There are times in one’s life where you just happen to be at the right place at the right time. Like my first goal that I ever scored in soccer. I was a studly 5-year-old and wondering around the soccer field aimlessly when the opponent’s goalie took the ball and punted it right off my head into his own net. And like any tough little Norwegian kid would do, I began to cheer and cry at the same time. I’ve loved soccer ever since.

In the farming world, I feel like I was at the right place at the right time when I met Paul and his wife, Elane, from Excelsior Orchards. The fruit that they were growing was the best that I had ever sunk a tooth into. Unparalleled freshness and flavors, all while holding a strong belief that our food system is better without the use of chemicals and poisons.

That first meeting was 14 years ago, and we have been supporting each other ever since.

The Excelsior Orchard harvest usually begins around the 4th of July and it is not uncommon to have their apples all the way into February of the following year. And this year is looking to be a phenomenal year from the Excelsior trees. The trees have made it through all the winter snow and spring freezes. So by this time in the season, Paul has a really good idea of what will produce this year and what won’t.

The good news for all of us is that the harvest is shaping up to be one of the strongest on record. We should have a steady stream of fruit coming from the trees this year. This will take the shape of cherries, apricots, plums, nectarines, peaches, pears, and apples. Fortunately for Paul’s harvest crew and for us, these all come in a stream of successive pickings. We will not get all the fruit over one month. They get in line and one after another come pouring into our warehouse.

For you (and me), this means that we can enjoy each harvest independently. Taste the nuances among the varieties and learn about the crops as they come in. This week, for example, we have the Benton Cherries. They are the first off the trees and do not like to be fashionably late. Being first to the party usually brings classic features with them. Here are some notes to keep in mind while munching on a Benton.

Temperature. First off, before we dive into some tasting notes of these cherries, please remember to try and eat your cherries at room temperature. If you want to store them for a while, sure refrigerate them. But ideally, you want to enjoy cherries at room temp so your mouth tastes flavors and not just temperatures. It basically is the same reason you do not want to drink a big bold red wine cold. Cold temps lock up flavors. So with that foundation, let’s dive into the bowl of cherries. And, by the way, this is a fun tasting exercise for the whole family.

Acid/sweet ratio. All cherries express their flavors in this balance between being super sweet/sugary all the way to being acidic or what our mouth calls “Tart.” So what happens on the tree is the cherries start out very starchy without any sugars and full of acids. Acids are great on the tree because acids will not compost or breakdown. They have a terrible flavor at this stage, but they are stable. Then add our magical sunshine.

As the cherries sit sunbathing on the trees, the starches will transform into sugars. Our mouths love sugars, But the more sugar a piece of fruit has, the less stable it becomes. Why? Because sugars breakdown very quickly and fruit will take on the appearance of being over-ripe. So commercially, this is the grower and the grocery stores’ greatest dilemma; how can you bring customers flavor while keeping a long shelf-life?

This one question is responsible for the poor state of our food industry. Stores try to bring customers flavors year-round, but cherry harvest is a month long. You can obviously have cherries outside that window, but the quality will suffer. Our cherries don’t have to sit on a grocery shelf hoping for someone to buy them. They go straight from the tree to you. How awesome!

So back to our Benton Cherries for this week. This variety is such a great one to launch the cherry season I feel like. Big fruit, yummy sugars, and a refreshing acid bite to them. Super tasty and not a complex fruit. Remember this fruit compared to some of the rich flavors that we have in store for you. If we were at a wine tasting, the Bentons are the fresh rose that you might start tasting. We have the dark cabs still coming your way. Buckle up for a fun month here. Farmer Monte

Take Me To The Website

OK, so this is probably as good a time as any to reaffirm with you that I have a few bolts loose in my brain. I think about some weird things and then try to see how we can make them a reality. Most recently I have been wondering what it would look like if our Scratch n Dent Harvest Box had a cute little baby with our Weekly Meal Plan. And spoiler alert, let me tell you that this little new-born is freaking adorable. So let me introduce you to this new addition to our family…

$10 Family Meal Deal with our push to bring you more easy meal plans along with the desire to find a good home for slightly blemished food, a light bulb went off—why not combine the two? That is what we have done and this is how it will look/act on your side of things.

