Category: Words from Tristan

I am officially switching to shorts and T-shirts in hopes of warmer weather. My clothing strategy hasn’t been very successful, though! We are still waiting for a good stretch of warm weather to kick it into another gear. However, with that said, the valley farmers are getting active and doing as much as we can to get ready for planting. On our farm we will be planting lettuce this week. The soil is still relatively cold, but we can get a decent seedbed ready for transplants. I am less optimistic for planting any direct seedings and will be waiting a few more days in hopes of dryer weather. Plants are pretty resilient and seeds can germinate through the most inhospitable conditions, but I have found that less stress on the plants equals better crops, so we prepare and wait.  

For now, lettuce and onions are going in, but beets, peas, kohlrabi will have to wait for slightly warmer weather. As will green beans, cucumbers, summer and winter squash. One thing I am expecting is that when the weather does turn warmer this farm season is going to feel like a sprint and less like a marathon. We will go from plodding to planting to weeding in the blink of an eye. Stay tuned. 

(Resharing from last week) Supply chain issues are popping in ways that I have never experienced. I was talking to another grower and I was commenting on some of my germination issues with the first round of lettuce plants and, he shared that he was also having issues.  

He had been using the same potting/transplant mix for the last decade, but this year Vermiculite wasn’t available, Vermiculite lets in air and keeps the soil from compacting. This year he did everything the same, but he is having to learn how to grow transplants with the new formulation. The only reason I even know about this is because I was hunting for a few more trays to offset our own lettuce woes! 

Another friend of mine, who has farmed for decades, who I can usually count on for extra plant starts, shared with me that he hadn’t even started a single tray! He has been bitten by the labor shortage and may call it a year after the nursery season is over.  

Inflation, labor, and supply chain issues affect all of us. Our team is working hard to grow and source food for your family and balance the increasing supply challenges. For now, we are going to hold our prices steady and continue to source the highest quality produce, and soon we will be harvesting produce from our own farm! 

Thank you for supporting Box of Good. 

Tristan, Joelle and the Box of Good crew 

When our farm team (John and I) fortuitously made a decision to wait till the first day of spring to start even a single plant, and then plan to get those plants in the ground around May 1, we had no idea just how wet April would be. Last year it was shorts and T-shirts in April. This year, people are still hitting the slopes! We made the choice to delay the start of the season partially because of how difficult it is to find farm help, but also knowing the weather risk! It’s easy to get lured into early planting when the first sun of spring comes out, but it’s not unusual for April showers to rule the day! “Mudding” in plants is not pleasant or profitable. Sadly, I’ve talked to several gardeners that planted early and had seed and plants rot or freeze, and will need to replant. 

I remember one year, before I started doing my own transplants, I pre-ordered 4 flats of lettuce trays to put in the greenhouses in April. I got a call, in early February, that my 40 flats were ready to be picked up! My friend had written the order down wrong and now I had 5,000 plants instead of 500 that needed a home and it was FEBRUARY! We definitely mudded those plants in that year. That was the ugliest seed bed I have prepped and planted. . . and then the weeds.

Somehow it worked out and we did have the earliest lettuce in the valley! I remember our future son-in- law showed up to help us harvest those plants at 5am. That was impressive! I am more than aware that May has the potential to be just as cold and I have farmed through more than one June-uary, as we like to refer to a wet and cold June.

With all that said…we are thankful that this weekend the temperatures warmed, we broke ground, got the cover crop turned in, and we are closer to planting! 

Supply chain issues are popping in ways that I have never experienced. I was talking to another grower and I was commenting on some of my germination issues with the first round of lettuce plants and, he shared that he was also having issues. 

He had been using the same potting/transplant mix for the last decade, but this year Vermiculite wasn’t available, Vermiculite lets in air and keeps the soil from compacting. This year he did everything the same, but he is having to learn how to grow transplants with the new formulation. The only reason I even know about this is because I was hunting for a few more trays to offset our own lettuce woes!

Another friend of mine, who has farmed for decades, who I can usually count on for extra plant starts, shared with me that he hadn’t even started a single tray! He has been bitten by the labor shortage and may call it a year after the nursery season is over. 

