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What’s for Dinner?

TKE_CoverOption2-500x500We’ve recently added a cookbook to our line of offerings: The Kale Effect! Co-written by one of our own Klesick customers, Christina Bandaragoda, this delightful cookbook will have you dishing up your dark leafy greens in some of the tastiest recipes ever! Our article this week is an excerpt from the cookbook. Enjoy!

Every Thursday afternoon the Klesick Family Farm delivery truck pulls up to my house with my weekly Box of Good – a box full of fruits and vegetables that are good for my family, good for my local economy and good for the earth. Thursday has become my favorite day of the week, my sigh of relief, a moment in time when my hope in the future is regularly renewed.  

How can a box of fruit and vegetables have this effect? The tangible benefits are obvious.  The time I save shopping I now spend with my family. The money I used to spend on fuel driving to the store is now allocated to buying food. The intangible benefits are less obvious and depend on my perception, attitude and meaning I attribute to how these fruits and vegetables made their way to my kitchen. I trust my local businessman. Based on my experience, I know that the produce will be of good quality, fresh, and free from toxic or harmful chemicals. As my family struggles with various allergies and food intolerances, I place a high value on toxin-free food. Why add more unknowns to the chemical cocktail we encounter in our modern industrialized lifestyle? 

I also consider the challenge of being introduced to new kinds of foods an intangible benefit. I know that if a vegetable I have never eaten before arrives in my box, I can find a delicious way to prepare it. I also believe that my Box of Good has the benefit of preserving open space.

Knowing that a portion of my grocery budget contributes to maintaining working farms in my county is valuable. I used to think of local farmers as guardians and stewards of our landscapes, soils and water. As each Thursday rolls around I become increasingly aware that it is us, the customers, who are guardians and stewards with each food purchase we make. Those with economic access to sustainably grown food should take this responsibility seriously.

Our buying habits determine the future of the farms in our surrounding communities as well as the health of our environment. The cultural perception that as a society we value nature, open space, clean air and water is an idea that has not been fully realized. This cloudy vision of a sustainable future can become a clear reality one grocery bill at a time.

Enjoy this Everyday Kale Salad from The Kale Effect Cookbook

Christina Bandaragoda
Christina is from Michigan, received her bachelors degree at Wheaton College, and later attended Utah State University where she received her masters and doctoral degrees in Civil Engineering. She now works as a hydrologist and environmental consultant.

 

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Picnic Time!

picnicWhen was the last time you went on a picnic? Now that Summer has officially started, why not enjoy it? Pack dinner, gather your friends and family, and head out on a lazy, sunny afternoon for a relaxed picnic.

Picnics are great for groups of all sizes. They feel romantic and intimate with your loved one, or fun and exciting with children. Even if you decide to go on a solo picnic with a good book you will end up feeling relaxed and re-energized.

If you're lucky enough to live in the Pacific NW, the options on where to go for a picnic are endless. If not, set up a blanket and plates in your own backyard! 

Here's a few helpful tips from our friends at Table Talk by Rosanna:

– Plan a menu that's easy to pack. Think sandwiches, bags of cut up fruit and veggies, salads – simple no-muss, no-fuss foods that you enjoy.

– Don't forget the beverages! Try sparkling water with chopped fresh fruit or fresh lemonade for a change! 

– Remember to pack the heaviest items at the bottom of your picnic basket – no one wants to eat a smashed sandwich!

– Keep one or two cold packs in your picnic basket to keep drinks and other chilled items cool.

– Don't forget the non-food essentials such as a good, heavy blanket (those with a waterproof bottom work best), flatware, napkins, plates, cups, and corkscrews. Fun items such as books, frisbees, horseshoes, playing cards, etc. And don't forget the sunglasses and SPF!

– Make sure to take trash bags – you don't want to leave a mess behind!

Have a great time!

Adapted from Table Talk by Rosanna.

 

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How Important is Farmland Anyway?

farmHere is a great equation for national security: Let’s continue to convert over a million acres of farmland every year for habitat restoration or strip malls. 

