Archives for January 2016

We probably all remember running around the playground, being chased, and then getting slapped on the back and hearing the words “Tag, You’re It!” Every time you would hear that, you knew it was your turn to go find some kids. Well amigos, I want this newsletter to be my version of “Tag, you’re it” and to have you help me go find some kids. Well, maybe not kids, but their parents, and coworkers, and friends, and family members. Let me explain.

Last week we made a huge move for our members in eliminating delivery fees and dropping the minimum order to only $25 for free delivery. But, as I wrote last week, this move only works if we increase orders and fill up our trucks. So I will not hold back or over exaggerate this when I say that we need you to help spread the word. This new no fee delivery model only works with your help.

I will be very honest and transparent with you (as I always am). Dropping delivery fees and lowering minimum order prices this week made our average order size drop by 9%. To offset that decrease, which we all knew would happen, we need to increase orders by at least 10%. And I know we can do it. Essentially, I took a huge gamble last week. I bet on our members. Why did I bet on our members over an arbitrary fee structure? Because I have bet on you all so many times in the past, and every single time our members have come through for us when we needed you.

So why should this time be different? It won’t be. We have already seen some really good support from our members to step up this week, now I just need you to spread the word. Amazing food, free delivery, low $25 minimum order…what else do your friends need to hear before they sign up? A back rub?? I don’t condone using back rubs to get people signed up, but use your best judgment.

OK, now on to some food thoughts. Bananas. Oh man where to start with bananas. Maybe to begin with is to let you know the demand for bananas is huge. Beyond huge. 40% of our orders this week had bananas added to them.

The second thing to know about bananas is that everyone in the produce world hates them. Why? Because they are the most finicky produce item you can find. You see the world eats one banana, the Cavendish. Think about all of the varieties of apples we enjoy, but the world eats and commercially cultivates only one variety of banana. It is insane. I have been on a bus through Panama in the heart of banana country and you the same looking banana mono-cropping for hundreds of miles. The word “diversification” does not exist in the banana world.

With that as our backdrop, we have found a small family grower in Mexico who grows non-Cavendish bananas. If you have traveled throughout many parts of the world, you get to experience (enjoy) the many non-commercial bananas. These are usually tree-ripened meaning that they never have that perfectly yellow color, free of spots. They each have character and they each actually get sweeter and more aromatic as they develop these “beauty marks.”

So if you are looking for the standard commercial blemish-free bananas, Do Not order our bananas. We are going to be bringing you something different, something special that you can really only find on a bumpy bus ride along beautiful stretch of earth somewhere outside the monotony that we call a grocery store.

Last bit of housekeeping, sub options. There are times (that I hate) when we do not have the exact item to fill an order. Spinach doesn’t hold up like we thought it would, etc. etc. When this happens, we run into a tough conundrum: to sub or not to sub? Is a tangerine just as satisfying as the orange you ordered? To some it is, for some not.

So we have worked with our web folks to get a solution. We are going to default everyone to “No Subs” for missing items. IF you want us to make appropriate substitutions for you, please go to “Account Options” then “Modify Personal Information” and under “Address” click the box that let’s us know you are flexible for similar item subs. This will help us help you in a huge way.

Farmer Monte

Do you remember a little ole company from the fall of 2011 named Qwikster? Probably not. But you will most likely remember the story. It was the time when Netflix was going to divide its business into two branches and operate the On-Demand company as Netflix, and the DVD to your door business as Qwikster. Members of Netflix were not too keen on this change and became very vocal about not wanting the change. The result, as we all know by now, is that Qwikster is in a graveyard right now. A reminder that even industry giants can make bad decisions.

So I use that as a preface to what comes next, the mea culpa. Or if you are not into Latin, it looks like me eating humble pie, or sticking my foot in my mouth, or pulling my head out of my…anyway you get the picture. The fact of the matter is I do not like what I have recently set in motion with the delivery fee structure. So I am going to publicly whip myself before we look at the easy solution. So grab a coffee and give me two minutes please.

In my attempt to make every one of our deliveries make perfect financial sense, I lost sight of common sense.

People hate delivery fees. Hate them. Justified or not, getting items delivered to our front doorsteps has transcended being seen as a service and now it is expected. Pizza, sandwiches, dvds, even couches. The list is so long of items that we can get delivered to our doors for free that food from our farm is not excluded from the expectation of free delivery. I get it. I don’t like delivery fees either.

