Archives for December 2016

Resolution and Citrus Season

December 30, 2016 by monte

What’s In the Harvest Box Next Week?

Friends of the Farm Members Savings This Week: $875

What a wild end to the year. For some folks, the holiday season is a time to unwind, relax and knock back some egg nog. But it has become a fairly crazy time for me around the farm. I know it seems like it shouldn’t be with the cold weather and all, but it is a pretty anxious time for me.

In January, people stop eating cookies and start eating their veggies again. Food sales can go up by 30% in January. So while it would be fun to sit by a fireplace and scratch at my bellybutton lint, we are busy preparing for the onslaught of healthy-minded New Year’s Resolution crusaders.

The new year is our time when folks may have what the Tao Te Ching calls “the eyes to see and the ears to hear.” January is the time when our society perennially looks at our health and at our lifestyle and believes that we can do better. Be better. And hopefully be happier. It happens every year and every year people fall off that path and return to what they know. So let’s look at this for a second and see if there are things that we can do collectively to help keep more people on the path to a healthy lifestyle.

But before we do, let me say two quick things. I do not live a perfectly healthy lifestyle and so I will not wear a white wig and tell you I have found The way. So what follows is definitely not a holier than thou nose in the air, these are just observations I have seen over the many moons in the food world. Secondly, I feel that tackling our nation’s health issues is one of the largest threats that face our society. Poor health choices kill exponentially more Americans than terrorists.

OK, with my preface and disclaimer in place, let’s dive into this idea of living healthier. So first off we have to remember that health is truly loving the journey and not the destination. We have to think of our healthy not as an action, but as a sum of our actions that become our Life Style.

The dictionary defines Style as “a mode of living.” So to be in a health “mode,” we have to look for realistic changes that can feasibly become a part of our lives. And for this to happen I think that things need to be fun. Fun things are sustainable.

So if you don’t like salads, aren’t good at folding yourself in half at yoga, or you only feel the need to run if you’re being chased by a wild animal, have no fear. You too can still have a healthy lifestyle. Taking walks after dinner, stairs instead of elevators, or getting your huevos rancheros without cheese. All of those are small wins that can lead to a major victory.

Besides trying to enjoy and make changes fun, don’t do it alone. It is a fact that if we have friends or family members to hold us accountable, we achieve our goals easier than if we try and fly solo. Maverick needed Goose and you need a wing-man too. So make goals with someone close to you and then help each other get there. Set celebrations for when you make milestones and penalties when you don’t. Most people like games…as witnessed by people running through the streets looking for a Poki dude.

For families, involve the kiddos with you as much as you can in the kitchen. Studies have shown such a strong correlation that when kids are involved with making their food, they make better food choices. One of the best things that we can pass on to our kids is a sense of enjoyment and wonder in the kitchen. Break down the intimidation that kids feel in the kitchen and they will eat healthier because of it.

Lastly, eat at home as much as you can. I struggle with this one myself because I love seeing what other people are doing with food. But eating out will hurt your waistline and your wallet more than dining in.

And this is obviously where the farm comes in to help you keep to any healthy resolutions that you may have. We have some many great food options that eating well has never been easier or more convenient than it is right now. Let us help.

On a quick product note, Arizona citrus season is absolutely going crazy right now. Oranges, tangerines, lemons, limes, and grapefruit are all in peak season. I love citrus in the winter months because you can almost taste sunshine in them. So sweet and refreshing on a cold day. Make sure to take advantage of all the varieties.

Happy New Year, Farmer Monte

Holiday Schedule and New Farm Land

December 9, 2016 by monte

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What’s In the Harvest Box Next Week?

Friends of the Farm Members Savings This Week: $831

So let’s talk a second about the upcoming holiday schedule. Usually there is a lot of schedule changing that goes on around the holidays for us. But this year, with Christmas on a Sunday, well, there just aren’t that many pawns to move. So delivery days will remain as scheduled with the one exception that we will Not have a Sunday Same-Day Delivery route on Christmas. Other than that, plan on us being able to keep you fed all the way until the ball drops and into a healthy ’17.

Speaking of a healthy 2017, now through the end of January we are sweetening up our Friend Referral program to give you more money for spreading the good word. We usually give members a $10 credit as a thank you for bringing family and amigos on board. As an added thanks we have doubled the referral credit that you can now get. So stop talking to Ted at the water-cooler about baseball stats from 1998 and get him fired up about the food that he puts in his pie hole.

Along these lines, here is an interesting statistic (for me at least) about the power of word of mouth advertising. Did you know that if you do not like something then you tell 12 people. Conversely, if you like something, you only tell 4 folks. Maybe our society thrives on negativity?? I sure hope not. But statistics don’t lie; we have to be right 3 times as many times as we are wrong. So let’s spread the word of positivity and tasty food this season and help our fellow neighbors on this rock eat better.

Next up this week is I have to tell you about an exciting change that we are in the process of right now. We are doing final clean up on the farm land that we have had since 2008 and moving north to the future vision of what this farm will be for our community. After 16 years of farming, I have to tell you that I can sum up the vision for the next 16 years in two words, symbiotic partnerships. Let me explain.