Every week at the top of the Customization page in the Harvest Boxes, we will highlight a meal that will feed a family of 4 and only cost $10. Yes, we can bring you and your familia a healthy and tasty meal for only $2.50 a person. You will not find a better deal anywhere. I promise.

Along with this phenomenal meal kit, I want to let you know that our members have helped me “see the light” in regards to our adolescent offering, the Scratch n Dent Box. Folks love it, love the idea, and are so-so on the execution of it. “Farmer M., can you please let us know what is in it? I don’t know if I should order oranges or not because I don’t know what’s in the Scratch.” Totally fair frustration that I know people have had.

The solution is easy…letting you preview the Scratch Box before ordering everything else you will need for the week. Beginning this week I will post the contents of the Scratch Box in 2 places. First, it will be added to the weekly Saturday preview that we send out. And second, on the website under the Harvest Box tab I will add the preview to the Scratch description. Look for it in either of those place and that should help you plan your food needs for the week.

We will Not be allowing Substitutions to these boxes. The luxury of Customizing a Harvest Box is kept exclusively for our traditional Harvest Boxes. Again the goals of our Scratch Boxes are to eliminate food waste and to bring you insane value on food that is slightly blemished.

Chicken. I think building the pyramids in Egypt may have been easier than finding a sustainable chicken program that we feel good about. Well amigos, the chicken has finally found a reason to cross the road (sorry, that is the best cheesy pun I could come up with on only 2 cups of coffee).

I am proud/thrilled to (finally) bring back a truly amazing chicken offering. Taste. Pasture-raised. Non-GMO. Humanely processed. Everything I was looking for we were able to source and without cutting any corners on quality or animal welfare. We needed the perfect offering before launching. So look for all of our new chicken options on the website now.

Lastly this week, let me touch on the new face of our Meal Kits. We have tried many variations of how the meal kits should look over the past few months. With our new certified food space, I think that the easiest way to handle the meal kits is to have everything that you will need inside the order. Basically a 1-Click meal planning. No guess work.

So as we build this feature out, look for these 1-Click Meals inside the Harvest Boxes. We will have them on the top of the customization page and know that if you add these babies to your order, everything you need for the recipe will come in the order. With the exception of oil, salt and pepper. I am going to go out on a limb and say that if you are ordering from us, you probably have oil, salt and pepper in your kitchen. Everything else will be in there with a recipe card.

As I have written about so many times, I want you to have fun and play with your food. Good food has made my life better. I am not ashamed to say that. I have simple needs/wants in this life and one of them is freakin’ tasty food.

If I can help you in your journey to love your food, I want to do that. That will take many shapes over the years. It might be a raw carrot, carrot soup, carrot juice, carrot salad, or even a carrot cake (coming up). There are so many fun ways to enjoy the flavors that we have at our finger tips.

So let’s buckle up and see where this wild culinary ride takes us. And smile knowing that the best is yet to come my friends.

Enjoy, Farmer Monte

Take Me to the Website

So a vision for change can be a curse as much as it brings happiness and motivation. As we all know, change cannot (and does not) happen overnight. It is a long journey filled with distractions, failures, and the occasional victory. And in order to stay on course, you have to love the process more than some arbitrary destination. There is no place that our local food system will arrive where we can declare Mission Accomplished. All I know is that this year our local food landscape is better than it was last year. Every year we keep progressing and making positive changes. That makes me happy and keeps me chugging along every morning.

But throughout this slow churning journey, you get watershed moments when we reaffirm that we are on the right path. This week was one of those moments for us. Let me share some things that we got cooking around here. I prefer a transparent business model so that everyone is on the same page.

This week I sold part of the business to our long-time partner and friend, Paul, from Excelsior Orchards. I have known Paul and his wife, Elane, since 2004 when they were ramping up production on their 85 acre Orchard in Paonia, CO. Over the last 15 years, we have tried to support Paul and Excelsior as much as possible. In return they have supported us.