But here is the real meat and potatoes issue that I have seen (and heard) unfold over the last month of these new delivery fees—some groups of folks feel like they are being excluded from our farm table. And honestly, that crushes me. Let me explain a bit here.

The local/regional food movement gets accused all the time of being “Yuppie food” or food for the few. I cannot stand that label of our food and we fight like heck to make our food affordable and available to everyone.

Looking at our resume, we have done an amazing job of getting fresh, local/regional foods into areas where no other store or company dare go. Rural towns, senior communities, and student dorms to name a few. These are not places where you expect to see healthy foods, but our delivery trucks are there. Unfortunately, these are also the areas that are most sensitive to price increases and I do not want to see that support and desire to eat well go away.

Hearing from people that this new fee structure just won’t work for them, we have listened. It made me realize that we need to change the scope of the discussion and make it broader than the financial viability of 1 single delivery. We need to look at it as the viability of routes, and of days, and of weeks, and of the whole enchilada. Having full vans out delivering is more cost effective (and environmentally friendly) than a van with fewer high dollar orders on it.

Searching for solutions, I dove back into the history of our home delivery and looked for when we had the most support for our farm. Not so coincidentally, do you know when that was?? Yup, when we had no delivery fees. Sure the average order was smaller at that time, but the delivery vans were more full and so it made up for the smaller average order. At the end of the day too, more people were eating healthy foods grown close to their kitchen. That, amigos, is what we are going to get back to and not hold onto a myopic focus staring at a single delivery stop.

So beginning now, January 22nd, we are going to run delivery fees through the wood-chipper like the guy from Fargo. They’re gone. Additionally, we are lowering the minimum for orders from $30 down to $25. Finally, we are adding a 4th Harvest Box size, the “Mini” for $25.

I apologize for these changes, but sometimes we need to fall on our face in order to see the clearest path. My nose, hands and knees are all scabbed up from this fall, but it has shown me where we need to be. And that is making as much room as possible at our farm’s table for everyone to have a seat. So pull up a stool and let’s break some bread, Farmer Monte

In case you haven’t been outside or looked outside in the last couple of weeks, it is cold and wet out. And not just in New Mexico, but throughout the Southwest and California. These weather patterns are obviously great for replenishing ground water and trying to recharge drought stricken areas, but it makes growing food a real nightmare. Plants don’t grow well in the rain and harvest crews are almost paralyzed by mud and rain. Needless to say, this is when you develop a love/hate with rain. You know we need it, but it makes your life very challenging in the short run.

My high school economics teacher, Mr. Jenkins, used to say that you can teach a parrot to be an economist by teaching him the phrase “Supply equals Demand.” And in soggy times like this, his words ring truer than ever. Produce availability right now is tighter than we will see it all year (hopefully not worse) and prices are higher than we have seen in the last 12 months or longer.

What all of this leads to is the fact that across the board, conventional or Organic, produce prices are going through the roof right now as people are scrambling to keep people fed. You probably don’t even see these prices going crazy because you are tucked snugly in the crib that we call our CSA. Which is how I like to see it—everyone safe in the nest (literally) weathering the storm that rages outside.

So that is the good news, you will not see any price increase during this time of chaos in the produce world. You may have a hard time empathizing with folks around the water cooler as they complain about food prices. Don’t worry, this is a normal feeling for our members to have. But I want to point out that we have not gotten to this point by accident. We are able to find shelter from these price fluctuations because of our commitment to partnerships.

One of the first things that you harvest in the quest for local food is nice dose of reality. On paper it sounds great to “eat within 100 miles from your home.” But then you realize that the person who invented that diet lives in San Francisco and enjoys fish tacos with a citrus glaze. Well what about the rest of us who live on the banks of the Rio Grande and cannot dine on Silvery Minnow caviar? Are we suppose to subsist all winter on cabbage, pine nuts, and elk meat jerky? I’m sorry, but I just cannot do that. And if that makes me a bad localvore than I will accept that label.

I consider myself a very conscientious eater. I want to know how my food was grown, where it was grown, and who the heck grew it…but I am not an extremist. For me (and by default for the farm), realism trumps extremism any day of the week.

Realism on the farm means that we cannot really grow much over the cold winter months. So we rely on the help of our partners in order to keep all of us fed during these months. But an amazing thing happens as we bring partner farms (suppliers) under our Skarsgard Farms’ tent—we move away from “market forces” and move into protected relationships. Let me explain a bit here.

