Klesick’s we have deep and long-standing relationships in the food industry, and because of the hard work of our awesome team, we have been able to navigate these unforeseen events and keep your Box of Good supplied and on schedule!  We are thankful to be able to provide continued quality food, value and peace of mind to our customers during this tumultuous time.

May this upcoming season bring a breath of fresh air, hope and healing to all of us!

-Tristan Klesick

I am so thankful for the rain to help clear up smoke and put a damper on a lot wildfires.  A few decades ago, a decision to manage the forest more minimalistic and allow nature to manage itself, has led to a really tumultuous period in our history. With a less hands on approach to managing our forests combined with global warming causing drier summers, more wildfires were to be expected. In essence we got what we planned for and then some. 

We see the same thing with reintroducing wolves into areas they once roamed. And if you combine them with Grazing permits for cattle or sheep ranching in an open range grazing environment one should expect wolves to eat cattle and sheep and deer and elk.  

Wildfires and wolves are more interconnected than we would think. Less intensive harvest of trees and less grazing permits has allowed the forests to grow an underbrush. Reintroducing wolves creates tension between the farming community and the natural resource community which has led to less grazing permits on public lands to allow the forests to act more naturally and wolves are a part of helping a forest to act more naturally as an apex predator. These two decisions are really an urban versus rural debate. 

In addition to the choices we have made as a society, we have also allowed people to move into these or closer to these wild areas. Now we have added a human life and a political issue to this policy. The clash between let nature be nature and managing nature will be really intense for years to come.  Ironically with Covid19 more urban folks are moving to rural areas and working from home. They will have a new perspective on living in “wild” areas that many of them were in favor of when they lived in the urban core. 

I am not advocating either way that the policies to let nature or reintroduce wolves are bad or good. I am saying that the current outcomes are what we should expect from those decisions. Allowing a forest to act more wildly is a good decision for a lot of natural processes. All that “tinder” and dying material feeds into a lot of biological processes. It could very well be that a wild forest will be healthier as it develops a cycle of fire and rebuilding itself. Mount St. Helens is an excellent example of nature rebuilding itself. 

The question now becomes will we (America) say, “enough is enough” and stop this experiment after a few decades of a policy change.  Will the potential good that comes after this tumultuous period be allowed to play out? Or could it better to go back to a more managed forest solution? 

As always, the answer is somewhere between, there are a few hard and fast rules in life, but this isn’t one of them. While I do not like wildfires and the harm they cause, I have to acknowledge that this is the expected outcome. What we (America) decide going forward will have an expected outcome as well. 

-Tristan Klesick