Category: Newsletters

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Together we are making a huge difference

We are currently running reports on all the food bank, water well and holiday donations that you have given through Klesick Farms in 2015, in preparation for sending out end of the year tax donation receipts. I am completely humbled by the generosity and kindness of each of you.

Our partnership is a force for doing “good.” So far this year, together we have donated over 975 boxes of high quality organic produce to 10 different food banks. Of these boxes, 799 were generously donated by you (156 of which were the Thanksgiving holiday donation boxes) and 176 were donated by Klesick Farms as part of our customer donation matching program. We also send our “seconds”/culled organic produce to the food bank weekly.

The real benefit of our partnership comes from blessing others, blessing those who need a little extra help to feed their families and blessing those who serve them. Those acts of kindness are what makes a community our “box of good” community. But we are not done yet, as you can now order a Christmas Blessing Box for this holiday season and continue spreading hope! You can also still donate a box to the food bank option of your choice, and for every four boxes donated we will donate one extra.

In addition to the Christmas Blessing Box, we have two other great social causes we are blessing this holiday season. Crossway International and She Is Safe are two great international outreaches. Crossway drills wells in Africa and She Is Safe helps women escape sex trafficking. Both organizations improve the lives of women on the other side of the world.

The Klesick family personally knows both the area directors for these organizations and personally supports their work. These two organizations do some amazing work in some of the hardest areas in the world. Maybe I can’t go to these places, but I can sure help them improve the lives of women in India and Africa.

This Christmas and holiday season if you would like to join us in doing good, as a thank you we will send you the fun and lively Christmas CD from Matty Ride, I’d be Fine with Christmas, for any donation of $20 or more.

These are the hardest newsletters for me to write, as I am brought to tears thinking about our partnership with passionate people who care about the lives of others and organic food.

Together we are a force for doing good!

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Tristan Klesick

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Eating Successfully this Holiday Season

You made it through the Thanksgiving celebrations—were you successful in eating well? I know that I had to try all three pies! Seriously, this season is brutal on healthy eating. The amount of sugar that is going to be given as gifts, devoured at schools, parties and work will be off the charts. I also know that January is coming and I really do not want to arrive there with extra holiday pounds to have to try and lose (now that I am 50 those pounds are a lot harder to chase away). So I have decided to share with you my strategy for avoiding those extra pounds, feeling better and having more energy (a.k.a. not feeling stuffed or lethargic) during the next four weeks. I invite you to join me in making eating healthier a little easier this holiday season.

Use this simple guide to eating successfully this holiday season:

  • The first thing we have to do is admit it is going to be hard! Shake your head back and forth, sigh and then say, “It is going to be hard, but I can do it!”
  • The second thing we need to do is get on the scale, yes the scale! Record your weight ________.
  • Next, write down where you want your weight to be each week. The only rule is that it can’t be more than 5 lbs in the wrong direction and it can’t be more than 10 lbs. in the right direction. This is what I call a BRAG (Best Realistically Attainable Goal). What is your holiday BRAG for weight _______? Even on the scale or a few pounds less is my BRAG for the next four weeks.
  • Choose real food first (e.g., fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese) at family gatherings or holiday parties.
  • Bring real food to parties, someone else will really appreciate it too!
  • Next, skip the treats at least once a day (saying “no” gets easier the more you practice).
  • Eat your veggies, they won’t show up on the “scale” like cookies, donuts, etc. will.
  • Drink water, smoothies or fresh pressed juices.
  • Keep getting your Box of Good Staying out of the grocery store this season will not only save you money, but limit your temptation to buy those treats.

Remember, enjoying ourselves, plus feeling better and having more energy are the real prizes this holiday season. The “scale” will only serve as a reminder that we won!

Cheers to your success!

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Tristan Klesick

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Thanksgiving

Do the words of thankfulness come rolling off your tongue like a swift flowing stream or do you have to pause and reflect like a calm beautiful pond? Is your list brief or overflowing? Does your list include immediate loved ones, friends, your employment or retirement? Does it include your pets or the environment? Are you thankful for our Government or parts of the government, like fire fighters, police officers or politicians? Are you thankful for everyday conveniences, like hot and cold water, electric heat and ranges or overflowing amounts of food year round? Are you thankful that you have the freedom to vote, exercise free speech and run for elected office?

