Our Detour to Sunizona Family Farms

For almost a year now my family has been receiving a weekly delivery of organic produce from Sunizona Family Farms, a family run farm located near Wilcox, AZ. I LOVE the Farmbox program, and if you're friends with me on Facebook, you've heard me shouting from the rooftops about it for a while now. (If you want to know more about why I love our Farmbox so much, leave me a comment with your email address and I will send you my "pitch"...I'm passionate about this!)

Last weekend we kicked off a trip to our family's home in Silver City with a detour to visit our friends at the farm. What a great time we had!

The family has been on this land for 16 years, and there are currently 3 generations who are actively involved with the family business today.

We were warmly received and shown around by Aimee, but we also had the chance to meet her parents, as well as Evan, the Farmbox Coordinator who was up from Tucson for the day.

The operation is impressive. We were first led into a very large greenhouse where all of the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and green beans are grown.

It was interesting to see their growing system--as the plants grow taller, the base of the plants are laid along the ground and the tops are trained upward with strings so that the produce is always harvested at about shoulder level.

They use bees throughout the farm for pollinating.

Then we headed out to the smaller greenhouses. Amiee opened the door to this greenhouse and my breath was nearly taken away by the beautiful view.

It was such a pretty sight to see the different varieties of kale growing so happily, with the beautiful landscape out the back framed perfectly by the greenhouse frame.

The salad house was also fascinating. When we joined the Farmbox program last fall, we definitely had to make a bit of an adjustment--we were not used to eating so many salads throughout the fall and winter seasons--but now we're hooked!

I love that the farm is practicing not only organic, but "veganic" farming methods because the result is a product that is healthier for my family as well as the environment. On conventional farms, animal based fertilizers (like manure) are used. Have you taken the time to consider the fact that when animals are given growth hormones or antibiotics, those turn up in the manure, which then turn up in the food that grows there? Ew. That's how all those e-coli breakouts happen with the bags of salad and spinach. With Veganic farming, the risk of e-coli outbreak is greatly reduced and the produce is free of hormones and antibiotics. Yay.

The family seems to really care about the land they are farming on, and they take care to tread lightly and run the farm as sustainably as possible. For example, the green houses are heated by burning the pecan shells from nearby pecan farms, and the ashes are then used as fertilizers for the plants. I love that.

Just last week the boys and I started reading How to Eat Fried Worms...

So they loved it when Amiee scratched the surface of the soil and grabbed a handful of wormy dirt for the boys to see.

They each picked their own worm to carry around the farm for our tour and there were plenty of giggles about whether they had the courage to actually eat one!

No one ate any worms, but thanks to our weekly Farmbox, our family is eating more salads and delicious produce than we ever have and that makes me feel so good. Just the other night we were discussing possibilities for Hank's upcoming 5th Birthday Dinner...he requested Cobb Salad & Rootbeer...sounds like a delicious celebratory meal to me.

Many thanks to our new friends at Sunizona Family Friends for having us, it was such a wonderful opportunity for us to connect, our whole family enjoyed it!