As a farmer, I need to be a full-time lobbyist for common sense.  The USDA and folks in Washington D.C. can create a lot of extra work for us small farmers!  One seemingly little law or rule change can seriously impact our lives, farms, and future.  Currently, there is one such proposed bill going through the US Senate and also a rule change being considered for beef cattle and grazing with the USDA. 

I’ll admit that I barely have enough time to run the farm, let alone the country! I rely upon a few key groups to highlight the big concerns that require a little more attention. I pay attention to the Cornucopia Institute and American Farmland Trust as my primary sources of information when it comes to healthy food and farmland preservation.

While I am busy raising food, the folks in Washington D.C. are busy making life a little more interesting.  Currently, there is a food safety bill going through the US Senate that will do nothing, in my opinion, to improve food safety, but it will certainly be easier for the large food processors and large farms to comply with.  Why do most laws seem to benefit the large multinational corporations?

The same goes for the USDA.  Currently, the USDA is considering allowing certified organic beef cows an exemption that allows them to be raised for up to 120 days in a feedlot.  This is a rule that is purely being considered to make it easier for feedlot owners to be able to label their animals as certified organic.  As a farmer who is concerned for the animal’s welfare and the environment, the feedlot is the last place I would send my animals!  (Granted, there are seasons when animals need to be confined, like during heavy rain storms and the wetter months, to protect the grass and grazing pastures during their vulnerable stage.)  But this loophole is not designed to protect the environment, it is so the feedlot owners can “finish” the beef before harvesting them in a conventional way and still get the benefit of using the organic label.

I am firmly committed to the “Know your Farmer, Know your Doctor, Know your Mechanic” concept.  The more people with whom we have relationships, the more tangible and authentic the service and/or products will be!  This country is too big to expect Washington D.C. to manage or micromanage everything.  Somehow, some way, we the citizens need to have more input, and it needs to be at the local level. 

I have posted these two e-mail alerts I received from the Cornucopia Institute on our Box of Good blog. As a farmer I can respond, but to really affect change, I need voters to “chime” in and support local, sustainable farming!  These laws and rule changes affect me as a farmer and my livelihood, but they also affect your health and, potentially, your access to healthy food.

Tristan

Stephen, the now big brother to our little Joanna Prayse, is my farm helper.  (Now, I really think he is helping mom by helping me, but nonetheless, I enjoy spending time with him!) Stephen, like most of my children, and probably like many of your children, loves to work with his daddy. 

The other day, when I was doing the initial pruning on the Honeycrisp and Chehalis apple trees, Stephen was working alongside me. When pruning trees, the first thing I do is decide what branches are going to stay and then I start cutting. I always make up my mind before I start pruning. I want to prune the branches so that light will be able to get into the tree canopy to help the fruit ripen. I also want to consider places for my ladder to get close to the tree. Even though I won’t need a ladder for a few more years, I need to leave an opening for them now while the tree is still establishing fruit bearing branches. So, you see, a little training now will be helpful later…which is why Stephen is my helper. Training trees and children will not happen unless I am hands on.

As I was pruning, Stephen was asking, “When is it my turn?” I was able to find branches that he could prune for me on most trees. I try and let him actually prune the tree, involving him in valuable work, not busy work. We were finishing up the Honeycrisp apples when I snapped this picture of Stephen pruning the tree. We had picked out a good branch to prune. I stepped back to capture the moment as he cut the branch, and just as I was finished taking the picture, I realized that Stephen had cut a branch that I wanted to keeeeeep!!! All is not lost. The tree will grow another branch and, most importantly, it was a very good cut.

Tristan

We have been tuning our stringed instruments, the brass and woodwinds are warming up, and the percussionists are readying themselves!  Now, the lights dim and all is quiet. In moments, the orchestra will erupt into an awe-inspiring symphonic masterpiece.

Don’t you just love a good piece of music? I do. At this moment, I have the William Tell Overture running through my mind. Its signature piece is only a small part of the entire overture and several instruments need to work together to make it all one beautiful piece of music. Gioachino Rossini quietly introduces this wonderful score to us, much like winter yielding to spring.

