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20 Years: 1998-2018

It is hard to believe that it was back in 1998 that Klesick Farms first opened its doors. That was a long time ago! Since the first day of business our family has been providing and delivering organically grown produce. Our mission has always been your health and organic fruits and vegetables. And it has been a very rewarding run.

The Klesick family is a first-generation farm family. We wanted to farm and found a way to do it. We did it because of customers like you that wanted organically grown farm fresh produce delivered directly to your home. In 1998 home delivery was original, novel, and definitely “outside-the-box” type of thinking. In fact, when we started you were lucky to have dial up (my grandparents still had a “party” line), you couldn’t GOOGLE anything, and copiers were the size of a Ford Fiesta. To place an order for fresh produce you had to call the office or email us. You can still call or email us, but now you can also text, IM, DM or PM and we will get back to you!

Facebook what was that??? Instagram, Snapchat or Pandora, Spotify and Hulu. I thought Hulu hoops (wink) were something you rotated around your hips in P.E. class. I was never very good at that!

A lot has changed, but a few things still remain the same—we still deliver organically grown fruits and vegetables to local families and we still answer our phones.

Here is a fun fact. Since our first week of 50 home deliveries of fresh organically grown fruits and vegetables in 1998 we have delivered over 700,000 boxes of good food. That is amazing! That is over 2 million apples, 600,000 bunches of carrots and thousands of strawberries, blueberries, cherries etc. Farm fresh produce delivered to one family at a time over 20 years has had a huge impact on our communities’ health, your health and has blessed a lot of organic farm families.

#Celebrate20

To celebrate our 20 years of delivering farm fresh fruit and vegetables, we have a special offer for our existing customers and your friends. Between March 1 and March 20th (20 days) we are going to be giving you a $20 credit on your account for each friend that signs up for weekly or every other week delivery. If 5 friends sign up you will get $100 credit, 10 friends $200 credit. We will apply your credits immediately to your account and your friends will get their $20 new customer credit spread over their first 4 deliveries ($5/delivery).

Let your friends know that now is the time to sign up and remind them to mention your name in the referral box so you can get your $20 credit. Have them use the coupon code: CELEBRATE20 to redeem their gift.

 

Thank you for making 20 years of Klesick’s a reality and thank you in advance for telling your friends about Klesick’s Box of Good!

 

Tristan Klesick

Health Advocate, Farmer, and Small business owner for the last 20 years.

 

 

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#LoveLocal

I love that title #lovelocal! It resonates deeply with who Klesick’s is and why we do what we do. We are passionate about healthy communities and that starts with a healthy family—one delivery, one meal, one bite at a time. And going deeper, for our communities to be healthy we need local farmers and purveyors of healthy food, and we need our local natural resources to be as healthy as possible: healthy farmlands, rivers, estuaries, mountains, valleys and clean air. The whole package needs to be healthy to have healthy communities. 

As a local business owner and local farmer, I am blessed to be able to work on the entire healthy community spectrum. When I am not writing a newsletter or planning your menus, you might find me at my farm. It is pruning and planning season. Or you might find me at a salmon/agricultural meeting trying to strike a balance for food and habitat. Or you might find me working to get more organic food into the local food banks and kitchens that serve the “hungry”.  

We are just a small company, a dozen employees, but we can be a part of the solution to help families get real nutrition through the food bank system. I need your help to take a bigger bite out of hunger. 

  1. Just being a Klesick’s customer helps provide the infrastructure to serve local food banks. How? 
  2. Because we have customers, we have food and we generate #2 quality produce that we sort and save for food banks.
  3. And since we are a delivery company too, we can deliver this food to local food banks. 
  4. This week we are adding our first school backpack outreach program. Super excited! As a part of the Providence Live Healthy 2020 campaign I was able to connect with the Edmonds School District’s Nourishing Network. Currently they are serving 145+ students in 23 schools weekly and they would like to receive organic produce for these students.  
  5. We also offer our Neighbor Helping Neighbor program as an additional item you can purchase. You can actually purchase #1 quality produce, the same quality we send you, to send to a local food bank at a discounted price. You can even specify which food bank.  
  6. Here is our current list: Anacortes, Arlington, Camano Island, Everett & Everett Recovery Café, Marysville, Monroe, Mountlake Terrace, Oak Harbor, Snohomish, and Stanwood. We deliver to 10!  
  7. These 10Food banks are open for serving the less fortunate at the time we deliver to these communities. 

