Tag: klesick farms

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I am Grateful

 

Lately I’ve been noticing that every time someone asks me, “How are you?” or “How was your summer?” or “How have things been lately?” the response is always the same: “Busy.” In fact that’s been the response for quite some time.

At first I believe I viewed being busy as the sign of adulthood. As a kid I remember hearing adults responding in the same way so often that I grew to think that was the right answer or, at the very least, the answer to aspire to. To be busy is the goal then, I thought. Somehow I began to put value in being busy, so that when I would respond to those questions with “I’ve been busy,” it came with a certain bit of pride.

I’m not sure that summer could have any other answer than “busy” when you have three children to keep entertained and a freelance job to manage, but I have a new goal for the fall: I want to respond in a different way. For that to occur, I think there is a mindset shift that needs to happen. Busy is no longer the goal – joy is, satisfaction is, health is, gratitude is.

If we saw each other on the street and you asked me, “How are you?” and I responded, “I’m grateful,” what would we think? I think both of us may be a bit surprised at such an unexpected response, but that is my goal – to reach for grateful over busy, joyful over overwhelmed, and satisfied over frenzied.

Fall will indeed still be busy with birthdays to celebrate, school starting, and the holidays nestled in there too, but there will also be slow-simmered roasts and braises, pots of soup, and loaves of bread that can’t be rushed and aren’t too keen on busy days. They beg to be sipped, savored, and doted on with a sort of ease that causes me to pause.

May this next season, however busy it may be, remind us that there is more to life than the busyness. Let’s focus on that.

Ashley Rodriguez

Chef, Mom, Food Blogger, Author

www.notwithoutsalt.com

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Everything is Early!

While our family was picking Gravenstein apples last week, I couldn’t help but notice that the Honeycrisp trees were full of red fruit. The telltale sign of ripeness is when the underlying color turns from green to yellow. On a red apple that can be a little harder to discern from a distance, but up close it is pretty obvious. Another sign that the fruit is getting ready is with how easy it comes off the tree. Most of the time, when an apple is not ripe, picking it resembles a tug-o-war match. At that moment, wise farmers concede defeat and wait a few more days J. The worst way to determine when an apple is ready to pick is to wait till they are all on the ground! With that said, there are always a few overachievers that ripen early and fall, which is a sure sign to get picking!ravenstein and Honeycrisp apples are three weeks early, potatoes are early, winter squash is really early, garlic and raspberries are not so much early, and corn loves this weather. But most things are early, especially for the later maturing crops. The good thing is that they are early and not dead! The dry spring and early summer has taken its toll on crops, but with good management we were able to use the heat to our advantage.

Having some late August rain has certainly helped take the edge off the fall harvest. The squashes—Delicata, Acorn, the three varieties of pie pumpkins, Kabocha (yes, Eileen, I planted those for you!) and Sweet Dumplings—have loved this weather. If truth be told, they are ready to be picked, but it just messes with my mind to think about havesting winter squash in August. So I will continue to walk past them, smile, and pretend they have a few weeks to go!

If the weather pattern continues trending with wetter winters and drier summers, us farmers will begin to shift the timing of our plantings and eventually even the crops we grow, to better fit the “new” growing season. Things like June strawberries will be replaced with May strawberries – I can hardly even say, “May strawberries.” On our farm we will definitely plant spinach, beets, chard, and peas earlier to take advantage of the rain and warmer springs. I will probably plant tomatoes and peppers outside the greenhouses.

There is an upside to drier summers: the heat produces sweeter tasting fruit and little water stress “kicks” the sugar off the charts. It just requires us farmers who are normally “water rich” to adjust to less water and watch for signs of stress. I am confident we can make the switch!

The long and short of it is that local farmers are going to have a few challenges with when and what to plant for the next few years, but dealing with weather isn’t new and growing food isn’t either.

tristan-sign

Farmer Tristan

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NYC

The Klesick family carved out some unusually hard-to-find space during the summer and went to visit Joelle’s sister in Manhattan last week. Mostly, it took a lot of early planning of what crops to plant and when to plant them. It also helped that we have an amazing team of people we work with to keep the farm going.

NYC: what an eye opening experience that was. Of course, I have been to big cities, but nothing quite like New York City. We logged over 60 miles on our feet (Joanna, our intrepid 5 year old, walked every one of them!).

I keep thinking about the story, Country Mouse, City Mouse. We live on 40 acres in the floodplain and they live in a 15 story high rise apartment in Manhattan. We pick berries, apples, kale, cucumbers as we walk the fields and they stop by the grocery store in the bottom floor of their apartment.  Amazing!