February and March are much like the precursory to the overture. We, in tune with nature, are warming up in preparation for a beautiful and harmonious blend of music. We are starting to work our fields, read the weather and the soil, and hit a few of the notes where the weather, the soil and tractors work together to prepare those first few seed beds.

Just as the music moves from a contented score to the race-like pace, so do we as farmers! As the calendar marches towards summer and the weather warms, we begin to plant more and more crops. At some point, almost majestically, midway through the summer our work switches to both planting and harvesting. 

Then, just as Rossini begins to end his overture with an exhilarating crescendo, our farm ushers in fall with its own crescendo – an abundant harvest!  All season we have been building towards the crescendo and then our farm and its farmers enter into a winter rest to contemplate and reflect on the season past and rejuvenate for the next season. Oh, I love farming!

Writing this newsletter fills me with emotion. I have so many memories of our farm:  different harvests, working alongside my children and my horses. My mind wanders to our fall festival, where you and your children have come and harvested potatoes, experienced 100 years of history, or played in our organic soil. Just like Rossini’s William Tell Overture, the musical score, with all the instruments, the musicians, and the lighting crew – all are playing a beautiful and important part to make it what it is. 

Just like farms and cities, forever wedded together, not so much different than a beautiful piece of music. 

I am glad to be in the symphony alongside of you,

Tristan

P.S. – KFF caught on video!  One of our happy customers in Everett featured our home delivery of “A Box of Good” in a CNN iReport story entitled, “Healthy Eating in Everett, Washington: Report by a Former Fast Food Junkie.” Watch it at:  http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-420779

I can remember one year, when we had a great February and March, but then April was horrible and May wasn’t much better.  That year I didn’t act on the early weather, and was waiting for the normal spring start in April.  What a mistake!  This year we have tentatively opened up about 3 acres of ground. We haven’t planted anything, but we have cultivated the ground, which facilitates drainage.  As soon as we get that two or three day window of dry weather we will be preparing the seed beds for peas, spinach and beets.  I can hardly wait!

I love this time of year with all of its unpredictability, unusual weather and timing issues.   I am constantly in touch with my second son Aaron (15 y/o), assessing the farm season and the next steps.  He is my tractor guy, Mr. Fix-it and all around great farm hand.  If I am at the office or at a meeting I will check in with him and consult about working a field or the condition of a recent planting.  I love driving a tractor, but both Aaron and my #3 son, Andrew (12 y/o), are better tractor drivers than I am!  If we as a farm are going to stay on schedule for plantings or harvesting I am going to need those boys to make it happen.  And make it happen they do!

Aaron, just for fun, got two free riding lawn mowers (not working of course) last fall and now has got them running. The catch is, he created one articulating tractor from the two!  Now most of you reading this e-mail are probably of the female persuasion, and so may not care a whole lot about tractors and mowers, but I encourage you to let your boys, both young and old, have a peek at what some old iron can become!  Aaron’s homemade, reconfigured, utility tractor can be found at www.4×4tractor.blogspot.com. This is still a work in progress, but I have plans for this mighty little machine on the farm!

Who knows…Aaron might be the next Wright brother, or Henry Ford, or John Deere!  All I know is that he is using his imagination to build and create something useful. As a homeschooling dad, that is worth everything to me!

Farming with the next generation,

Tristan

I overheard  my daughter Maddy (8) correcting her younger sister Maleah (5) last week.  Maleah was using the word “dirt” as they were playing with BRIO train tracks, a Lincoln log house and a few little people. Maddy, in the casual course of conversation, responded to the word “dirt” by saying that it is actually “soil.” Maleah agreed and they went on playing. 

As their farming father, I was particularly happy to hear my 8 year old refer to “dirt” as “soil.”  For me, my soil is everything. It determines what kind of farmer I am and what crops I can grow. Yes, I am a farmer that raises vegetables, nuts, fruit, cattle and hay, but for the most part those are the crops that my soil allows me to raise. Essentially, I am a soil farmer. Soil is a gift from God. It holds all the essential minerals that plants need to grow. With the addition of some water and sunshine, I have the perfect environment to farm. Yeah!!!

So when Maddy uses the term “soil” instead of “dirt” I pay attention because she is showing respect to the building blocks of life.