I think if each of us were intentional about our thankfulness, took a few minutes and began to log what we are thankful for, the list and its length might be very surprising

Thankfulness is a perspective—it is a choice. I know that this year has had many challenges for many families—hard things like cancer, death, job loss or loved ones moving away. But, if you are reading this newsletter right now, you are still “in the game” and right now it is your turn to bat.

As the pitch called Thanksgiving approaches your plate this week, are you going to swing with all your might and hit a homerun? I believe you can, in fact, I know you can, because hitting a Thanksgiving pitch is the easiest one to hit. It starts out like this, “I am thankful for….” Then watch joy begin to flood your heart and a smile appear on your face, and that joy and that smile, well, they are downright contagious. Before you know it, there will be more genuine smiles all around—smiles that begin with your thankful heart.

May this Thanksgiving be the best because we all have so much for which to be thankful!

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Tristan Klesick

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The Week Before Thanksgiving

The next six weeks are going to be brutal! For those of us who are trying to navigate the “Standard American Diet” (aka, S.A.D.) food system by making good food choices, it doesn’t get much harder than Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s! And since the high fat and high sugar groups have hijacked our food system, it can be really hard to eat well. Thankfully, this Thanksgiving can be more successful than ever, if we implement a few simple strategies.

Strategy #1:  Avoid the grocery store! Most of you already are successful at this because you get a box of good delivered—saving both time and money

Strategy #2:  Avoid the middle of the grocery store—saving more time, money, and calories.

Strategy #3:  Practice, Preach and live Portion Control—preventing the “I ate too much” feeling.

Strategy #4:  Think about how good dessert will taste—helping you not eat too much at dinner.

Strategy #5:  Repeat strategies 1, 2 and 3 for dessert—making your own desserts or ordering them from us.

Sure this is a little tongue-and-cheek, but if we don’t have a PLAN for Thanksgiving and this holiday season, it will own us! And at our daily “weigh in” we will be wishing (and feeling) we had a little less to eat. And it won’t be the fruits and vegetables that did us in either! It will have been ourselves (don’t you hate the truth). Really, I am responsible for eating well, no one else. Yep, it comes down to the person in the mirror to make the choices. You can do it!

Holiday Donation Boxes
Consider partnering with us to alleviate hunger this holiday season. It is still not too late to order a Holiday Donation Box. Every week, we partner with you to get healthy produce out to eight food banks in our community, but at Thanksgiving we want to send even more good food to and through our local food banks. We make it ultra-simple: you order, we pack and deliver. And this season we are sending a Matty Ride Christmas CD, titled I would be fine with Christmas as a thank you for partnering with us.

Thank you,

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Tristan Klesick

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Planning for your Thanksgiving Meal

Planning for your Thanksgiving holiday meal, plus your easy Thanksgiving order form PDF!      

Klesick Farms is grateful for the opportunity to help you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. Just the thought of you and your loved ones gathered around the dining room table, sharing good food and good stories, warms our hearts. Perhaps more than any other holiday, Thanksgiving captures the true meaning of a box of good.

Our Special “Holiday Box” Traditional Meal Items

We are excited to once again offer our special annual Holiday Box ($40). This special box of traditional holiday produce can be purchased in addition to or in place of your regular order. You can also purchase a box even if it is not your normally scheduled delivery week. See pre-order form, below.)

 

Holiday Box Contents:

Yellow Onions, 1 lb.

Yellow Potatoes, 3 lbs.

Yams, 2 lbs.

Carrots,2 lbs.

Green Beans, 1 lb.

Organic Bread Cubes for Stuffing, 1 lb.

Granny Smith Apples, 2 lbs.

Cranberries, 8 oz.

Celery, 1 bunch

Delicata Squash, 2 ea.

Navel Oranges,2 lbs.

*Due to the special ordering necessary for this box, menu items cannot be changed or substituted.

 

Delivery Schedule:  Holiday Box deliveries will be made November 3rd through December 5th. The week of Thanksgiving, all deliveries will be made Monday through Wednesday. Please check the newsletter that comes in your box of good for your alternate delivery schedule the week of the holiday.

 

An Opportunity to Give! ~ Sending a Holiday Donation Box to Neighbors in Need

If your celebration includes helping the less fortunate who live in our community, we make it easy for you to give. For the discounted price of $32, you can purchase a Holiday Donation Box for us to deliver to a local food bank prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. How good and easy is that? Plus, for every Holiday Donation Box you purchase, we will send you Matty Ride’s Christmas CD as a gift (a great stocking stuffer)!