If you would like to join Klesick’s on taking a bigger bite out of hunger at the local level, you can purchase a Neighbor Helping Neighbor box at the discounted price of $28 by clicking on any of the hyperlinked communities mentioned above. You can order a weekly, or every other week or monthly Neighbor Helping Neighbor box and we will do the rest. And to top it off, for every Neighbor Helping Neighbor box you purchase, we will send you a yearend tax donation receipt. 

This year we are celebrating 20 years of farming and delivering good food—more to come on that. In the last 20 years with your help, Klesick’s has delivered over 11,000 boxes of good food to local food banks! That is amazing and humbling all at the same time. Klesick’s (you and us) have made a difference in the lives of local families—one family, one delivery, one bite at a time. The need is still great. Please consider adding a Neighbor Helping Neighbor Box and help take a bite out of local hunger. 

 

Thank you,  

Health advocate and farmer, 

Tristan 

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Change is a Good Thing

The biggest factor in losing weight probably has more to do with what you eat than any other factor. I just got back from the gym and burned 200 calories in an hour. In effect I burned a 16 oz. Grande from the coffee stand! That is a pretty steep price for an hour of my life. And how many of us are hitting the gym to burn a latte every day?

The resting or basal rate of metabolism is how most of our calories are burned–70-80% of a 2000 calorie diet for a woman or 2500 for a man. These are the calories burned by thinking, by cell divisions and processes. Hence it is referred to as resting metabolism. Another 10-15% is tied to digestion, just processing what we ate. And the last 10-20% is tied to movement of some sort. For sure, exercise is a part of it, but so is vacuuming, walking, or answering the phone. Of course, there are always a few outliers, and you can massage the percentages a few here or there, but most of us fall into these categories. 

I pick up my kiddos from school a few times a week, and the size of middle schoolers ranges from skinny to “normal” to heavy. American kiddos are trending towards heavier, much like the adult population. The trend towards heavier is not a good trend. What is the solution? Have the kids exercise, make them run around a track??? Yes, it is important to get their heart rate up and get fitter, but to reverse the heavier trend for American kiddos (and, dare I say adults) it would make more sense to change what they eat while they are at school rather than hope that exercise will solve the dilemma. 

If it is accurate to say that we burn roughly 70% of our calories doing nothing physical, it would stand to reason the biggest gains in losing weight will probably come from eating less and not from exercising more. But eating less is only a part of the solution. We also need to eat the right kinds of foods and eat them in the right quantities. This is not a popular opinion in the food manufacturing world or with their congressional lobbyists. Their mantra is: All calories are equal. If you are overweight, that is your problem–exercise more. 

That thinking gets under my skin! America has a calorie problem–too many and the wrong kinds! If we want to win with food and win on the scale and win at the doctor’s office, we will have to eat fewer calories and better calories. Of course, that would put a serious dent in Coca Cola or Pepsi or Nabisco or Hershey’s or Starbucks profits, but I don’t care and for this father, farmer and health advocate that would be fine by me. 

Turns out your Mom was right. Eat your vegetables, just don’t boil them to death (please). Eating more vegetables, fruits, quality proteins and fats would go a long way towards reversing the American health crisis. As usual the solutions are simple, but the commitment to changing is where the rubber meets the road. Change is up to us. 

Klesick’s is here to support your healthy food choices.

 

Health Advocate and Farmer,

Tristan

 

 

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Willpower, continued…

Last week we delved into willpower as more akin to a depletable resource versus the notion that it was more like a muscle that could be strengthened. I think willpower is fascinating to study and learn about.  You could spend hours reading all the research, and I have, but mostly I am looking for how it applies to my daily decision making.