Dave Hedlin of Hedlin Farms has said more than once, “Dirt is what you sweep off the kitchen floor and soil is what you grow food in.” Amen!

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Have you noticed that we are now on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr?! We are taking advantage of these new forms of media to keep in touch with you, let you know about special promotions and clue you in on what’s happening on the farm. We’re uploading scenery photos from the farm every month. Join us and watch the seasons change! I have posted a picture of my little ones playing with their BRIO train tracks and Lincoln logs. Go and check it out and feel free to share with us a picture of your kiddos having fun.

Facebook.com/KlesickFamilyFarm

Twitter.com/boxofgood

Flickr.com/photos/klesickfamilyfarm

We are tentatively firing up the tractors and getting ready for spring.  I have called the lime spreader and hopefully he will be ready to lime our fields this week.  In farming, timing can be critical and for the Klesick Family Farm, with all of our diversity, we need to lime as early as possible.  This year, based on soil samples and crop observations from last year, we will need about a ton of lime per acre to raise our calcium levels up. The reason I want to apply lime now is because we raise grass for hay and grass for our beef cows and we raise vegetables and fruit.  With all of these different cropping needs, early spring applications allow us the greatest flexibility.

Calcium has been called the “trucker” of nutrients – you could even call it the “life of the party.”  Plants really love adequate calcium and many nutrients attach themselves to it and follow it up into the plant from the soil.  I wish farming was as simple as adding calcium, but then there are magnesium ratios and manganese ratios and nitrogen needs as well as trace micro nutrients like boron and zinc, which are some of the minerals needed to grow the plants. I also have to keep track of the soil bacteria and make sure they are happy because they feed the plants the minerals that I am applying to my fields.

As a rule, I try and keep my soil profile full of minerals for this simple reason: if the minerals are not present in the soil, the minerals will not be in my crops and, sadly, not in your food.  America has too many empty calories on its plate already and my customers are not going to be getting any empty calorie food from me.

Whatever happened to the good old days of adding manure and barnyard wastes to your fields, working it in and growing food?  I think what has happened is technology.  We now can add just the right amount of this nutrient or that nutrient because through soil sampling we now know what we are missing in our soil.  I am happy that the technology exists, but for some reason I still hasten back to Grandpa’s gardens and he never soil sampled. He just cleaned out the chicken house and loafing sheds and worked it into the garden and, voila, green beans and green peas coming out his ears.  I know, because I remember sitting on the back porch snapping beans and shelling peas.

I suppose I have blended both worlds—Grandpa’s and mine.  I use a draft horse for some of the work and I compost lots of materials which I add to our fields in liberal amounts.  I raise beef cows and and so did he. He raised vegetables and fruit for his family and I raise them for my family and your family.

I guess you might say that my farm has a lot of my Grandpa in it.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tristan

I have been trying to stay on track myself, spend more time with my family, lose a few pounds, get a little more sleep and exercise daily.  I have been measuring my goals using an excel spreadsheet. It is amazing the accountability that comes from journaling your successes and need I say it, yes, setbacks.

I have one of those scales that measures pounds the old fashioned way.  Have you ever noticed that 1 inch on that scale looks like a mile, even if it is only 10lbs.  Losing 10 pounds is not hard, but keeping it off is the real work.  Keeping weight off requires diligence and a change of habit.  For the last two months I have been pretty religious about getting up a 5:30am and doing a 30 minute workout.  I don’t have any exercise equipment and I am only using 5 lbs dumbbells, but it is working.  My hope is to encourage you that you can simply affect your goals with an at home exercise program that doesn’t cost a lot of $$$$.

I also use that time when I am finished working out to make a fresh glass of vegetable and fruit juice.  I absolutely love the colors of fresh juice. I posted a picture of this morning’s juice online at my blog.  The picture is straight from the juicer before I pour it into the glass for my wife and me.  The colors in fresh juice are incredibly vibrant, almost neon. The reds, the pinks, the oranges, and greens are bursting with flavor and  with vitality.

I have had increased energy, more time on my hands and kept off a few of those pounds that tended to hang around during the holiday seasons (especially since I am a forty something now).  The nice thing is that I have gained some traction on my goals and I have measureable results to document, and more importantly encourage me to press on.