About 5 years ago over a cup of coffee and a handshake, Paul and I made a deal that if he could grow it, then we would find a home for his amazing fruit. NM just does not have growing climates for tree fruit like Paul and his neighbors have on the western slopes of CO. So we are truly fortunate to have access to the high quality fruit Paul brings us.

With all of the support that the two farms have offered to one another, bringing Paul in as an owner of the business was a no-brainer. We are happy to have him on board and excited about where the collaboration will take us from here.

This new addition to our ownership structure also marks a philosophical move that I have been chewing on for some time now. And that is if we are to truly have a local food model that serves the community, then the community should be able to have ownership in the model. Skin in the game.

As I have written numerous times and honestly believe, trying to shift the paradigm of the local food system will take many hands on deck. So the more people and suppliers that we have vested in growing the model, the better it will be for everyone who eats the food. I really foresee the role of Skarsgard Farms expanding not as a retailer, but as a centralized hub for suppliers, growers, and ranchers to access as many mouths as possible. Local and regional farmers/producers changing the food landscape for our communities one meal at a time.

Lastly this week, I want to touch on a few common threads that we noticed in our survey from a few weeks ago.

More Meal Plans. This was probably the loudest reverberation among the responses. If the survey was a mob with pitchforks, they would have been yelling “Give us Quality…but make it Convenient!” I get it. My life is busy and there are times when Convenience rules. We need better options for chaotic times.

Let me say that we are working on it. We have a certified kitchen about to launch and are working on a pretty amazing partnership deal with a local restaurant that will take shape this late summer/fall. We are moving intently in this direction with lots of new products on the horizon. Stay tuned.

Meats. We had several members say that they do not like the fact that we offer/advertise our meat program. I understand that this is a very sensitive subject and I will tell you that I was a vegetarian for a number of years. So I get it. I could not stand the industrial meat model and so I did not support it.

But running the farm I got to meet local ranchers and see how they were raising animals in a different way. Their systems not only respected the animals but also the land that the animals call home. Seeing such healthy and sustainable ranches, I felt/feel proud to be able to bring you their meats. If you are going to eat meat, this is the way the animals should be raised. You will not find a better system. Anywhere.

If you do not want to eat meats, I respect that. But for our members who choose to eat meats, I will make sure that you have the healthiest and highest quality meats for you and your family. That is my promise to you.

Thank you for all of the support, Farmer Monte

Take Me to the Website

So spring has most definitely sprung around here in the Land of Entrapment. And what a welcomed change I have to say. I know that as a grower you are supposed to love every season, but I will take flip-flops over heavy coats any day. Plus seeing plants began to wake up is just healthy for your soul. So enjoy this time of year amigos. Just don’t get blown away.

This has been a super chaotic late winter. Not going to lie about that. Moving warehouses while not taking a day off of deliveries was let’s just say challenging. But with an amazing crew and a fantastic new space, we rocked it out in style. A few more gray hairs, but what the heck, I got some to spare.

With any new space comes new opportunities. New ideas. So let me share a few of these with you. The biggest one is Certified Food Processing center. You see when it comes to the Health Department, you can get several certifications. At our old location we were considered a Food Handler. That meant that you can place a pint of strawberries in a cooler, but you cannot run a knife into them. As soon as a knife cuts a fruit or veg, you have to be a Processor. Makes sense. But we just didn’t have the infrastructure to pull it off over there.

Fast forward to our new digs (that we were able to buy fortunately, adios rent). Our new space has a walk-in cooler with floor drains, a 3-compartment sink, a hand-wash sink, washable walls, and a partridge in a pear tree. All of which the City of ABQ requires in order to be able to Process food for retail consumption (aka feed your family). This is honestly one of the cleanest and nicest food facilities that I have seen. And it makes my gerbil brainstorm insane possibilities.