If it is more like a depletable resource and we only have about 15-minutes’ worth of willpower at any given moment, that means I will need to find a different strategy than relying on willpower to make lifestyle changes. And that strategy is called a plan that we default to when temptation is creeping in. We do have some willpower we can muster against wrong foods, thoughts, or our busy schedules, but for most folks, willpower has been pretty wiped out just getting the kids or yourself out the door.

We also talked about that since we only have limited willpower, it might make more sense to make one lifestyle change and focus on that. If you want to incorporate more veggies and fruits and less packaged foods or convenience meals, that would be a change that could require a lot of energy. Adding going to bed earlier, drinking more water, and going to the gym 3x per week could be a recipe for failure.

All of those areas are important to living happy healthy lives. But if you are not accustomed to doing any of them and they will all be a lifestyle change or a new habit, chances are you will not be able to get traction on any of those goals long term. This is primarily because now you are tackling 3, 4, 5 new habits.  And with a limited amount of willpower to draw upon and considering that you are also using willpower for ordinary decision-making tasks, it might be wiser and more successful to concentrate on winning with one lifestyle change.

Which one is up to you and depends on what area of your life you want to change because if you don’t want to change the area, it won’t matter. Wanting to make a change is necessary to make a change. Something like 180 million Americans are going try and lose weight this year, multiple times. If this is where you find yourself, focus on losing weight through eating more fruits, vegetables, proteins, good carbs, fats and only focus on changing your diet. The more changes you add, the more plans you will have to develop, follow and implement to be successful. Once you are winning with food and it becomes more of a permanent lifestyle change—add in another.

This could be reversed and you could commit to getting stronger by going to the gym. Once that habit is in place tackle another change. It is just really hard to make multiple lifestyle changes at the same time. I encourage you to pick one goal and get after it. Develop a plan and add some accountability and attack the new habit until the old habit surrenders. Then put the next lifestyle change on notice that you are coming after it next!

 

Your Health Advocate and Farmer,

Tristan Klesick

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The Chocolate and Radish Experiment

In 1996 Roy Bauermeister developed an experiment to better understand “will power”. For most of us, will power is something to be marshalled, built up like a muscle, or an inner super hero we would call upon to help us overcome a temptation. And for those people who were successful at making lifestyle or diet changes, well, they just had better will power and the rest of us hadn’t conjured up enough will power to say “no” and were consequently, viewed as having weaker will power. Or dare I say, “we were just lazier”.

Dr. Bauermeister and his colleagues designed an experiment that brought in 3 test groups. The first group was invited in to fill out a questionnaire. In the room was fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, hot out of the oven (I already want one of those cookies) and a bowl of radishes. They were instructed to not eat the cookies because they were for another project, but they could eat the radishes. After 15 minutes they were led off to a room to do a geometry equation that was impossible to solve (that part was unbeknownst to them). The second group came in to the room with the cookies and the radishes and they were allowed to eat the cookies, but not the radishes and after they were finished with their questionnaire led off to a different room to solve the same impossible equation. The 3rd and last group entered a room without cookies or radishes, filled out the same questionnaire and attempted to solve the same impossible equation.

The groups that could eat the cookies and didn’t have cookies or radishes persisted for 19 minutes and the ones who had resisted eating the fresh baked chocolate chips only persisted for 8 minutes. Their ability to persevere had been depleted earlier denying those chocolate chips cookies. Basically, the groups that could eat the cookies or had no cookies offered to them were able to persevere twice as long the group that had to exercise their will power to not eat those fresh baked chocolate chip cookies! This was the first experiment that changed the notion that will power was something you just conjured up when needed or built up like a muscle; will power is a depletable resource. And to make matters worse, you only have about 15 minutes of it available at a time. And we use will power for a lot of decision making things, like checking emails, getting the kids to school, to getting on a treadmill, to trying to eat less sugar…the list goes on and on.

