DEAR FARMKETEERS:  Water levels are historically low, but The ‘Creek is running all the way downtown.  That’s right, our unruly band of farmhands and ciderlings will be at the 34th Apple Harvest Festival on the Ithaca Commons, Friday through Sunday!  Rain or shine.  It usually rains.

Find us on the corner.  Last year was our first time and it was a whopper of a hoot.  Find our ramshackle booth where we will be slinging hot and cold cider, caramel apples, boring apples without caramel, pumpkins, Brussels sprouts, and glee.  The glee is free.  The caramel is gooey.

Meanwhile the farm is OPEN for apple picking.  This week’s fantastic crop is Cortland, Empire, Early Fuji, Liberty, Spartan, Jonagold, Macoun, and the last of the Macs.

The apple and pear display gets big!  Discover new types.  Weird ones you never heard of.  Some are amazing, some are meh, some are bleh.  You won’t know til you try.  This game has all the thrill of black-jack without the dirty dealing.

New this week — Pick a Bag o’ Pumpkins!  Pick all the pumpkins you can fit into our new reusable bag for only $12!  You keep the bag, and outfit your whole gang with pumpkins.  And yes we did fit all 28 pounds into that bag.  Booyah.

Pumpkins love company.  You don’t want to separate a single Jack- or Jill-O-Lantern from their mates.  They thrive in numbers.  Pick a bag full and your porch will sing.

Fresh cider served hot and cold.  This is plain tree juice, nectar of the dogs gods, a straight-shooting fruit bev.  Pressed here from fresh apples and pears.  No added sugar.  Not even pasteurized.  Just squeezed fruit.

Donuts.  These toroidal flavor poppers speak for themselves.  Line up at the Donut Hole (which is rectangular, as luck would have it) on Saturdays and Sundays 10 AM to 6 PM.

Sunflowers!  More than you can shake a flower at.  Fill your home or office with sun.  You will find them planted between the pumpkin rows and growing around the farm.

Professional flowers.  These sunflowers are professionals.  They go to work locally with @bizbloomfloraldesign.  Good enough for the pros, good enough for home and office.

Last wave of veggies?  Green and purple bell peppers, lots of hot peppers.  Tomatoes are more of an effort.  Heaps of eggplant.  Will this be the last easy picking weekend of the season?  Note the new reusable bag!  Good customer!

Pick, cook, eat.  This really is the time.  Veggies will soon go poof.  Apples, too.  Check out this drool-worthy Japanese curry by rising star Farmketeer @mapleandmatcha.  She used apples from the farm and grated them to “make it a little sweet bento buddy.”  Unimpressed Giraffe was unimpressed.

Playground for bigs and littles!  Cornell grad students have it rough.  You’re not exactly a student and you’re not exactly a professor.  You’re a tweener.  Here at The ‘Creek, we offer safe harbor to tweeners.  You can prance and frolic and be silly with no judgey professors being all judgey.  You can work on your second career as badminton champs, like Sanlin and Yolanda here.  Scientists by weekday, shuttlecockers of great pizzazz on weekends…  Go Big Rad.

Amanda’s Platypear.  Or Peartypus.  This is what happens when you work with fruit all day.  You start seeing things.  The fruit talks back.  Illusion and reality coalesce.  Please come give our farm stand folks compassionate human company.

Special event on the farm October 5, 4-6 PM!  Register now online!  This is a rare chance to talk shop and break bread with a nationally recognized cidermaker and your veteran neighborhood fruit tree farmer.  Autumn of Eve’s Cidery and Steve of Indian Creek will host “Twilight Walk, Talk, and Picnic Dinner” here at the farm.  You will tour the nursery, learn which apple varieties make the best cider, and finish with dinner and drink by The Piggery and Eve’s!  Space is limited and the event is NEXT WEEK, Wed, Oct 5 at 4-6 PM.  Register now.  Cost is only $15 per person including dinner and drink.  Click here to register online.

The event is rain or shine.  Come hang with us for an informal, educational, agriculinary soiree.  Help us celebrate Cider Week Finger Lakes!  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.