Inflation, labor, and supply chain issues affect all of us. Our team is working hard to grow and source food for your family and balance the increasing supply challenges. For now, we are going to hold our prices steady and continue to source the highest quality produce, and soon we will be harvesting produce from our own farm!

Thank you for supporting Box of Good.

Tristan, Joelle and Box of Good crew

We spent the better part of the last two days buttoning up loose ends. The usual affairs of planning, organizing, coordinating, and cleaning before our trip to NC, VA, and PA to see family and friends. This is going to be more of a whirlwind than relaxing, but it is farming season and spring break, which means that a week away is what the calendar allows. 

It has been far too long since we have seen our oldest Son, Micah, and his wife, Elise who relocated to Charlotte. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up in West Africa given their gradual migration east. We will spend a few days with them before Elise heads off on a medical mission trip and we head off to VA to visit friends in Richmond for two days. 

And then we will finish off the last leg visiting another son, Andrew, his wife, Abby and their new baby Kylan Rhys. Joelle was able to catch a red eye back in early February, when we got word that he was on his way, a few days earlier than expected. She missed the birth of our 8th grandchild, only by a few hours. Still amazing, considering we are 3 time zones away. 

Getting to meet Kylan for myself and introduce him to his aunts and uncles, Maleah, Stephen and Joanna is the primary driver for this trip. This is our first grandchild born and living outside of WA. Not sure how I feel about that, I would love to have their family closer, and while facetime is a good substitute, it is a distant second at best. 

Our crew finally got packed and off to bed for the 4 am start. One of our kiddos greeted me immediately when I started to roust them. Mind you this is not the norm, all of them require a few reminders to get them moving normally. Not this time, that one loves an adventure and I about fell over when she greeted me wide eyed and bushy tailed, “Good Morning!” The other two got moving after only one reminder :).

We planned our trip to leave a few days before the official spring break, but even then, the park n ride we use was already chock full. I was thinking “Oh My, we should have left earlier to get through the TSA line.” However, I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at SeaTac and got through fairly quickly.

Maleah, was teasing me, “Dad’, are you one of those dads who gets our family to the airport 6 hours early.” I retorted, “No, I am one of those dads who prays for no traffic and gives myself an extra hour 😉”. We had an hour to spare. 

Joelle is the organized one in our family; she can think of things I didn’t know were things to think about. Her thoroughness always pays off.

Well with the farm and Box of Good in good hands, we are going to relax, visit and love on the newest Klesick.

Signing off on this edition of the newsletter somewhere over Utah!

Tristan, Joelle and the Box of Good crew

Well, sort of off to the races. We have started the first 1000 lettuce and onion transplants. We will be planting transplant trays of lettuce every 10 days for the next two months. Round two is in the queue! We have a mountain of compost that needs to be spread and we will need to start mowing the cover crops to feed the soil, and eventually the plants, and eventually our customers!

We will be holding off any field work until the ground dries a bit more. Okay, quite a bit more! When I walk out in the fields it is more like a slog; squish, squish, squish. I am fine with it for now. Last year it heated up in April and sucked all the moisture out of the soil, which was great for April, but when August rolled around, that April heat wave didn’t leave much moisture. And I really don’t have any control of the weather anyway. But we are ready when the timing is right!

Managing moisture is one reason why cover cropping is so important. A cover crop is a crop of wheat, or rye, or vetch or weeds, that is planted in the late fall, to protect the soil from rain (compaction), to store nutrients and to feed the soil bacteria and mycorrhizal fungal populations that break down the nutrients that the plants need to grow. 

Currently, the cover crops, like most of your lawns, are loving this wetter spring. While it can be challenging to find a dry time to mow our yard, I want the cover crops to grow as much as possible.  And then when the timing is right, we will mow them down, spread the compost, and begin to till the fields. It will be a feast for all those bacteria and fungi I mentioned earlier. 

Healthy soils are the key to healthy people. 

International troubles are being felt on local farms

The Ukrainian-Russia war is highlighting how interdependent the world has become. With Russia’s vast oil and natural gas supplies and the Ukraine’s farmland, we are seeing the ripple effect everywhere. I just ordered the first round of diesel for the farm season and a pallet of organic fertilizer –Ouch! (I would gladly pay more if it would end the conflict). For us the costs are felt, for sure, but I can only imagine the farmers who farm thousands of acres. And then you have to factor in the types of farms, wheat, corn, and soybean farmers will see higher input costs, but will also see greater demand from the shortage, especially if the conflict doesn’t resolve before planting season in the Ukraine. 

