2021 recap and letter from Jason

Hi guys,
I must confess that I feel very guilty for not writing my weekly emails for the last 8 months. I hope you will forgive me, and that you will accept my excuses below. It has been a crazy year.

Here’s to 2022 being one of stability and new beginnings for us all.

In the meantime, I hope you will take some pride in being a vital part of Farm Cart Organic’s 2021, because with your support, we survived:

Starting the county’s first home compost service, The Better Bucket. We have been collecting food scraps from 220 member homes a week, and in doing so have created nearly 50 yards of organic compost from materials that would have been landfilled. It has been awesome and eye opening, and we will be sharing all that we have learned about composting, the landfill, and municipal trash collecting in the coming weeks.

We also opened what we believe is the area’s first completely organic plant based farm to table restaurant, The Good Plow. We opened in September to a ton of press and big crowds. It’s been touch and go, though. The food started out good, then got pretty inconsistent (yikes,) and now is firing back up on all cylinders. It is super fresh and tasty. And we are getting very proud and excited to start sharing its products again with you guys next week.

While this all sounds exciting and rewarding to be a part of, and it is, there have been major hurdles to overcome. And those hurdles seemed to have come to a head at certain times during the year to produce formidable difficulties. The most major of which was when we ran out of money at the end of the restaurant construction in July. And then were surprised by both our general manager quitting and our warehouse sublease ending abruptly due to a cannabis company taking over the space.

To say say that we had to scramble is an understatement. Friends loaned us money, our community rallied behind our kickstarter fundraiser, and our core team buckled down together, struggled together, and kept our spirits high together. While we packed your boxes out of a rented trailer on the back of a loading dock we finished the restaurant and built a formidable cooler from scratch at the same time. It was gnarly, but we have faith in what we are doing, and amazingly found that there was a solution to every problem we encountered waiting in plain sight.

The biggest blessing in all of this has been having our eyes opened to those amazing people that we work with. The farms that stepped in and had our back, thank you Alex Frecker, you are the best. The core lords of our team that have lifted our spirits constantly and shown a can do attitude in the face of everything: Chris Johnston, Kate Nelson, Lacey Bushey you guys are the rock in the storm. And the hero’s that came in the time of need: Woody’s refrigeration, Brian Aresco, and Mark Methman The list goes on. But the biggest lesson was that real, incredible people will show up for you in a time of need.

With all of that said, we feel like we are at the starting point of the new frontier for Farm Cart Organics. We are broke, but for the first time in our business’ life, we are standing on our own two feet. We have our own packing facility, our own permitted food facility, and our own small fleet of refrigerated vehicles.

Which brings us back to the new year and my promise to you. I promise to be back here with you again, weekly, bringing you the real time who, what, where, and when of how Farm Cart Organics, with your support, is constantly working and striving ceaselessly to be the best, most powerful tool of our local agriculture system possible.

See you next week,
And thank you for sticking with us.
We hope you love your farm box.
And we hope that you are really taking advantage of all that we have to offer you and your family.

With love,
Jason Lesh

p.s. Next week, I will be introducing our new team baker and will be teasing you with our first focaccia loaves.

What a year that was! We’re tired.

RECIPES