Donate a holiday box to the food bank today! Click here to add the Holiday Donation Box to your cart, or call our office at 360-652-4663 and we’ll be delighted to add that for you!

 

Thanksgiving Week Pre-Order Form PDF

You can leave this order form out for your delivery person, mail it to us,email a photo of it to us, or use it as a guide when emailing or calling us:

[email protected]    360.652.4663

Thanksgiving Holiday Box Order Form_2015

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Fall is Here

We’re in it now, aren’t we? Fall, I mean. I say that as I look out my rain-covered window and see a few leaves still clinging to the branches of my dogwood. Down the street another tree flaunts its ombre hues, beginning with a brilliant red cap until red fades to green underneath. Three little pumpkins stand as soldiers leading to our front door where I just waved goodbye to two football players and a bat as they headed off to school and on to their harvest party.

Yesterday, while squash, beets, and carrots roasted in the oven, I candied lemon and orange peel to dip into bittersweet chocolate. Today there are plans for a Brussels sprout salad, a gratin of squash, and white beans laced with nutty Gruyere. So, basically, I’ve fallen deep into the fall clichés and I couldn’t be happier.

That’s the beauty of living in the Pacific Northwest – we get to enjoy the seasons. Each one comes with its own pleasures, and just when the doldrums of one season start to sink in, we start another. I know from experience that today’s rain won’t feel cozy and inviting come February and March, but at that point I’ll be distracted with thoughts of spring gardening.

The point is, seasons come and seasons go and in them there are things we love and others we don’t, but for right now I’m relishing the new season, sipping my spiced cider with giddiness and delight, as I plan for pumpkin muffins and apple cakes.

Ashley Rodriguez

Chef, Mom, Food Blogger, Author

www.notwithoutsalt.com


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Klesick’s Special Thanksgiving Holiday Box

Every Thanksgiving holiday season we offer a special Holiday Box ($40) full of traditional organic Thanksgiving meal items for your celebration. Not only can you schedule a Holiday Box to be delivered the week of Thanksgiving, but it is available for the entire month of November (available Nov. 1-Dec. 5). You can have this box delivered along with your regular order or in place of your regular order (please specify your preference when placing your order). The box menu is as follows:

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Remembering Neighbors in Need.

If your celebration includes helping the less fortunate who live in our community, we would like to partner with you by giving you the opportunity to purchase a discounted Holiday Donation Box for only $32, to be given to local food banks the week of Thanksgiving. Last year 122 Holiday Donation Boxes were distributed and this year we’d love to have a greater impact. The volunteers at the food banks have expressed again and again how wonderful and satisfying it is to be able to supply people with fresh produce. You can order a Holiday Donation Box online or by contacting our office.

Special Thank You Offer!

For every Holiday Donation Box you purchase, Klesick Farms will send you a copy of Matty Ride’s Christmas CD

KF Christmas CD Art

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Tristan Klesick

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A Farmer’s Perspective

This past week has been a blur in the valley. It felt like all the farmers were busting it! Spring and fall are two seasons that really are critical to the farmer. We have to get our early spring crops in and we have to get our fall crops off. We then replant with either a cover crop to protect and nurture our soil biology or get another crop planted for spring harvest. It is a cycle of farming that never rests.

In our valley we also have flood pressure. It was October 2003 and we had just moved to the valley. I remember it clearly. Rain was coming, but no worries – it’s only October. Our neighbor calls, “Looks worse than predicted.” It was and most farmers were caught off guard. We expect flooding November through February, but not October.

Our valley was full of crops that needed to be harvested. They were in rotation and were to be out by November. There were also winter ditches to dig and fields to plant. The weather, however, had another plan—the end of the season, with water everywhere and covering everything. So for us, October is a month that we pay attention to because it has left an indelible mark on our souls.

Late last week, coming home from town, it was dark and I noticed all the headlights in the fields. A lot of my neighbors were “pushing” it around the clock to get ahead of the weather. So with that picture of my neighbors working around the clock, I penned this:

Headlights in the Field

Headlights in the Field
Headlights in the field tonight.
Working ground – discing, plowing, planting.