And if the war is resolved, then all of us farmers will have paid a premium for our fuel and fertilizers with prices decreasing. The other challenge is that while U.S. grain farmers will likely benefit from the shortage caused by the war, dairies, poultry, hog, and beef type farms will be adversely impacted due to the increasing cost of fuel and feed. But then next year, the grain farmers will have to save their seed or buy more to plant their crops and the cost of the seed will then be higher for them because of the farm costs from this year, but hopefully fuel and fertilizer costs will stabilize.

I could write and write about this. Nothing is simple any longer. For now, we are praying for peace and planning to grow food. 

Tristan, Joelle and the Box of Good crew

I have been sitting on my hands. For the first time in as long as I can remember we haven’t fired up a tractor this late into the season. I am not anticipating starting for another 2-3 weeks. And while we are a few weeks away from working the soil, we will start to seed our transplant trays with lettuces and onions with the hope having them ready to go out by the end of April. Of course, it is all weather dependent and I have been at this long enough to the 2022 farm plan loosely.

I have seen April’s as wet as the wettest of wet months and I have seen it as dry as August. But as the calendar moves forward, I am confident that the combination of warming weather and rain will work itself out and we will find a window or two to get those first crops planted. We are about to get busy and then it will all cascade from there.

Since we are talking about farming, this season tends to be a bit rough on the salad farmers in AZ and CA. You can set your clock by it. The salad bowl of America begins to transition, the lettuces in particular are the most challenged. Every week we work hard to find the best quality produce from our organic network of farmers and suppliers. Lettuce and spinach farmers are more impacted by the rising heat of the desert and the still colder fields of CA. This year has been no exception. We have been featuring a lot of red butter lettuce, mostly because it is the best quality right now. 

As a rule, we rotate through the vegetables and types of lettuce, but during this transitioning season, we never deviate from our high-quality standards. We may even skip a week or two if we are not happy with the quality of a produce item. 

Our high standards are not unreasonable, but they are high. For me, having run my own produce store, before I became a farmer, is just a part of me. I judge quality by sight, touch or smell. There are a handful of organic farmers that always deliver the highest quality and there are others that we won’t touch with a ten-foot pole.  

Last week, I was walking the floor and picked up a lemon, its feel, its intense smell delivered this farmer/foodie a wow moment. And last weekend we made a lemon cake with lemon filling and lemon glaze. It also happened to be an Australian themed project for our daughter’s homeschool co-op. Sunshine was on the menu! 

Earning your trust, every time we make a delivery is important to us.

Tristan, Joelle and The Box of Good Crew

You can train your body to crave healthy food. First, get in touch with how healthy food makes you feel.  Nutrient dense food gives more energy, helps with mood, aides in gut health, makes you less sluggish, improves quality of sleep, and helps with weight management! 

Eating healthy also helps prevent, delay, and manage heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases. The more conscious you become of how healthy eating literally fuels your body and brain, the more you will want it.

Don’t burn yourself out, you don’t need to switch your eating habits 180 degrees overnight. Start to incorporate new healthy habits to eventually create an overall healthy lifestyle. I am a big proponent of stating goals in the affirmative. I never thrived in a “buck up, buttercup” regime.

Save your will power for when you really need it. Take a few minutes and write down a list of things you know will be better for your health. Drink more water or eat an apple or veggie snack every day rather than a processed treat. Make meals with veggies or salad each day. Eat clean and lean meats, and whole grains. Eat meals between noon and 6pm to give your body a break, intermittent fast.

The list can be as long or short. I would encourage you to keep it short and specific, something that you can easily check off in your head. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is overly processed and filled with sweet, salty and sugary foods, and it can be so hard for your taste buds to get past all those, dare I say addictive, flavors. Which is why I am encouraging you to add in, on purpose, foods in their preprocessed form. It can be hard to retrain our taste buds, but it’s possible!

If you are feeling the need for change, start small, be kind to yourself and don’t give up. Adding healthy food is always a win and if you find yourself eating the old way, take a deep breath and assess why, and then start again.

Your health is so important.

