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Change

Change is afoot here at the Klesick Family Farm. The first change happened last weekend. I was blessed to walk our oldest daughter, Emily, down the aisle! Making that walk is an incredibly emotional moment in a father’s life. In the last two summers, Micah got married, Aaron got married, and now Emily is married. It is a little different, giving away a daughter than it is receiving a new daughter into our family. After all, this is my little girl, who I’d always known would find the love of her life and decide to get married, but it happened way faster than I ever imagined! Joelle and I are very excited for Keiran to join our family and to hand over to him one of our greatest treasures, so that they can begin their journey together.

For those of us who are parents, our children are our most precious crop. We pour our lives into them, teaching them, giving to them, and believing in them. A wedding is a culmination of all of these AND you get a new family member. Emily’s wedding was pretty special.

Another much smaller change that we have made at the Klesick family house and on the farm is to cut out plastic wrap. It has taken a little adjusting, but we are making it work. It is just so easy and efficient to use plastic wrap. But here we are, three weeks into the New Year, and voila, the trash is less full and we have discovered there is life after plastic wrap. Who would’ve have known!

We have located all of our bowls that “had” lids and purchased a set of silicone lids and a few sets of the clear plastic bowl covers. We have mostly used the clear plastic bowl covers because most of the larger main meals like soup or roasts already have lids for the pans we cook in. The silicone lids are excellent for covering salad type bowls. One thing I have noticed is that we rarely cover anything on a plate anymore, whereas before we would routinely use plastic wrap for covering a plate of leftovers.

We are also switching to a re-useable pallet wrap for our business. This move alone will save one garbage can of plastic going to the landfill a week. Another environmentally friendly move we are considering is switching to emailed invoices.

Let us know how your family or business re-uses every day items to benefit the environment.  You can email us or share your ideas on FB, twitter or Instagram!

Thanks for supporting our good food network!
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Farm Update

This is the part of the season where farmers are planting, weeding, and harvesting as well as planning for the next season. Last week, the harvest rotation was cucumbers, snow peas, snap peas, raspberries and zucchini. This week, we have the same harvesting schedule, but less of some and more of others. Raspberries will taper off, with peas, cucumbers and zucchinis kicking in to high gear. We will also be harvesting red leaf lettuce and kohlrabi and a few bunches of chives and sunflowers. Once the harvesting is finished, we have weeding, and lots of it.

Now we are adding irrigation. Irrigation—some farmers lovingly refer to it as “irritation” J. No water, no crops, no food—funny how that works. Fortunately, our soil has a good water-holding capacity, so we get by with a lot less “irritation” than most folks.

Wedding

Our second son, Aaron, has found the love of his life and asked her to be his wife. We are delighted to add Emily to our family and host their wedding in late August on the farm.

The wedding date has precipitated a change in our annual farm festival, which has traditionally been the third weekend in August. As parents and hosts of our son’s wedding, we have decided to change the festival to a series of educational farm walks and events.

So, in lieu of our annual farm festival, we are hosting two farm tours, a fun run (tentative), our squash fest and a garlic planting day. We are excited to share our love of farming and our farm with each of you through these fun, interactive and informative farm days. Each of the listed events are free to our customers, except the Harvest 5k Fun Run. If your school group, church group, book club, etc. would like to come see the farm on a different day, give the office a call and we would love to schedule a farm tour.

Schedule of farm events:

Friday, August 1st, 7pm and 8pm, 1 hour farm tour with wagon ride through the farm.

Thursday August 28th, 7pm and 8pm, 1 hour farm tour with wagon ride through the farm.

September 27th Harvest 5k Fun Run, supporting the Port Susan Food and Farming Center.

September 27th (same day as the Harvest 5k Fun Run) noon to 5pm. Come and help farmer Tristan harvest winter squash and potatoes.

October 12th Garlic Planting, 9am to noon. It will be a clove-popping, garlic-planting party.

See you this summer,

 

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