Tag: spring 2018

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Thank You

I still remember the day that Joelle and I made the bold decision to offer home delivery of farm fresh produce and started delivering to those first 50 customers.  In some ways it seems like a lifetime ago and in other ways it seems just like yesterday! And we are always excited to see another local family sign up and make a decision to take charge of their health.

The American food system is broken and anything but healthy. Political and profit motivation have left Americans sicker and sicker with each new generation. Many Americans prefer a pill to solve their health/dietary issues, whether it be a prescription or vitamin. Slick advertising campaigns selling us more energy or added vitamin C, E, Calcium, blueberries, cherries, aronias etc. enticing us to buy their products. Like that will make all the added sugar or fat in their blueberry muffins healthy and good for us! Anyone ever make jam at home and think, “WOW! 4 cups of white sugar to 1 cup of fruit.” That is certainly good for the Sugar industry, marginally good for the blueberry farmer, but not so good for us. Sadly, that is how most of the food industry operates – best for the manufacturer, okay for the farmer and not so good for us.

For the last 20 years, Klesick has stood for real food, grown without chemicals that adds value to your life. It is not easy being a small business and it is certainly not easy being a farmer, but it is a privilege. It is a privilege growing, sourcing and delivering farm fresh organic fruits and vegetables directly to you, giving you an organic food choice that is fresher and healthier—fresher and healthier for you, your family and our planet.

For Joelle, myself and the Klesick team we want to extend a deep and heartfelt thank you for supporting our organic farm, organic farming and the organic food alternative. Together we, you and the Klesick team, are sending a strong message to the large multinational farms and food processors that we value local farms, we value local companies and we value nutrition rich food.

 

Together we are making a difference.

 

Tristan

 

Health Advocate and Farmer

 

 

 

 

 

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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