I know that I have way more will power at the start of the day, than I do at night, which ironically is the time that I will succumb to a temptation to a snack or “brake” my commitment to lifestyle change or… To make matters more challenging, the brain runs on Glucose (sugar) and when it is feeling tired from all the decision making it begins to demand some fuel, particularly a sugary fuel and it is not concerned about what kind, so even your brain can work against you to make those lifestyle changes.

The solution is more KNOWLEDGE not more WILL POWER. Now that I know that will power can be depleted, the antidote is a plan, a good old-fashioned plan pre-thought-out and put-into-practice plan. If I am craving sugar, I’ll have an apple—not a donut or cliff bar.

Now you have a little knowledge, what is your plan to be successful—eat better, lose weight, run a 5k, or go to bed earlier? Whatever your goal is, you will have to plan for success in advance and not count on will power for success. You can do it, but you will have to have a plan for lasting results.

 

Health Advocate and Farmer,

Tristan

 

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Traceability

Welcome to food safety in the Social Media world. Last week Consumer Reports felt that the FDA was not doing enough to protect consumers from an E. coli outbreak. Their experts felt strongly that the E. coli bacteria came from Romaine lettuce. No one knows if it came from packaged romaine, baby romaine, mixed bags of baby romaine, who distributed it, what farm it came from, etc.

What we do know is that there is anecdotal evidence that Romaine might be a common food eaten by the people who got sick. At that time there had been 17 cases in the United States over a 6-week period. There have been thousands of romaine lettuce heads sold during this time. E. coli is a very serious bacteria and can be deadly and at a minimum make a person very sick.

Romaine lettuce is suspected to be the carrier, but it is not clear if it is the romaine, or water it was washed in/irrigated with, or what region, or farm where the bacteria started from. Traceability is a big part of the solution. But the sheer size of our nation and its population makes tracing outbreaks like this really difficult.

The Centers for Disease Control, FDA, and USDA are all working on it and at this point cannot conclusively answer any of the who, what, when, why and where. Which is why there hasn’t been an official warning or recall yet. That might all change in the next few days, as I am writing this newsletter on Friday.

Here is what I can tell you. I have been a farmer for 20 years and been in the produce business for 25 years. Our fruit and vegetable food system is incredibly safe and during my tenure there has been only 1 vegetable related outbreak that is forever etched in my memory. It was the Spinach E. coli outbreak that sickened 276 people in 2006. They believe the contamination occurred from water in an irrigation ditch used to irrigate the spinach. But even this event took a few weeks to track down the source.

That event created what is now called the Food Safety Modernization Act and placed farm inspections into the hands of the FDA. As an aside, most food recalls are centered around processed foods, meat or packaged fruit and vegetables.

Klesick’s has been delivering fresh produce for over 20 years. We have deep relationships that go back just as long. When and if a food recall were to happen, we can reach out to our suppliers or other farms in a heartbeat. We can go right to the invoices and see where the product came from and, in many cases, we know immediately what field it was grown in. We also know which customers received the item in question and can contact them by email or phone based on the situation and all this can be done within an hour. I hope I never have to do any of this, but I know it can be done.

Being a small farm and small business with long standing relationships with other farmers and suppliers helps us provide the safest and most nutritious organically grown produce to you and your families.

 

Your Farmer and Health Advocate,

Tristan

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Bitters for Better Health

Over the next year we are going to be rolling out some new flavors in the Boxes of Good – Bitters! Bitters are a class of vegetables that are nutritional powerhouses. Though fairly common, they rarely show up in the American diet. But now, many of us will get to experience wonderful flavors that fuel our bodies with more vitamins and minerals.

As I have migrated away from sugars (organic or otherwise) I have noticed that my taste buds are drawn to kales, mustards, arugulas, chicories, etc. I am not sure why that is happening, but I do believe that sugar co-opts the brain and creates an overly dependent desire for more sugar. Having lessened sugar’s grip on my taste buds probably has freed my taste buds to enjoy more varied flavors and bitters are definitely on the menu.