I am sure when they come to see us, it is too quiet for them to sleep, as for us, that city never sleeps – it just slows down a notch. We did the tourist thing from Central Park, to The Met, the Museum of Natural History, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty. The 9/11 Memorial was intense and beautiful. We even went to a Yankees vs Red Sox game via the subway.  Now that was an experience! Just imagine trying to squeeze twelve more people into a Prius that already has five passengers. Definitely no personal bubble space!

On our way to DC and Philadelphia, I got to see some farmland in NJ, PA, DE, MD and VA. Yes, there is still farmland back east and it is a good thing, because when I was in NYC, I had this heavy thought on my mind: “We have to save farmland, because someone has to feed all these people, FOREVER!”

As a farmer, I couldn’t help but think about what it would take logistically to keep NYC fed. That is a daunting task. No one has a car, let alone a freezer or a garden. Yes, there are farmers markets, but they pale in the need to feed millions of people surrounded by high rises and streets. The city is dependent upon outside resources. In fact, I would venture to say that most New Yorkers don’t even think about it.  Why would they? They have to trust the system.

America has amazing infrastructure in place to grow, harvest, process, and deliver food to people everywhere, but if that chain is disrupted even for a day or two, NYC is in a world of hurt. Imagine what a simple snow storm does to grocery store shelves. What would happen if California and Florida were both in a drought and couldn’t produce their traditional volumes of food?

As your farmer, I am working to not only grow healthy food, but preserve the ability to feed future generations. After my visit to NYC, saving Farmland is of even more paramount importance, every acre everywhere!

 

tristan-sign

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Inchelium Red Garlic

We’re sharing our Inchelium Red Garlic harvest with you again next week! These gigantic bulbs not only taste above and beyond “regular” garlic, they have the heritage to back them up! It is considered to be the oldest strain of garlic in North America!

Here’s a little more about this heirloom garlic.

Inchelium Red Garlic Allium sativum var. sativum

One of the most productive of all the heirloom garlics, this softneck variety is also an artichoke type. This means that its bulbs cluster in layers like artichoke petals. The variety was discovered on the variety was discovered on the Coleville Indian Reservation at Inchelium, Washington. It has consistently won high marks (often taking first place) in garlic tastings. From a culinary standpoint, it is probably one of the best of the American heirloom red garlics.

Its historical relevance is profound, it has been identified as the oldest strain of garlic grown in North America, having been grown far before the arrival of English settlers. It was found originally on the Colville Indian Reservation in Inchelium, Washington. Today Inchelium garlic can be found sold under its true name (not simply, garlic) throughout the Pacific West and Northwest United States.

Visit our friends Filaree Farm for more info.

 

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Join Me in Protecting the Integrity of Our Food Supply

Locally, we have been fighting to preserve farmland and now I need your help to convince our two Congress Representatives to vote NO on HR1599: the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act. This bill essentially prevents states from adopting their own GMO laws and REVERSES any laws that have already passed. That is the wrong kind of leadership on this issue.

The anti-GMO community is calling this the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right to Know Act).  I have spoken with Congressman Rick Larsen and Congresswoman Suzan Delbene’s office and neither of them are committing at this time on which way they are going to vote. The vote is in two days – I know how I would vote!

Please click on the link and express your opinion. The vote is scheduled for Wednesday or Thursday. Also, please share this and let’s let our representatives know that GMO’s are not the future and should not receive preferential treatment from the federal government. ASK them to vote NO on HB 1599, aka the DARK Act.

 

Tristan

 

 

Act Now on GMO Labeling to Stop the “DARK” Act

Contact your Representative in Congress today!

From the National Organic Coalition 
The innocuously named HR 1599: the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act has been dubbed the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right-to-Know Act) by members of the good food movement. The DARK Act will be voted on in Congress next week.

The DARK Act will:

  • Prevent states from adopting their own GMO labeling laws and reverse laws that have already passed.
  • Prevent state or county laws regulating GMO crops.
  • Prevent the Food and Drug Administration from requiring companies to label GMO ingredients and instead continue a “voluntary” labeling policy. In 14 years, not one company has voluntary labeled products containing GMO ingredients.

Take action now to stop the DARK Act!

  1. Call the Capitol Hill Switchboard at 202-224-3121, and ask for your Representative’s office where you can leave her or him a message.
    Click here to find out who your Representative is.
  2. Click here to send an email: Tell Congress to oppose the DARK Act and support mandatory GE food labeling!

Below is some sample language for your message to your Representative.
Please customize this to fit your voice.

Please oppose HR 1599 (the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act”). Congress should focus on the labeling solutions that Americans are asking for – not legislation written by and for big food and chemical companies that only serves to keep Americans in the dark.