When our application gets approved (2 weeks), we will be expanding our offerings in some seriously fun ways. So following the example of our strawberry, we will be able to bring you a fresh strawberry, a jam, juice, smoothie, dehydrated, or cut up berries on a tossed salad. The processor certification opens so many doors of possibilities for us and you. It also will allow us to buy more products from our suppliers and to help them grow their businesses.

This next stage of our business will be an exciting one. Look for these new faces to join the party this Spring.

I also wanted to point out some really cool things that are Not new to the table but deserve to mention again. Our Scratch and Dent Box. This Harvest Box is the solution to 2 major obstacles that we see in the food world. First is that not all produce that makes it out of the field is able to be sold as premium standards. Only about half a grower’s harvest can be considered “grocery store grade.” So that means that half of what is grown goes unused. The sad thing is that this is not because of quality, but merely aesthetics. Ugly food.

Our society and consumers have been trained that if produce doesn’t look a certain way then it is bad. I know that I am preaching to the choir here because our customers have evolved past that thinking. But even for us, as we are prepping your food we run into the dilemma that “Shoot, the bell pepper is a little too wrinkled to send out, but still great to eat.” It would be great to find a home for that pepper.

Additionally, Organic produce gets a really bad rap for being “too expensive.” So we were able to address bringing you better Value and cutting down on Food Waste with our Scratch and Dent Box. 12 lbs of fresh Organic veggies, for only $15! I feel like it is a win-win situation for everyone. Look for that Box offering on the website.

The other Rock-star that I need to remind you of is our Large Order Discount. As I have mentioned numerous times, the cost for us is the same to drop a small order as it is for a large one. So after you have paid for the small order, there are savings to be shared for you. So we have built in a tiered pricing structure that automatically (No Coupon Clipping) saves you money from your grocery bill.

At $50 take 5% off your bill. $100 = 10%. $150 = 15%. And $200 slash 20% from your bill. Easy and you do not need to scan a membership card or learn a secret handshake. Although if we did have a handshake, rest assured it would be awesome.

Lastly, keep your eyes peeled for a cool recipe card that we have added to all of the boxes this week. Some great ideas.

Have a great weekend, Farmer Monte

Send me to the Web Site

Over the last decade and a half, I have written a ton of newsletters. Probably in the neighborhood of 700. But this week something happened to me for the first time ever.

I had my weekly newsletter all done. I had rushed through my proof reading like I usually do. I am sure that there was a grammatical error like their usually is. And just before I was going to print and email it to you all, I read an article.

The article basically laid out how the huge savings that customers could (did) expect from Amazon buying Whole Foods were just a mirage. Amazon isn’t going to be able to waive its magic wand and fix the grocery game. Transportation, ingredients, and packaging costs were starting to eat their proverbial lunch. Only way out? Raise prices.

So why did this article have such an impact on my newsletter this week? In fact it is a pretty benign article. The irony of it was that I had just written about how we have been able to cut our prices and give you better value more than we have been able to do at any point over the course of our journey. And I think that we (finally) may be at the tipping point for the local food movement. Let me break this down a bit.

The ultimate goal for the Local food movement has always been offering something better, healthier, and more sustainable than the industrial agricultural food model. You have heard all of the buzz words for almost 20 years now… Buy Local, Less Food Miles, Support the Local Economy. But then there comes that time of self-reflection when you are looking at yourself in the mirror and question, “Are we really making a difference? Are those buzz words becoming reality or are they just buzz words that people like to dream about?”

I have to be honest that there have been times when the path has gotten a little faded and I have questioned if the Little Engine That Could would actually reach the top of the hill. But this week has reinvigorated me. Sure part of it is our move into a new warehouse. However, it is also seeing that what we have been doing for all of these years is moving the needle. Of course there is no Finish Line in this journey, but things are getting better. And that makes my gray beard smile.

All of the partnerships that we have been cultivating for years are giving us stability in this time of rising food costs. The Local food movement is (more and more) making good Economic sense and not just good Common sense. And this has been the pivot point I have been wanting to see. In order for the Local food wave to really reach its potential, we need what is good for the earth and what is good for our wallets to be in accord with one another. I think we are on the doorstep.