This week we are featuring Treviso Radicchio (pronounced Raw-Deke-ee-O), a part of the Chicory family. The Treviso was grown by our friends at Ralph’s Greenhouse in Mt. Vernon.

This dark red leafy “green” is chocked full of vitamins A, C and K, and minerals like calcium, potassium and magnesium. Filled with folate and fiber, and low in fat and sodium, these greens are a must for a healthy diet and a healthy digestive system.

Eating bitter food activates taste buds that simultaneously stimulate enzyme production and bile flow, which promotes digestion. The better your food is digested, the more nutrients you’ll absorb from your food. It doesn’t matter what you eat, if you can’t absorb it, it won’t be of much benefit to you. The high fiber content in bitter greens also helps to eliminate waste through the digestive tract.

What’s more, bitter greens also promote natural detoxification of the liver, which regulates cholesterol, balances hormones, detoxifies the blood, and metabolizes fats (Excerpted and slightly modified from MindBodyGreen). I believe that food is the problem causing our health crisis in America and that food is also the solution to our health crisis in America. The choice is ours, but the overwhelming amount of sugar and processed foods in our grocery stores and restaurants makes eating healthy a real challenge.

At Klesick’s we exist as an alternative to the industrial processed food system. With your help we have stood together as a beacon for good food and common sense for the last 20 years, delivering only organic fruits and vegetables – one family, one delivery, one meal and one bite at a time. And I am in for another 20!

 

Farmer and Health Advocate,

Tristan

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Good Food Health Coaching by Klesick’s

It is sure nice to be on this side of the Holiday Season. After New Year’s, life will settle, and things will return to a relatively more normal routine. And as far as I am concerned routine and normal are greatly appreciated!

The new year always brings such fresh optimism and renewed energy, we just need to sustain it, but how? That is the million-dollar question.

Well the answer depends on what the goal is that you are trying to accomplish. If the goal is to lose 5lbs maybe two weeks to a month. If the goal is to lose 50lbs maybe 1-2 years. If the goal is to lose that last 5 lbs., maybe 2 or 3 months!

Maybe your goal is to run a 5k which will require different training than a 10k or a Marathon. But no matter what the goal is, each person has to assess where they are, how attainable the goal is and then develop a plan to accomplish the task. The first hurdle is recognizing that something has to change, and then acting upon that goal. Don’t get stuck in the planning mode; yes, plan to be successful, but don’t be a successful planner!

Let’s talk about what makes achieving a goal successful. First, you need a good goal, that is reachable, but a stretch. Second, the big picture/plan, AKA the final goal. I like to use a business strategy called 4DX. Essentially, you state the goal “from x to y by z”. For example, I want to go from 205 lbs. to 185 lbs. by 3/15/18. Third, implement the plan. If your goal is to lose 20lbs, your plan might look like: eat 3 meals a day, cut out processed sugar, no snacking, drink 3 glasses of water, weigh myself Wednesdays/Sundays. The last part of the plan is probably the most important: accountability! Once you have decided what the goal is, its timeframe, and the plan to win, then you’ll need accountability.

Accountability can take many forms, a life coach, a counselor, a friend, joining a group. I am a big fan of accountability, it just makes reaching a goal that much easier.

Klesick’s is going to offer a group coaching call weekly via a private Facebook group. Our accountability will revolve around good food and incorporating more of it into your diet. The Good Food Coaching will be focused around eating better to feel better and a byproduct of eating better is losing weight. We are going to limit the group to 30 folks. The price for the Good Food Coaching and accountability will be $8/wk. and will run for 3 months. If you would like to join us on this journey, visit this link.

Wishing all of you a wonderful start to the New Year and we will see you in January with more good food conveniently delivered to your door!

 

Farmer and Health Advocate,

Tristan

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Love

I think this time of year is a powerful reminder of what was, is, and what can be. All of us find ourselves at different places than we were last year. Some of you have moved and are getting accustomed to new environs, establishing new relationships, and building community. Others have moved back to “home” and are reconnecting, reestablishing old relationships and rebuilding a sense of community.