Headlights in the Field
Old man winter is coming soon
plant the wheat, the barley, the rye
before he shows,
before he sends the rain.
The weather windows are small,
the clock keeps ticking,
planting has to get done.

Headlights in the Field
I will see you at the crack of dawn
after the fields are planted.
Headlights in the fields tonight.

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Tristan Klesick

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GMOs Then, GMOs Now.

My dad has been talking about GMOs for a long time. I dug up this newsletter from October 2000. Enjoy! ~Andrew

The Genetically Engineered Foods (GEF) debate appears under other names like Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) or Frankenstein Foods. GMOs are around today primarily because of a societal problem: DEPENDENCE and SHORT SIGHTEDNESS. What do we do when we’re sick? We run to the doctor. We do this because we are hoping for some cure-all that will take care of the problem NOW! Never mind that we have been abusing our bodies with a poor nutritional diet for years.

We, as a people, have long forgone the ability to think for ourselves. If it is in a package and says “low fat” or “natural” and the picture is appealing we will put it in the shopping cart. It doesn’t matter that the manufacturer has added a huge amount of sugar to make the flavor palatable or some sort of chemical to replace the natural fat. We trust a product just because it says natural, without reading the label. And when we pass through the checkout stand another vote is tallied for nutritionally poor food. After all, the USDA and the FDA have assured us that if it is in the store it is good for us or if it is in the pharmacy it is safe to use. I’m afraid that the GMO products are no different. Many will pull them off the shelves, trusting the government for their health.

GMOs are the panacea for poor farming practices that have plagued this country for 60 years. In the beginning of this petro-chemical age, around the early 1940s, there were a few farmers experimenting with chemical fertilizers. The chemicals were used as “vitamins,” if you will, to provide a boost to the plants, and they did. However, the reason that the chemicals provided the boost was because the farmers had been adding compost and manures back into their fields maintaining its fertility levels.

The problem occurred when the farmers decided to forgo sound farming practices and just start using chemicals to grow crops. This type of thinking is similar to living on vitamins only. After a few seasons the health of plants started to deteriorate (and so did their nutritional value) and the pests arrived to feed on these unhealthy plants.

What was the solution? Was it to return to farming organically? Unfortunately, not. Instead, pesticides were developed. We also decided that we needed herbicides to chemically control weeds. Can you see the parallels in the American population due to poor food, easy living, convenience, etc? The farmers pressed ahead; after all, the USDA said the chemicals were safe to use, the universities said they were safe to use, and of course the fertilizer sales people said they were safe to use. While the farmer is partially to blame for using the chemicals, the government, industry, and the consumers are equally to blame. Today many farmers are trying to switch to better farming practices, now that they have found their land basically dead, with no microorganisms left.

It sounds a lot like people. When a life-threatening disease occurs, it is usually then that we decide to eat more naturally and become motivated to change our lifestyle. Each small step we take towards a healthier lifestyle the easier it becomes and the more satisfying life is.

Together, we are making a choice for a better, healthier food supply, for now and for our future.

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Tristan Klesick

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An Eagle, Fog, Dew…and a Farmer.

As a farmer, the seasons are ingrained into my psyche. Day length, temperature, dew, clouds, every element, every nuance speaks to my soul.

One morning last week the moon was just hovering above the cottonwoods, a light fog was lifting, and the sun was just about to crest above the Cascades when I entered this predawn scene. As I stepped out of the old white farmhouse into a new day, I came into the beauty of the Stillaguamish River Valley—its stillness, quietness, and peacefulness. I was alone with my Creator in His creation, basking in all of it.

Stepping off the front porch and taking a few more steps towards the west, there was that brilliant globe suspended above the tree line. I stopped, mesmerized by its beauty and my smallness in it.

Not more than 100 feet above was a bald eagle circling. The same sun that illuminated the moon caught the bald eagle’s white head glistening as it glided through the fog. Its majestic wingspan and silhouette were shimmering with every turn, around and around, lower and lower, filled with grace and power, effortlessly sifting through the predawn sky.

Just at the tip of the tree line the bald eagle straightened out and sailed through the trees. At that moment I, too, returned to my home at peace, excited for what this day would bring.

An eagle, fog, dew, and the early morning dance of the moon and sun. As a farmer, moments like this speak to my soul. They remind me that I am the steward of this farm. My purpose is to balance growing food for you and for all the other creatures that call this place home. This is my work, this is my passion.

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Tristan Klesick