Let’s Talk About Peaches & Whatnot.

HEY, FARMSTERS. Hope this crop alert finds you well and good.

Let this peach symbolize our love for the people who love our peaches.

And let this headline break their hearts. Historically hot weather coaxed out the peach buds way too early. The usual frosts followed and froze those poor buds dead. There was massive crop loss throughout the region. Instead of a tree having 300 peaches, it might have 3. That’s around 1%. So as usual the 99% get screwed. We have opened the peach orchard for picking, but we are asking you to limit your haul to 4 quarts, so everyone might get a shot this year. And take every peach you pick, don’t toss them on the ground — they’ll ripen fast if they aren’t already.

If you don’t find enough to pick, come down to the stand, where we have beautiful peaches from the farmers of Pennsylvania. They escaped the worst frost and got a good yield. They’re our neighbors to the south, so it’s good to help them out with a peach purchase. They are local in the grand scheme of things.

What else is picking? Surprise! You could pick these early apples! Yellow Transparent is the name. There are just a few trees near the theoretical physics shack.

Best apple sauce apples ever made. You can read about Yellow Transparents here on the nursery web site — stories about dad and those apples and Butch and Uncle Burl and Little Pearl and Montie from way back in the old time days.

Bringing us back to 2012, you can pick delicious strawberries in our brand new field. Just about 40 quarts left to pick here, so get them while you can. That will be it for this year. Next year this hilltop field will give a big full crop.

While you are up there in strawberry land, enjoy our complimentary opera broadcast. There’s plenty of drama in the production, and honestly the vocals are better than a lot of screechy stuff you hear at The Met.

Of course, raspberries are still going strong. You pick and you eat.

Zucchini time! There’s just one row right now.

But it’s a nice row. Lovely, in fact.

And perhaps the big news of the day is that the farm stand is open! We’re under the porch in the shade. A real person will be working most of each day, and if nobody is physically or mentally present, you can still do the old self-serve thing.