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Breast Cancer Awareness Month

The Month of October is dedicated to Breast Cancer Awareness. In doing research for this article I came across this article from Everyday Health. Cancer is complicated and if you or a someone you know is battling cancer, any type of cancer, you are in a fight. I have copied and pasted the opening paragraph from the article below.

A cancer diagnosis can often be directly linked to your family medical history, your lifestyle choices, and your environment. You can’t control your family medical history, and only some aspects of your environment are up to you. But lifestyle choices like diet, weight, activity level, and smoking are yours to manage.

“Preventive measures are so heavily underutilized by people. And yet they work. Everything in moderation really works”, says Richard R. Barakat, MD, chief of the gynecology service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. (Emphasis mine)

Diseases like Cancer are heart-wrenching and emotionally, physically and financially devastating. I hate what it does to individuals and families. I know that hate is a strong word, but what Cancer does to an individual and their family is devastating.

At Klesick farms, we have a plan to come along side and help. Our Klesick Farms Cancer fighting plan is:

1.We believe in prayer. If you would like us to pray specifically for you or someone you know who is fighting Cancer (or anything else) Email Mike@klesickfarms.com. He organizes our prayer time and customer interactions. All of us care, but Mike is gifted when it comes to caring. Or you can use this link to submit a prayer request or share your story.

2. Everything we sell is a part of the solution. We don’t carry GMO products and 95% of what we provide is fruits and vegetables. Some customers have joined together to fund a Cancer Fighter’s account, so that they don’t have to shop or think about it. Home delivery is great way to come along side and add tangible help. Call us to set up an account for a friend, co-worker or family member. 360-652-4663

3. Lastly, we have discount program for families fighting cancer or heart disease. If you are in the fight of your life, let us know so we can add the health discount to your account. If you would like to donate towards this, we will make sure your donation gets applied to a family fighting Cancer. We are here to help and be a part of the solution.

 

 

Tristan

Farmer/Health Advocate

 

 

Support Healing Through Nutrition

$5 from each purchase goes to our Healing though Nutrition program.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) we are offering Fruit Baskets with Pink Ribbons for $30 delivered to you or directly to the person you want to bless.

 Click Here to add a Basket

 

 

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Cancer

It would be great if no one ever had to hear those words again. Not from a doctor, a spouse, a mom, a dad, a friend, or a FB post.

I remember making a delivery to a customer’s home. I knew she was fighting cancer and would spend a few minutes visiting with her each delivery. Then one day, she wasn’t home at the time of delivery. Do you ever have that foreboding sense in your spirit? I did, she was gone, moved from this life to the next. It still brings me to tears just writing this.

Another time, a longtime customer had stopped deliveries, and I followed up with a call to check in. There was no answer, so I followed up with an email. I got a reply, “Marty died”. I did have a chance to connect with her husband, but what can you say to someone who has lost their wife, the mother of their children and his best friend.

I hate cancer, I hate what it does to people, I hate what it does to families, the carnage it leaves behind can be ruthless, it certainly is no respecter of persons.

If you are battling cancer, please call us, let us pray with you, let us put a Healing Through Nutrition discount on your deliveries. Please let us partner with you and partner with you in your healing by discounting your boxes of good food.

You are one of the reasons we call our boxes “a box of good”. We don’t care why or how you got cancer, we just want to help you battle this disease with high quality organic fruits and vegetables, help you make one less trip to the grocery store, and have one less thing to think about.

What if I don’t have cancer? Be thankful, but you can help others who do? For the next 3 weeks we are offering fruit Gift Baskets with Pink Ribbons for $30 delivered to you or directly to the person you want to bless.

1. Buy one for a friend or family member who’s battling cancer.

2. Or, just buy one or more as gifts. These will make great gifts for anyone, birthday, anniversary, or just because!

And not only will Klesick Farms deliver your fruit baskets, I will donate $5 for each basket sold toward our Healing through Nutrition program and apply a discount to folks fighting cancer. Order today and we will do the rest.

 

Farmer/Health Advocate

Tristan

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Summer Vacations

DSC_3267I know, from 15 years of running this business, that many of you will soon be off to your favorite vacation spot; loading up the “station wagon,” piling in all those kiddos and heading to the mountains, rivers, beaches, etc. 