As we offer the support of all of our CSA members to a grower, it makes them have a more consistent avenue to sell their goodies. They do not need to call as many stores, hassle with markets, call dozens of chefs. All of your mouths, collectively, can give a farm the security blanket it needs to continue to grow. The power of a group is that important. And because of that, when the market forces (due to weather) make the price of products shoot up, those farmers honor our support by not increasing the prices. Sure they could get more money selling it elsewhere for a few weeks, but they take care of our needs because we help take care of their needs the other 50 weeks of the year.

This is just a snap shot of how we work with growers, ranchers, bakers, coffee roasters, etc. The old adage of “you watch my back and I’ll watch yours” sounds so simple, but it is still a rarity in today’s business landscape. For us though, it is the backbone of all we do. And I am glad that at times like this when food gets tight and prices are at their highest, you can rest easy knowing that we have got your back covered.

Farmer Monte

Oh the New Year. What a time of hope, of promise, and of people setting themselves up for disappointment. It happens every year and it happens to all of us. We literally and figuratively bite off more than we can chew. We are so ready for the new me, that we live an unrealistic lifestyle for a few weeks. And then, by the time we celebrate Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, our own dreams for lasting change are squashed like a mosquito party at the Indy 500.

So how can we avoid this perennial pitfall? Well, I am no Tony Robbins or Dr. Phil/Oz, but I can shed some insight on what I have seen through our members (and myself) over the years. I know we all like to think that we are unique and are different from everyone else, but we see similar trends every year. So let’s look at them proactively.

First thing to realize with our food (and I know I may be preaching to the choir here), is that food is a lifestyle choice. Our food is not what we eat in the sense that it is a noun or an object. When you get to the root of it, food is not what we eat, but rather how we eat. It is a philosophy. It is a relationship that we cultivate mainly with ourselves. And I honestly feel that there is no greater expression of self-love than how we choose to nourish ourselves. Food is the foundation for our lives and our lifestyles.

With that, I urge folks to move past staring at calorie content, fat grams, and is there high fructose corn syrup in my Twinkie. Those are just trees within a much broader forest. Stay focused on the forest amigos and not the trees. Our food forest is about establishing a routine. Something that we choose to (and can) replicate day after day.

For me, any routine has to be fun. I have been accused before of being as deep as a puddle. That life is not all about having fun. Sure we can be serious at points in our lives, but having fun is the best way to turn actions into a routine. So first and foremost, find a food lifestyle that is fun for you. If you hate drinking carrot and kale juice, don’t make a resolution to become a juicer. Let’s find the low hanging fruit first, then pull out the ladder.

My second piece of advice after you find a fun way to a healthier lifestyle is to not beat yourself up when you slip. This is one thing that happens all the time when folks start loading their fridge up with healthy Organic produce. Invariably, a little bell pepper will hide behind the jar of pickles and get all wrinkled. After the profanity subsides, the guilt jumps on your back like a 1,000 lb gorilla. You feel like a failure. You feel like you are terrible with money, as if you just blew your kids’ college fund on the blackjack table. I want to tell you it’s ok, it happens.

I hate wasting food as much as the next bear, but these things happen when you try to keep lots of freshness in your kitchen. It is better to eat tons of fresh foods and lose a little bit, than to give up and eat processed or frozen foods. Just accept that a little loss is still fine.

One of our members told me that since they got their fresh deliveries on Tuesdays, that Monday nights were always soup nights to use up all the remaining veggies they had from the previous week. That seemed like a good way to use things, and also a fun and creative way. Regardless of whether you soup it, juice it, blend it, dehydrate it, or lose a bit of it, just go easy on yourself and make changes. If kale seems to not make it around your house, sub it. That is the reason we worked so hard to get a computer system to allow you the flexibility in your ordering. Have fun with your food and go easy on yourself.

My last suggestion for having a fun, guilt-free, healthy new year is experiment with new things. I like to find (easy) recipes on the internet to try new things and new ways to cook. Leave the elaborate recipes for someone else. Grab a quick and simple recipe to prepare a veggie or protein you are not used to working with. This will be a fun way to expand your skills in the kitchen. I recently learned that if you place fresh baby spinach in the strainer then pour your cooked pasta through it, the hot water will cook the spinach perfectly and then you can toss it in with the pasta.

Let’s enjoy and have fun with our food this year. Cheers!

Farmer Monte