We’re all in different places and our lists will look different. What’s on my list? 1. Drink a fruit/veggie smoothie 5x/week, 2. Drink herbal tea 5x/week, 3. Eat between noon and 6pm most days, 4. Create meals that are made up of 75% fruit, vegetables and salads.

Thank you,

Tristan, Joelle and The Box of Good Crew

When we moved to our current farm, it was about as close to heaven on earth, as one could get. It had a great building where we could pack all of our produce, and use it as a home base. The initial 23 acres that came with our farm were idyllic. The kids had so much room to roam. You might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned the farmhouse. 

Funny story about that, the land and out buildings were the jewels of the 130-year-old homestead. We had been hunting for a farm to buy for 5 years. Land is so critical for a farm. It literally will define what type of farm you are going to be. Dairies and crop farmers staked out claims in the river valleys and beef, chicken, lamb and Christmas tree farmers made the hillsides their homes. We looked long and hard from Okanagan to Goldendale to Montesano, even as far south as Scio in Oregon. 

It was exhausting, everything just out of our reach or didn’t have the right soil type. We finally just paused and prayed this simple prayer, “Lord, if you want us to farm in Snohomish County, you are going to have to provide a way.” It wasn’t more than a week later that a friend of ours was out planting trees on the river banks and had parked across the street in the driveway of what is today our farm. 

I had let all of my farming friends know that we were looking. It just so happened that this particular farm was a rental and the renters had moved out unannounced.. Our friend just happened to be taking a break when the owners, took a break from working and wandered out and struck up a conversation.

She asked, “Do you know anyone looking to buy a farm?” That encounter changed our lives. It had a great building, incredible land, and it was in a part of the flood plain that didn’t have any dikes. Joelle grew up in the Snohomish River valley and she remembered the horrific floods of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and how devastating it was for those families with flood waters flowing through the rafters. We knew we didn’t want to be buying or moving to a farm that was situated behind dikes you can’t see over. 

This farm checked all the boxes, occasional minor flooding, a great barn to work in, and rich soils. The old farmhouse, to quote my mom when we showed her what we had just agreed to buy said, “Are you going to tear it down and put a mobile home on it?” It was in pretty bad shape. To quote another friend of ours, “Fools rush in, where pro’s never tread!” We didn’t know enough to make an informed decision or we didn’t care. WE HAD FINALLY FOUND OUR FARM!

My mom and our dear friend were both right, it was a fixer, but the house had good bones, and we had considerable energy back then (today not so much). 

We no longer use the out buildings for packing, and have since moved that part of our operation to downtown Stanwood. And now the farm is where we grow food for you. It is also where we live. It’s become a place where the third generation runs and plays, recreating many of the same memories that their parents had.

As we draw closer to our 22nd year of growing vegetables, that one prayer back in 2003, changed everything.

-Tristan, Joelle and the Box of Good crew

I must chalk all this crazy weather up to- well – winter! One of our team members commented that she was ready for some warm weather – so am I. I do, however, like winter with its own brand of beauty and its own rhythm. 

I like shoveling the walkways and stacking firewood for the winter fires, but there is one winter chore that must be done in a timely manner or else! It is keeping the snow off the greenhouses, thankfully that is an infrequent occurrence. One of the challenges in our area is that the snow is wet and can flatten a greenhouse quickly. When I, unexpectedly, woke up last week to 4 inches of snow, my first look was out towards the greenhouses. All was well.

We are about 3 weeks away from starting our lettuce and onion transplants and then hopefully, weather permitting, those seedlings will go out into the field at the end of April. This planting schedule is a bit later than normal, but when I look back through the seasons, it just makes sense for us, to start a little later and avoid all the unpredictable weather that is associated with the winter and spring tug-a-war.

Mind you, this is my plan, and it is subject to change. Mostly because we have always started early, and it is so hard to not take advantage of good weather, when it pops up. But, more often than not the early planted crops usually harvest about the same time as the later planted crops, because they struggle in the early weeks. So, my strategy is to skip that first transplant window in early March and wait till the first day of spring to start. I have also asked Joelle to hide the tractor keys till March 21st! 😊 

This week’s Box of Good.