Some of you are welcoming new family members—a new son in law or daughter in law or maybe a new future prospect for marrying into the family. Others are welcoming new children and introducing them to the wonder and awe that is life and life at Christmas. And a few more of us are welcoming grandchildren to their first Christmas’s.

Like many of you, I find myself experiencing life at warp speed. But one thing that is not lost on me is that I am a year older this Christmas and so are most of the important people who are in my life–except Arlo and Nathan our newest grandsons experiencing Christmas for the first time and joining our other grandchildren Kaden, Hadlee and Grayson. It is going to be a lot of fun around the farm this holiday season.

Joelle and I are in that middle spot. We have grandchildren, and children and older parents. It is a beautiful season in life, but a full one. It makes me think about Grandpa Hank. It has been years since he passed away, but what is forever etched in my memory are his eyes. If there ever was a tinkerer or inventor, it was Grandpa Hank. He built a riding lawnmower that could also be used to split wood and another attachment to mow the hillsides. Good old-fashioned ingenuity!

Funny thing about Grandpa Hank, his great grandson Aaron got the “bug” one day and took two riding lawnmowers and found a way to attach them and make an articulating lawnmower that was steered using pulleys and a winch. In many ways Grandpa Hank still lives and his talents and gifts are passed on, just like each of our talents and gifts will be passed on.

But back to Grandpa Hank’s eyes. As dusk was setting on his earthly life, I would watch his interactions with the family—all those little ones running around, stopping by for a hug or the newest little one landing in his lap. His eyes were always focused and taking in the entire scene. I think he was still a big kid, with an even bigger appreciation for life. The wonder and awe of life was not lost on him.

Love is a gift and is best passed on, but we will have to keep our eyes open to be able to not only share our love, but also to receive love. We can love and be loved because a baby boy born on that Christmas morning first loved us.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and the most blessed of Holiday seasons,

 

Tristan

Farmer, Health Advocate

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Keep the Holidays Healthy

Does anyone else think that this is a lofty goal?! Everywhere you turn there is an advertisement to buy something, do something, donate to something, plus all the running around and mental energy to keep up with it all! To complicate matters, our will power is severely depleted when it comes to food because we have already made another 100 decisions that day. We just don’t have the energy, time or will power to cook or prepare a healthy snack. And the winner is…. Sugar and Processed Foods! The loser is….

But there is an antidote to the food traps. Planning! We have to plan to eat healthy or most of us will have a lot more to “lose” in January. It is the same with our finances. If we don’t want to owe VISA/MC for this holiday, we will have to plan where our money goes and how it gets spent. Otherwise, come January, we will have two crises, a visa bill crisis and a “I ate too much in December?!?!”-crisis. But personally, I want to have “0”, NADA, no, crisis in January. Not a financial crisis. Not a weight crisis. And I want that for you, too.

With Thanksgiving down and Christmas coming, I am going to have to be diligent. It is hard enough to eat well, but during this season there is SUGAR everywhere and for a lot of folks, sugars and flours are addictive. If you are one of those people and honestly find yourself craving sugar, this season is especially hard. Just saying “no” probably hasn’t worked in the past and it probably won’t work now either.

I personally don’t believe that this is a will power issue. Many of us have elevated insulin levels in our bodies and elevated insulin levels block a hormone called Leptin whose primary job is to let us know that we are full and to stop eating. This means that for a whole lot of people, the natural processes of eating and feeling full aren’t working. This is due in part to a diet with too much processed foods in it. The other challenge is that in order to make this switch, a person will need accountability—firm, loving, compassionate accountability–to help them hold on to the new way of eating.

The good news is that our body is so resilient that we can lower our Insulin levels so Leptin will begin to work again. The solution is simple, we will need to eat whole foods and less processed foods, and, yes, eliminate Sugar (except that which is found in fruit and vegetables.)

Look for more information next week on eating better during the holidays. Until then continue to eat healthy and be healthy,

 

Your Health Advocate and Farmer,

Tristan Klesick