The success I was feeling from juicing fresh fruits and vegetables and exercising was the inspiration for our newest “box of good” the Juicer’s box. The Juicer’s box has the old standby juicing fruits and vegetables with a few weekly menu changes (to spice it up) to make about 12-14 glasses (10 – 12oz.) of juice a week.

Keep up on those New Year’s resolutions and if necessary “fire” them up again and start with a slightly different plan than the last one.  You, and only you, can ultimately affect your personal health and your family’s health,  here, at the Klesick Family Farm we appreciate being a part of those healthy lifestyle choices and changes.

Cheers to good health,

Tristan

This is a time of year when people are making lifestyle changes for good. We all start to focus on maintaining healthy eating, exercise and setting goals for ourselves to keep us eating healthy. However, there are so many others—friends, family members, and neighbors—who could benefit from the fresh variety of fruits and veggies that you’ve been enjoying!  This season, we want to partner with you in the goal to share the good!

Many new customers join our team of faithful customers at this time every year, and many of those new customers are referrals from you! We are always so excited when a new customer signs up and gets on board with “a box of good” that we send out a thank you gift! Be it one of our incredible coffees, artisan sourdough breads, or delicious products from Sweet Creek Foods, we send out one of these offerings to both the new customer and the existing customer that referred them to us!

This has been a fun way for you to sample some of our product offerings, and yet we decided to make it even more fun for you to refer your friends. We are having a “Share the Good” contest! From now through the month of February, not only will you receive the standard thank you gift for your referrals, but for every two people you refer, your name will be entered into a drawing for the chance to win one of three unique prizes!

Chocolate Lovers Cookie Box
A completely unique, beautiful gift package of Breadfarm’s most delicious chocolate concoctions
Cocoa Nibs
Espresso Shortbread
Chocolate Thumbprints
Dark Chocolate Almond Biscotti

Breakfast Selection
½ lb. of Camano Island Coffee Roasters’ Coffee of the Month
Artisan Chuckanut Multigrain Bread
Local Organic Eggs, 1 doz.
Local Creamed Honey, 12 oz.
2 jars of Fruit Spread, 10 oz. each

Lunch Assortment
Artisan Honey Wheat Sandwich Bread
Albacore Tuna, 7.5 oz.
Dill Pickles, 16 oz.
Peanut Butter, 16 oz.
Fruit Spread, 10 oz.

The prize drawing will take place February 26 and winners will be notified immediately thereafter.

We are excited about making your referrals more rewarding! So spread the word! Share the good!

This is the famous time of the New Year’s Resolutions.  We save up all of our energy, build up all the muster we have, to make the big push to change something.  If we could only apply all the time we spend waiting to implement the change to the actual change, most of us would be more successful than less in our new habits. 
The crux of the issue boils down to motivation and accountability.  Some would throw in desire, but I have all the desire I need to start anything, but I really need that motivation that comes from accountability to succeed.  “The experts” say it takes 91 days to change a habit.  I think they are right.  It takes 91 days to make the new habit an old habit.

But if we are going to make it to 91 days, we need a plan with some measurable goals.  But don’t spend too much time thinking about your plan. We love to plan in this country, the shelves are filled with dust covered intentions. You already know what areas you want to improve, pick one and get started!

So if you need to eat healthier, make a plan to eat a salad every day or bring a lunch to work three days per week.  You might decide to walk for 30 minutes, rain or shine, three or four days a week.  These are measurable goals that will eventually lead to the bigger goal of losing weight or increasing your stamina or whatever.

So let’s get started!  Most of us already have a mental plan, the plan needs shoe leather.  I can’t resist one farmer’s comment at this time: “It is hard to get the field plowed, if you never put the plow in the field.”  So let’s put the plow in the field.  Plowing isn’t always easy and it isn’t always pretty, but if you don’t start plowing, you can’t plant and if you don’t plant you can’t harvest (your goals).

Now tell a spouse, a friend, your farmer (smile) about your goals and ask them to motivate and encourage and hold you accountable on your new venture.  Just get going. You can’t harvest your goals, until you plow the field.

Happy Plowing!