Back to my original newsletter for this week…we have seen supply of Local and Regional healthy food choices explode. This increase in supply, along with short miles to travel, has brought better value to you than we have ever seen. We are now able to offer you more food for fewer pesos than ever. Organic food is seeing more growers and better growing practices. That combination drives prices down and value up. A win-win situation for everyone involved including Mother Nature. We are in the doorway of a major shift of the industry; food free of chemicals has transformed beyond just a fringe food offering. We have to be thrilled about this.

Secondly, and this is huge, we arrived at this place through the will and the want of the people. Think about this, there has been no law passed to make people eat Organically grown food. Every bite of healthy food has been a choice made by a person. It is the reason why they say “Eating is an Agricultural Act.” What we put into our mouths shapes our agricultural industry. We are here today because of decades of conscientious eating in our communities. One bite at a time.

Thinking about all of those years of support for the Organic movement has made me think of how we are still in business today. And it is because of you. We have never had a billboard, no big dollar marketing campaign, shoot we have never even hired a salesperson. We grow and have grown throughout New Mexico strictly on our members spreading the good word of our food and of our mission.

For all of the word of mouth advertising you do for us, we want to thank you by giving you a $20 credit for every Friend Referral who signs up and orders. Plus they will enjoy 15% Off their first order. Thank you for keep us going/growing.

Onward and Upward, Farmer Monte

I would love to take a brief second here to look at how the winter crop production is shaping up. Seeing as how we are about half way through this winter season, it is a good time to take notes on where we are going and where we have been.

Greens. This has been a very good winter season for greens. Greens are not huge fans of major temperature swings, so protected winter growing is always preferable to the manic days of a New Mexican spring or hot summer. Look for lettuces, chard/kale, salad, and spinach to continue to be strong here for the next couple of months.

Apples. We are still enjoying some of the incredible fruits from Excelsior Orchard in Paonia, CO. As you have probably noticed, the apples have just been getting sweeter and sweeter. As we hold them in cold storage, the sugars continue to develop and intensify in the fruit. So any little bit of acid melts away and you are left with super tasting winter apples. You honestly cannot get apples with this kind of flavor before heading into the New Year. They need time to mature.

We will continue to have Paul’s apples hopefully into early March. But he also has pressed some apples and pears into Ciders for us. After pressing them, we freeze them so that we do not need to pasteurize or add any preservatives to them. After you get them thawed out, you will have about 2 weeks to drink them before they will start to ferment in your fridge.

If they do ferment a little bit, they are not bad. So please do not throw them out. They will have just a slight bit of alcohol in them. All grapes, pears, and apples contain a natural yeast on their skins. So if you do not pasteurize them, the yeast can start eating up the sugar and, viola, you get hard cider. Thank you Johnny Appleseed for all of your hard work. Look for these ciders in the Harvest Boxes.

Citrus. You cannot even talk about winter food production without mentioning (or thinking about) citrus. We have such an amazing group of citrus growers in Arizona that keep us flooded with these wonderful bits of sunshine throughout the winter months. It has been 8 years of working with them and seems to just keep getting better every single year.

Valencia oranges will start a transition into a variety called Arizona Sweets. They are like a Valencia, but just a bit sweeter and less acid. Those will start next week. The Navel oranges are also about a week out. We will highlight both of those fruit varieties in next week’s offering.

Lemons and Limes have been as consistent as the sunrise. And look for the Grapefruit to begin their transition as well into a sweeter less acidic fruit. The longer the grapefruit sit on the trees soaking up the Arizona sun and cool nights, the acid mellows out and becomes a lot sweeter. So good for those of you who love sweetness and not so good if you love your grapefruit with a strong bite. Overall just the best time of year to be enjoying our regional citrus program.

And a little citrus fact for you to chew on (pun most definitely intended). Most produce distributors come out of California, the Salad Bowl of the United States. California will not accept Arizona grown citrus into the state to protect their industry. What happens then is that all of the fruit that comes into NM is grown in CA because the distributors for grocery stores come out of CA. So AZ citrus is almost impossible to find.