Well, our team also knows that a few of you, after getting off the plane in Hawaii and settling into your condo, will slice up a beautiful ripe mango, take a juicy bite and then all of a sudden be gripped with panic. At that moment, you will realize that your box of good is about to be delivered to your home because you forgot to reschedule your deliveries! There is no need to fear, however, because we have a highly trained team to help you mitigate the potential disaster. 

Here are our tried and true best strategies to enjoy that stress-free mango:
1.    Order an extra box of fresh produce to take with you on your trip.
2.    Login to your account online and change your delivery dates.
3.    Call, e-mail or Facebook our office and we will make the changes for you.
4.    Leave a note for your delivery driver. 
5.    Donate your box of good to a local food bank during your vacation!

Donating your box of good is a great way to enjoy your vacation (wink, wink). Really, your delivery will be used to help a local family in need eat a little healthier, it will also help local growers and, of course, KFF. Another option is to donate the value of your box to our “Healing through Nutrition” program, where we use your donations to match discounts for other KFF customers who are fighting cancer and heart disease. Please contact our office if you have any questions about these options.

Even if you are not going on vacation this summer, you can still partner with us by ordering a food bank box or donating to our Healing through Nutrition program. 

Back to work on the farm,

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Healing through Nutrition

This is our new outreach for 2012. Last week we shared that the American Cancer Society donated 145 million dollars in 2010 and that 0.3% or $440,000 of that went to nutritional research. Cancer is a multifaceted disease, yet we believe that a healthy diet is vital in prevention, during treatment, and for recovery.  This year we have decided to tackle cancer and heart disease locally, one family and one person at a time.

Deborah was pregnant. During her pregnancy her family discovered she had breast cancer. Her friends opened an account with us and funded it so she could focus on her baby and her treatments, without having to worry about shopping. A soccer team just blessed a fellow player’s family after his father had a stroke. The team mom sent out an e-mail and at the next practice raised $250. That is 10 deliveries of fresh produce. Beautiful, touching, and impactful.

My heart is to alleviate some of the financial burden that our local families are facing as they fight cancer or heart disease by discounting our boxes of fresh produce. We already have a very successful food bank outreach called Neighbor Helping Neighbor. And yet our hope is to expand the good that we, as an organic community, can do and get some healthy produce into the homes of those with diagnosed cancer and heart disease.

Klesick Family Farm is good at growing, sourcing, and delivering nutritionally rich foods that can help the healing process and we want to and need to partner with you to expand our abilities to meet this need in our community.

Here is what I am proposing:
1. If you know of a family medically diagnosed with cancer or heart disease, consider purchasing them a box of good. We will discount your purchase 5% if we deliver it and 15% if you deliver it.
2. If you can’t afford to purchase a box of good for a family, send their name to us and we will try and meet the need through donated funds.
3. Consider donating to our Healing through Nutrition program. We will use these funds to bless those families fighting these diseases.
4. Consider organizing a fundraiser at your office, rotary club, church, etc. and open an account for a family you know fighting these diseases. We will do the rest. A few customers have done this and those families (those giving and those receiving) are forever changed.
5. Lastly, please let us know about the ones you know who are fighting these diseases. Just send us an e-mail to  mike@klesickfamilyfarm.com  with their first name and a short biography and we will add them to our prayer list. If they are important to you, they are important to us.

A few years ago, I learned a valuable lesson. Our family had stopped to help a family that was stuck on the side of the road during a snow storm. We got out and tried to help them, but in the process another car was rear ended, because neither of them could stop on the ice. In hindsight, we couldn’t really help that person who was stuck because we didn’t have the right vehicle (4×4 monster truck) and in some ways we made the situation more unsafe. The person did get unstuck, chained up, and going again, but it had more to do with the aforementioned type of truck stopping and helping.

I share this story because some of you have the ability to financially help another family and others don’t. I am asking you to partner with us where you can to make a difference in the local families fighting these diseases. For some it is to forward names, for others to sponsor a box, and for others help us to fund this Healing through Nutrition outreach. Any and all ways of helping are extremely appreciated.

I love being your farmer and it is privilege to work alongside each of you to make our community a better place!