January 2021

After sheltering, altering, and avoiding change for the last year, there is not a better movie to watch this Groundhog Day than Groundhog Day. If you have not seen it yet, you need to. And if you have seen it 100 times like me, there will be something else to make you laugh the next time you watch it.

Also this February, looks like we will have some cold weather. And when that happens, I love firing up the oven and making roasted veggies. When I was a little Hippie-In-Training farming in Santa Cruz, CA, we would always make a rendition of this when the nights got chilly. Which they did frequently.

So take any carrots, beets, potatoes, onions, and whole heads of garlic and place them on the counter. Cut every-thing up into healthy bite-size pieces. No fine chopping. Keep them chunky. Toss that mix with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Rub the garlic with olive oil too and place the whole head on a baking sheet with your mix. Bake the mix for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Turn the mix one time during the bake to get all the sides nice and crispy/roasted.

This is a fantastic winter roast that can be enjoyed warm out of the oven or save left-overs for a cool salad the next day. If you want to add some greens, throw chard, kale or spinach into the mix for the last 10 minutes of the roast. Lastly, if you are a vinegar lover, drizzle the mix with a nice balsamic.

Moving on….The Scratch n Dent Box. Our little baby is growing up. We have received a lot of demand for these dudes, but our packing system was not scaling up with that demand. So, as of this week, we will post what is in the Scratch Box every week. You will be able to See the contents of the box, but you will Not be able to customize it. Customization is kept for our Harvest Boxes only. But at least you will know what is coming your way so you can plan accordingly. Hope this helps you out, it will definitely help out our side of things.

Welcome Taos! I am really happy/excited to welcome Taos to the SKRS Table. This has been a long time coming, but needed a final push to make it happen. I want to thank Jessica from Tea-O-Graphy and Mercedes from Taos County Economic Development Corporation for their support and help in making this happen. If you have family, friends, or foes in Taos, please share this great news with them. Deliveries begin Thursday 2/4.

More new faces at the table…Eldorado and T or C. Really awesome to see small communities with such great support for our state’s producers. Both Eldorado and T or C have brought great momentum to the movement. Gracias!

And just to be crystal clear on our mission, I want our model to grow throughout the state. I want producers in Taos to feed folks in Las Cruces. And vice versa. Our model is flexible. We do not have expensive storefronts all over the state. New Mexico is not an overly populated place, so when you have a lot of rural areas, typically your food choices are not great. The USDA terms much of NM as a “food desert” be-cause of this.

Using our model of collaboration, aggregation, and distribution, we connect small producers throughout the Land of Entrapment to hungry mouths. The concept (on paper) is super simple; Feed New Mexicans, Support New Mexicans. But of course the devil is in the details.

We have been very good at getting larger population areas of NM fed over the years. My goal moving forward is that we need to bring smaller communities to the table as well. So you will see a big push on our part in 2021 to continue to build routes and opportunities to rural NM. We have seen the model work along the dense I-25 axis of the state, now we need to push east and west into the more rural areas that need (and want) healthy local food options. This is our/my goal moving forward. I want all of our customers to know/understand this.

I appreciate complete transparency with a business. You should know exactly where your financial support is going. And yours is going to help feed New Mexico. We do not siphon our energy or resources in any direction other than feeding the state. As my ole mentor, Farmer Erick, would say, “Purity of heart is to will One thing.” Bringing yummy food options to this state is my One thing.

Buckle up for a fun and tasty journey amigos. Thank you for all of your continued support. Viva New Mexico!

Farmer Monte

Here is a little love letter I wrote to the first month of the year.

Dear January,

You fill me with so much optimism every year. I get to finally hit the reset button on all the bad decisions I have made and all the tasty biscochitos I have eaten. It is time for resolutions and planning on how to live the best life I can. Love, Farmer M.

I usually hate the weather in January, but love all of the potential that it brings to the calendar. The year is so fresh and pliable in January. I am also a realist though and know that resolutions without reflections are a wasted effort. So I like to use this time for some serious and honest self-assessment. I do this exercise personally as I criticize my hairy love handles. But I also think about where we are as a business; what we are doing well, what needs work. So here is my morning brain dump.

The Good. We scaled up (quickly) to help feed more New Mexicans. I am a Yes guy, not really a fan of the telling people No. So when thousands of new faces showed up at our table, we pulled up more seats and welcomed them.

On the back side, we were freaking out. Buying new trucks/vans, hired triple the crew we had before, and asked our vendor partners to kick their butts in gear and help feed more people than any of us had ever done before. Late nights blurred into early mornings. Sore bodies and tired eyes stayed focused on keeping food on your tables. And throughout it all, we have been surrounded by the most positive team that I have ever seen. Truly incredible and so proud of our crew.

More Good…our Partners. Just as we pushed ourselves to the limits, our partners were as well. Expanding food offerings, working overtime, keeping a healthy local economy moving. We have more partners right now than we have ever had in the past. Working together we have created a local food network that is as sustainable and vibrant as anywhere that I have seen in the country. All of these partners flourishing in the sunshine of your support. I cannot thank you enough and I think you will be happy and impressed with more great things to come.

Prepared Foods/Meal Kits…we finally have a prepared food program that we have been fine-tuning for years. We have thrown so much spaghetti against the wall over the years trying to find a system that makes sense. And when we finally brought my ole amigo, Chef Jules, on board, our mission started to stick. I could not be more thrilled with the direction/energy that we are seeing with these offerings.

It is difficult to have a vision for where you want to go, but some hurdle stands in your way. I knew/know that locally prepared farm-to-table prepared foods do Not have to be expensive. We work directly with the producers, there should be no hindrances on supply. Our issue was not having a conductor, an orchestrator to bring all the vendors together to supply our prepared meal program. We have that now. So look out because things are about to get very interesting.

But in the sea of so many good things, there is a one thing that keeps me up at night. It is my Bogeyman. My El Guapo. And that is items that do not make it into your order. Or as we call them around here, “Outs.”

I will let you in on a little industry secret and that is Outs will make or break the home delivery industry. Your grandparents shopped at a store. Your parents shopped at a store. For most of your life (until you found us of course), you have shopped at a store. Home delivery of food is the polar opposite of how humans have shopped ever since we stopped eating Woolly Mammoths. It does not feel natural to have someone shop for you.

But I don’t want our service to feel “natural,” I want it to feel like Royalty. Stop spending your life pushing a cart around and standing in line. Shop from your couch, with a huge glass of wine, in your underwear, for the most incredible food you can find anywhere. That is my goal. And that goal cannot be realized if we have chronic missing items. So my vow to you this January is to try to eradicate Outs as much as we can. Attack them. This is a huge challenge for our whole team, but we are committed to bringing you the best lifestyle we can. And that starts by not wasting time at the store. Happy New Year!

Farmer Monte

Archives for January 2021