The conversions are great for a few landowners and the developers who profit from them, but what is in it for the rest of the community? For starters, eventually food production can now join oil as an imported control piece, a piece that is controlling us. Sure we have lots of land in this country, but most of it is going to the highest bidder and if crops don’t pay as well as something else, most farmland goes on the block and out of production.

Recently, the City of Arlington received an application to develop a piece of farmland at Island Crossing. Dwayne Lane’s Chevrolet has been fighting to move to this location before Congressman Rick Larsen was a congressman. At that time, the Growth Management Act was able to hold the line on preserving this prime agricultural land from going into development. Eventually, the City of Arlington was able to annex this noncontiguous piece of land and all of Island Crossing, and in the process doom agriculture and the ability of that land to feed the Puget Sound region.

The most valuable land we have in this country is our resource lands: timber, mining and farmland. These types of land provide the bedrock for our economy and our national security. We should do everything possible to ensure that these lands are converted as a last resort. I would contend that land closest to the cities is the most vulnerable land and also the most valuable. 75% of our dairies, fruit and vegetable farms are located near urban populations.

If we need more of anything in this country, it is more fruits and vegetables, not less. We need to expand fresh fruits and vegetables reach to the inner cities, hospitals and schools. We need to expand the reach of organically grown foods and foods grown without synthetic chemical fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides. We need to stop coddling mega food corporations, mega chemical corporations and mega farms, and change our national food policy to feed our people healthy nutrient-rich food. 

I got an idea: Let’s make the quality of food a priority, not the size of a campaign contribution or the shareholder’s profits.

The farmland at Island Crossing is all but lost. Unfortunately, the loss of this piece will inevitably doom the land next to it and the land next to that and so on, until Arlington reaches from I-5 to downtown. Then all that beautiful productive farmland will look like the Kent Valley; all because Chevrolets sell better on cheap farmland at Island Crossing then at the better situated, commercially zoned and serviced, non-floodplain Smokey Point exit.  Really?

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Tomatoes & Potatoes

tomatoes potatoesOh baby, has it ever been warm. Of course, the one year I decide to skip sweet corn (our other local farmers are growing this crop) the weather is perfect. There is some corn in the valley that was waist high by the fourth. Shoot, most farmers are ecstatic with knee high corn by the fourth. For us, the raspberries are on, the peas are on, summer squash is on, the cucumbers and peppers are on. The tomatoes are just turning, the potatoes are already the size of baseballs and soon we will be picking green beans. 

I have been thinking to myself why am I so busy? The other day, I finally came inside at 11 p.m. and realized that I was as hungry as a bear waking up from a long winter’s nap—I had skipped dinner. But the real reason, I am so busy is because we are two to three weeks ahead in most crops. Having that rainy, sunny, rainy, sunny weather cycle has been good for almost everything.

I am a little nervous, though. Strange thing about weather in the NW, last year once it stopped raining at the end of July, it didn’t rain for another 80 days. Most crops appreciate some moisture. And because of the spring and early rains, most crops were able to catch up when the hot August nights rolled around. This year they are early, but will the rains come to carry them to harvest? I think it will work out. But in the end, I can’t change the weather, but I can work with it.

I just planted our last crop of green beans for September harvest and we are now in the process of mostly weeding and harvesting, as opposed to weeding and planting. I love this stage, when we begin to harvest. You get to see the fruit of your labor and, more importantly, you get to start paying off the fertilizer bill, fuel bill and the labor bill, and, hopefully, at the end of the season in November, there will be some $$bills left for the farmer ☺! 

We also managed to get a few hundred bales of hay in the barn. Feels good to have some feed for the beef cows put up in case this great weather holds. When it comes to raising beef, I mostly focus on the grass. My goal is to manage the grass so that the cows don’t overgraze it. I want it to bounce back and get growing again. Rarely does a day go by that the cows are not moved to a fresh pasture. Yes, it is absolutely way more work for us to move our animals daily, but it is way better for the pasture to move the cows daily. And in a year like this…August grass will be a premium if we have another glorious summer with little or no rain till October.

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