California has great citrus, but I personally don’t think that it is as good as our neighbors to the west. And I can promise you that it is not as fresh. You are getting fruit that is less than a week off the trees. No other store can give you that. So enjoy the incredible varieties and flavors that we have to bring you this winter.

Lastly, our Local Pasture-Raised Meats. As I’ve mentioned before, I love produce. This farm was built and remains rooted in plants. But we have had some fantastic ranch partners come to the table with their locally raised meats. This pastured-meat program that we have put together for you has taken the better part of a decade to fill up. But I think that we are finally getting to a great spot. 2019 you will see better cuts and types of meat than we have ever had available. Right now check out the Virgin Farms Lamb. Raised in ABQ’s South Valley. Truly the best lamb I have ever had and I know you’ll agree.

Enjoy amigos, Farmer Monte

What a year 2018 has been. We have been working on some pretty incredible stuff behind the scenes and much of this work has culminated in a slew of new launches that we have brought to you this December. Well…just as in any classic thriller, we have saved the biggest/best for last. And before we dive into the Big News, I want to share some back story to it.

As I have mentioned, 2018 marked our 15 year anniversary. And I have to tell you that this year has been one of serious soul searching for me personally. As any of you know who own small businesses, it is impossible to differentiate yourself from your work. This place, our mission, and our employees are on my mind constantly. But I would have it no other way. I found my life’s calling when I was 24 years old and I have not veered off the path for a day over the last 19 years. My passion for local food and local producers is just who I am; as inextricable as the stripes on a zebra’s ass.

So 2018 has been been shaped by what the next 15 years will look like for us. I love where we are now, but how can we use this as a springboard for growth rather than a slumber of complacency? In life and in business, I firmly believe that if we are not growing and trying to make things better, then we are dying. We need to find ways to make our lives better and in doing so, we will drive innovation in the marketplace. In meeting challenges head-on, we will encounter opportunity.

And one of the biggest challenges that we will face as a society in the upcoming years can be distilled down to one word: Connection. Or lack of Connection as the case may be. Technology allows us to shop conveniently from our homes. Technology allows us to communicate with people without even talking to them. We are surrounded by technology.

Technology can do a lot, but it cannot cultivate a genuine and authentic Connection for people. In order to develop that connection, we as human beings still need to see/smell and taste/hear something in order to fully connect to it/them. We need to experience something firsthand to truly love it or understand it. There are no shortcuts to build real connections.

So (deep sigh) here we are at the intersection of the love of food and the realization that the successful marketplace of tomorrow will be one rooted in Experience, Sensation, and yes, Connection. We do not need to compete with the Amazons of the world, we need to be the antithesis of them. The vision moving forward is not to find something that someone is doing well and try to copy it; but rather look at what we have in our tool chest and bring you something completely new and fresh. So I want to introduce you to the newest member of the Skarsgard Farms family…

The Farm Stand is an 18,000 sq ft building that we have bought by the airport off Gibson and Columbia. We will move our entire operation into 8,000 ft of warehouse.

This leaves 10,000 ft of open space that we are looking for user(s) to fill. The space is diverse and honestly a blank canvas now. We can divide it up however the users want/need.

Here is the idea that we are putting together…conscientiously design and build out a Synergistic home-base for like-minded Health and Wellness businesses to operate and support one another. OK, that is a long statement, what does it mean?

What it means is that we Now have a space to house not only our efforts, but other local businesses as well. We are looking for people who believe (like we do) that we are stronger together than we are by ourselves. Who believe that our community needs a Hub where we can go for yoga, massage, music, art or mental health services, then be able to stay and buy food from local farmers, ranchers, coffee shop, or bakery. Consolidate the energies of many local visions into one space.

All of this leads me back to you! We have an amazing foundation for this space/project. But the potential really is held in who will join us on the journey? Which faces will fill in the windows to help take this from being a great project to being an Epic one? Are you looking for a new direction in your business or do you know someone who is? Let’s get the dialogue going and build out a space that makes us all proud.

Exciting stuff to come, Farmer Monte