You may also thank legislators who have come out against the Dark Act and for labeling:

Chris Gibson of New York
Peter DeFazio of Oregon
Barbara Boxer of California

For more information, and to send a message today, click here.

GMO food labeling is important to Americans, with over 90% consistently supporting transparency in the marketplace. In 2013 and 2014 there were over 70 GMO labeling bills introduced across 30 states, with laws being passed in Maine, Connecticut and Vermont.

View this post on Cornucopia.org

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Stonefruit 101

Stonefruit 101

“Stonefruit” refers to members of the genus Prunus, which includes peaches, nectarines, plums, pluots, cherries, and apricots. The season for summer stonefruit is short-lived, and delicious! With the fruit coming and going so quickly, we don’t want you to miss out by having to toss spoiled or improperly ripened fruit. Here’s some info on proper storage in order for you to make the most of these short-season gems.

Care – Store unwashed fruit at room temperature until ripe (usually only 1-2 days), then place in sealed container in the fridge.

Ripeness – Gently press around stem and when flesh gives slightly to pressure fruit is ripe. Stonefruit ripens from the inside to the outside, so if fruit is soft all over it is more likely overripe.

Tips for Preventing Spoilage – Stonefruit’s biggest enemy while ripening is moisture coupled with lack of airflow. Set ripening stonefruit on a cloth or paper-covered countertop or in a place where it gets plenty of airflow. Try setting them stem side down to ripen. This lessens the chance of then rolling and bruising. Once your stonefruit is ripe, it deteriorates very quickly. Within a day of being fully ripe, if left out of refrigeration, you can have overripe/spoiled fruit and some very attracted fruit flies. Check daily and place in refrigerator as soon as you notice the stem area has begun to soften. Take special care when handling your stonefruit – never squeeze to check for ripeness! Even a small bruise will be cause enough to turn into a rot/bruised spot on your fruit as it is still ripening.

Use – Once fruit is ripe, and you’ve placed in the refrigerator, plan to use within a day or two (this gives you a total keeping time of about 4-5 days). Stonefruit is refreshing as a healthy breakfast paired with yogurt or hot/cold cereal, as a topping to a green salad, and as an ingredient in fruit salads. For grilling, or for topping green salads: use slightly less ripe fruit, it will hold up better without breaking apart/juicing. All Stonefruit bakes up fabulously into crisps, pies, and sauces!

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Keep Multi-Family Zones at Higher Densities and Preserve Farmland

A few weeks ago you received an action alert from farmer Tristan Klesick and I, asking for your help in telling the Snohomish County Council to not adopt changes to the County’s Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program. Unfortunately, the County Council did not listen.  Instead, Council’s decision was a missed opportunity and allowed exemptions for single family homes and townhouses from the TDR program, and preserving valuable farmland and local food sources.  

If that wasn’t bad enough, now the County Council is considering removing even more land and development from the TDR Program!

The County Council is considering reducing minimum density requirements in multi-family zones–even those multi-family zones around Highway 99 are perfect for transit-oriented, mixed use redevelopment.  This would allow for single family homes and townhomes in areas that are best suited for higher densities.  It would also remove more land from the TDR program, which would reduce opportunities for protecting critical farmlands in Snohomish County.

If the Council approves, we will lose opportunities for affordable housing near transit; we will lose receiving areas for TDR development credits to preserve farmland, and we’ll have further expansion of our urban growth areas into our rural lands.

That is a lose-lose-lose situation.  Ultimately, if the Council decreases densities in our Multi-Family zones, we will also be adding more and more cars to our roads creating more traffic nightmares, adding more pollutants into our air and water, and giving the developers exactly what they want…open season on our rural lands for more sprawling development!  And we won’t be helping our farmers preserve farmland!

Please CLICK HERE to send a message to the Snohomish County Council today to tell them NO to reducing minimum densities in our Multi-Family zones, and YES to keeping TDR receiving areas intact for these zones to help preserve farmland and local food sources.  

Our Council needs to hear from you!  They need to know that you want housing choices for all income groups and higher densities in the multi-family zones that will help jumpstart transit-oriented development.   We need long-range planning regulations that will house our growing population near transit and urban centers, reduce car trips that are polluting our air and water and clogging our roads, and save farmland from urban sprawl.

The hearing is at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 15th!  Please CLICK HERE  to send the message before the hearing.  If you can, please attend the hearing and speak directly to the Council.

Thank you for your help!

Kristin Kelly, Snohomish/Skagit Program Director, Futurewise

P.S.  If you would like more information about how to support your local farmers and about Klesick Farms, contact Tristan by Clicking Here.

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Kristin Kelly
Email: kristin@futurewise.org
Phone:
Address: 1429 Avenue D, #532
City: Snohomish WA 98290

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Our New-and-Improved Shopping Site!