As I have expressed to you in the past, the idea that our farm needs to be everything to everyone is in our history book. We do not have the resources or ability to try and raise the cows, grow the produce, collect the eggs, and bake the bread. It’s too much. And honestly, something gets forgotten about or a corner is cut somewhere. Growers cannot be and do it all. Hungry mouths need diversity and growers need help.

So let me tell you a bit of how this farm will be structured before I run out of space. We have been buying cows and pigs from my friend, Steve Moore, for many years now. He manages 85 acres of land in the South Valley of ABQ. Over the years and walking through the fields, we have talked about a farming model that integrates produce with animals. The ultimate goal is to take care of the soil that takes care of us.

There is no way to sugarcoat it, farming in its nature is mining the soil. We plant seeds, grow plants, and harvest minerals from the soil in the form of food. Farming, as a mathematical equation, mines these minerals from the soil and they have to be replaced or the system will collapse. Organic or not.

The best farming systems that I have ever seen are not intensive but rather extensive. Meaning that the more land that we can have, the more space we can have to allow fields to “rest” after we harvest a crop off of it. And that is what this new farm and partnership will look like. Rotations of animals, cover crops, and cash crops all sharing the land. We will feed you in a way that no other farm in this region is doing.

Crops are grown and harvested. Animals come in next to eat all crop residues. Grasses are then planted to help feed the animals on fields that were just melons (for example). Both the animals and the veggies from birth to their ultimate harvest will call the farm home. About as close to a closed system that you can come. This kind of system can only happen with sufficient acreage. We just did not have this opportunity on our previous farm with its land limitations.

We are very happy to be working with Steve in this new integrated rotational farming model and I will definitely keep you up on how things look. We will have an Open Farm (kinda like an Open House) this Spring!

Farmer Monte

The Site and The Challenge

December 2, 2016 by monte

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What’s In the Harvest Box Next Week?

Friends of the Farm Members Savings This Week: $796

The Site. I know that many of you hate surprises. You have gotten used to our sometimes quirky web site over the years. It is imperfect but you have learned how to deal with it. You are not thrilled with it, but it works. But amigos, we have a huge facelift coming your way. This is not just an aesthetic change but a complete restructuring to keep up with the technological advances that we are seeing in home delivery.

Here is a quick story to help put this new web page into perspective. I got my first cell phone when I started the farm in 2003. I needed to answer calls and I was literally a man who was out standing in his field. So a landline would no longer be sufficient to keep in touch with our members. That was only 13 years ago. Fast forward to today and many of our members our using their phones to place orders for their food to be delivered to their doorstep. Times change quickly!

This kind of technological change is only going to accelerate in the coming years. More and more companies are going to be entering the home delivery marketplace and we need to be ready for whatever comes around the bend. I used to think that we were on the cutting-edge of the marketplace with our home delivery of farm freshness.

I have to tell you that now I feel like there is a window that is closing and if we do not make necessary steps to get inside that window soon, we will be locked out. I have mentioned many times this year that we are in the midst of a seriously competitive state in the grocery industry. It is taking a bite out of farmers and farmers’ markets across our nation. So complacency at this point could be the death knoll for many.

For our farm and business, we will avoid that complacency by remaining diligent in keeping up to speed with technological advances, as well as keeping the quality coming your way.

So I preface all of that to lead into this new web site that we will be launching in less than 2 weeks. We will walk you through every step of the transition, but for this week, I want to put it (and keep it) on your radar that we have some amazing changes coming and I don’t want any shocked folks.
The Gap. When I was younger and less of a fur ball, I had the fortune of spending a semester in the alleyway of the London School of Economics. I learned two very important things there that I still remember clearly to this day. First was that there has never been a famine in this world due to a lack of food, only a lack of distribution. I had no idea at the time that much of my life’s passion would end up being around the distribution of amazing foods. Second was the voice that came over the speakers boarding the trains on the Tube. The voice did not want you to catch a toe and trip getting on the train so they would always say, “Mind the gap please.”

This idea of the “gap” is what we now use to talk about and visualize as the difference between taking a good idea and turning it into good execution. Because without the proper execution of a plan, an idea is a pretty pointless thing to have.

I bring that up because we have had some pretty lofty ideas around here like trying to bring dozens of suppliers together to sell under one tent, and oh yes, offer same-day delivery to many of our customers. Those goals would be cute and all, but we have to execute for the ideas to be useful.

And good was no longer good enough. We have to be great in order for folks to stop going to the grocery store and let us bring food to you. Think about how ingrained going to the grocery store is in our society. We do very little now the same way that our grandparents did them…but we shop the same. I mean we have gone from Ford’s model T to self-driving cars in 100 years, but we still shop the same way. So to break this grocery umbilical cord, we have to be perfect for you.

This was the challenge put to our warehouse manager, Edward, and all of our pack crew, Jon, Brian, Ryan, Fonz, James and Kyle. Good is not good enough; we have to be perfect to shift the paradigm. And I have to tell you that they have all been incredible. We have brought our pack accuracy rate to 99.75%. Pretty awesome to see and it makes me very proud of our entire crew. These kind of numbers could not be obtained without everyone working together. Makes for a happy papa bear I tell you. Have a great week, Farmer Monte