When I look at this menu, I immediately start thinking about roasting vegetables. Carrots, parsnips, sweet onions, green beans and broccoli. Oh my! But I am also partial to steaming all these as well. If I were going to steam the vegetables, I would cut up the carrots and parsnips into ¼ inch rounds and steam them for 10 minutes and then add in the green beans and broccoli and cook for another 10 minutes, drain and add a dollop of butter a pinch of salt and dig in. 

Bon Appetit,

-Tristan, Joelle and the Box of Good crew

Monsanto won, or so one would think. They have controlled the USDA and the FDA for decades. There is a revolving door of legislators, VP’s and consultants that have traveled from Monsanto to the USDA, FDA or even higher places like John Ashcroft, the once Attorney General, and back to Monsanto. It is a game as old as our government has existed, but in the post WW2 era, big business has had way too much influence on our food and farm policy. This is wrong, but I can only do what I can, and becoming an organic farmer and proponent of a different food system, was something I could do. 

The first ‘back to land,’ modern organic farming era, came during the 70’s, coming on the heels of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. Another ‘back to the land’ was brewing in the 90’s. That is where Joelle and I began our organic farming journey, or more precisely, where the seeds of our organic farming journey were planted and germinated.  

I remember it as clearly as yesterday when I met my first organic farmer. We were recently married and were trying to find our way as young adults. We had two children and 3^rd on the way. I fortuitously stumbled upon a job as a produce person at a boutique retail produce store in NW Portland called Kruger’s Specialty Produce. At that time, we sacrificed financially, leaving a good job, but with little upside for growth. We needed to subsidize our income, so I started my own janitorial business working evenings to make ends meet. I ended up cleaning the offices at a farm chemical plant. I remember when I started the manager told me, “If you bring in any employees, we do not want any pregnant women working in the warehouse.” I could not get that out of my mind. It was ironic that I had two paths before me, working for a company that sold products that killed versus working for a company that promoted growth and health. I could not stay at that warehouse. 

Almost immediately, at the produce market, I was introduced to organic farmers delivering their beautiful produce. They were working with nature; they were committed to not using chemicals and toxic chemistry to grow food for people. They believed that soil health was of paramount importance and eschewed conventional/chemical practices. It was not easier for them, but it was the only way forward. Many were farmers that were sick and tired of farming with chemicals, who watched their soil health deteriorate, and others were looking for a way out of corporate America. No matter what the path, they were committed to a different food system. 

Their conviction was infectious and that inspired the beginning of our home delivery journey. We started delivering organic produce in 1988 and with every delivery, my passion to find a way to farm increased. It took Joelle and I another 5 years before we planted our family at our Stanwood farm and started to grow food! 

24 years later we are still at it. 

Tristan, Joelle and the Box of Good crew 

During the winter months we are busy planning and preparing for the upcoming farm season. We look through farm and seed catalogs and choose some tried and true varieties and look for fun, new varieties! This year we’ll purchase seeds from our local supplier, Osborne Seed plus High Mowing and Peaceful Valley. We purchase only certified organic seeds – to support organic farming methods that align with our values and those of our valued customers. 

This warm weather is getting the farming juices flowing through my veins, and as the days get longer, these telltale signs point to the fact that soon it will be time to grow food. For over two decades we have let weather dictate our farming schedule and that has worked well. But the downside is that crops take longer to grow when planted earlier, we often must till and re-till the soil due to sporadic weather, and hope for a good weather window to plant those early transplants.  

When I factor in my desire to farm and the realities of weather, the early spring feels more like running on a hamster wheel. I have winter’s worth of energy and desire all pent up! But when I surveyed the previous 20 farming seasons, I approached John, our main farmhand, about intentionally starting a little later. We decided back in December to not fall prey to the Siren’s Song of early spring. We are going to start seeding crops in trays on the first day of spring! This is a big shift for us, because normally we would be planting out our trays on the first day of spring.  

Our soil is heavy and, while it responds fine to early tilling, it really works up nicely later in the spring. Starting later will also create better seed beds and facilitate quicker crop growth. One major advantage to starting later is there will be less weeding. In the early spring, weeding is more akin to relocating the weeds as we hoe, (moving clumps of weeds around) compared to having them dry out and die off. Starting just a little later we will be able to skip one whole cycle of weeding. 

We are also going to focus on multiple varieties of salad crops this year, and we plan to bring back the pumpkin patch for 2022!  

Tristan