As of today, the online shopping experience at Klesick Farms just got a whole lot better! Try it out here! The first thing you will notice is that all of our pages now look like they belong to the same good food site, but there also have been a couple of other useful changes. Here’s a quick overview of what our site update means for you.

  1. Mobile-Friendly

Ordering your box of good or adding on that bag of apples while you’re on your phone just got easier. Shopping for your produce now works equally well on your smartphone, tablet or desktop.

  1. Simplified Checkout

With everything on one page while checking out your order, you can easily see all that is required to submit your order.

  1. Improved Order Management

On the view/edit orders page, all of your items on order are grouped by delivery date so you can easily see what is coming each week and change your delivery date if needed.

If you experience any problems with our site, please let us know!

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Preseving Local Food Options & Farmland, Part II

Week of June 21, 2015

Preserving local food options and farmland should not be this hard! The United States has been blessed with some amazing Natural resources like good Farmland, Forest lands, grazing lands, minerals, water and waterways. And since the day this country was founded we pushed west.  Forward Ho! Surprisingly?!?!?!, we reached the Pacific Ocean and no longer can push west.  So what are we going to do now to wisely use the finite natural resources we have been blessed with to provide a quality of life for generations of future citizens?

Farmers are like any other member of our communities. We have kids, grand kids, we have to go to the dentist and doctor, save for weddings and retirement. We also have to manage a large community resource called farmland. And in the last 20 years that management has included an ever increasing regulatory burden, otherwise known as additional expenses to run our farms. And the closer your farm is to the city it gets more complicated, and if you happen to farm next to a river and a city, WOW!

Given the County Council’s appetite to not use Zoning or TDR as mechanisms to shift the Development pressure away from our farms at the moment, we need a different strategy.

I think fair pricing, not price gouging is a part of the solution, but supply and demand drive prices. Having more farms selling to more local folks will keep food prices affordable and have the biggest impact on saving farmland today.

To accomplish this, each of us will have to be intentional. I believe small-to-medium farmers are the key to feeding our local communities. Literally, bringing a box of good to more people is the solution. I have intentionally positioned Klesick farms to play a larger part in feeding our local communities. We have moved to a new packing facility, we have expanded our delivery days and are working with more local growers to get more local food to our customers.

The solution is to have more of you! Yes more of you: customers who are intentional about supporting local farms. It is that simple: the more local customers, the more local farms. So preserving local food options looks like eating locally from local farms! We need more intentional eaters!

Look for information on Facebook and in your inboxes this week as we roll out a new summer campaign to preserve local food options and farmland.

 

Together we can make a difference!

 

Farmer Tristan


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Preserving Local Food Options & Farmland, Part I

Week of June 14, 2015

Last week, Klesick Farms and you, our Good Food Community, teamed up with Kristin Kelly, the executive Director of Snohomish County Futurewise, and the Pilchuck Audabon Society to encourage our County Council to “preserve local food options and farmland.” In 2012 the County Council voted 5-0 to implement the current Transfer of Rights Development (TDR) program. Last week the Council voted 4-1 to essentially gut the TDR program and give the development community the “green light” to build more single family homes. So now the County Council has “caved” in to the developers’ wishes, meaning our urban areas will still receive most of the incoming population growth.

If the Council would have stood on their decision to support TDR, that growth would have still gone to our urban areas, but we would have been able to preserve, forever, thousands of acres of farmland at the same time. The Council, except Dave Somers, didn’t want to hold the line and require the development community to use TDRs. Council members Ken Klein, Terry Ryan, Brian Sullivan, and Stephanie Wright voted against TDR. So now Snohomish County residents will still get the extra growth, but the developers will get more profits and no farmland is protected. That is not a win-win; it is a windfall profit for a few landowners and developers.

Also, in 2012, Council members Brian Sullivan and Stephanie Wright voted for the TDR program. If they would have voted the same way this time or committed to stand with TDR, I wouldn’t have had to ask for your help. Ironically, Council members Brian Sullivan and Stephanie Wright were not running for reelection in 2012, but they are this year.

What really bothers me is the lack of integrity that exists in our political process. This change to the TDR program “came out of nowhere” and was timed to limit public participation and placed into legislation where there is no repeal process. Where is the transparency in that!

This week Kristin and I will be asking for your help again to send one final email message to the County Council expressing our dissatisfaction with their vote and a desire for more transparency in the process. Please join us in sending a strong response for the Council to preserve our local food options and farmland by implementing wise growth policies going forward.

Kristin Kelly and I both believe that the Snohomish County can balance the need to accommodate the future growth with protecting our farmlands. It is more than doable. Click here to send your response to the Snohomish County Council.

Respectfully submitted,

Farmer Tristan