DEAR FARMKETEERS:  Kids are back in school.  Teachers, too.  Everybody’s getting real smartlike.  But there’s learning to be got right here in Farm School.  Heavy reasonin’ and lofty waxin’.  In today’s Fresh Crop Alert, we share 16 tidbits of erudition from our cornucopic Cupboard of Knowledge.

Last chance to pick a peach off a tree.  Peaches will be kaput after the weekend.  To a human being, a peach hanging silently on a tree is like “some patient god come down to woo her.”  Flannery O’Connor wrote that about a cow in a field outside a lady’s window.  But a peach is every bit as cow as a cow.  Biscuit of wisdom = Every peach contains the universe, every drooly bite creates it anew.

Chicken with balsamic peaches.  Peaches are for now – eating fresh and cooking up special.  Look at what ‘Creeknik @itsme_emily cooked with her haul ^^^.  Anddd she canned peaches for the winter.  Bravo.  Biscuit of wisdom = Harvest now, eat now AND later.

Yes, you KAN haz honeycripssps.  Farm Kitty got first pick, but you can still get yours.  It is time to pick Honeycrisp, Early Fuji, McIntosh, and Cortland.  All beautiful crops this year.  Easy picking.  Biscuit of wisdom = Farm Kitty ALWAYS gets first pick of Kittycrisp™!

Ask at the stand which apple rows are ready.  You can’t tell by just looking at an apple on a tree.  You also can’t tell by following the ARROWS on our signs!  Unless you are looking for a patch of dead grass.  Thank you to Faithful Farmketeer @heather.april for the fun photo.  Biscuit of wisdom = If I can’t see you, you can’t see me! 

Hey that’s my apple!  No way, mineeee!  Honeycrisp can make people grabby.  Cool weather will bring out the winner-takes-all mentality in otherwise lazy armchair apple pickers.  But there’s enough for everyone.  If you pick nowwww.  Thank you to @liberation.supper.club and @liontail_press for using local food in your work… and sharing.  Biscuit of wisdom = Apple picking inpires sharing. 

Bountiful and exotic heritage apples at the farm stand. Happy 310th birthday, Ribston Pippin.  “This apple was grown in 1708 from one of three apple pips sent from Normandy to Sir Henry Goodricke of Ribston Hall at Little Ribston near Knaresborough, Yorkshire; the original trunk did not die until 1835.  It then sent up a new shoot and, on the same root, lived until 1928.  Ribston Pippin is one of the possible parents of Cox’s Orange Pippin.”  (From Wikipedia which is always correct about everything.)  Biscuit = A ‘pip’ is what people over there call seeds.  Sooooo weird!

Pick your own pears.  Pear season will close soon.  You can pick the lovely and weird varieties in Row 19 of the Dwarf Orchard – Flemish Beauty (pictured), Magness, Shenandoah, Potomac, and more.  There are also real beauties at the farm stand, such as the prized little bugger called Seckel.  Remember that most pears are hard on the tree – they ripen inside out – and will ripen sitting a in paper bag for a few days at room temp.  Brown paper is most homey.  Biscuit of wisdom = Pears are actually way more Frenchy and subtle and sophisticated than apples.  And if you are lucky enough to know a “pear-shaped” person… Mama mía!

Pick your own pumpkins.  5 weeks til Halloween.  Farmer Steve says we’ll never sell all the pumpkins.  He planted more pumpkins than there are stars in the sky.  But Emily Dickinson taught us, “THE BRAIN is wider than the sky, / For, put them side by side, / The one the other will include / With ease, and you beside.”  So if we put our brain on the pumpkin problem, we can do this!  Biscuit = Please pick pumpkinnnns!

Flower champs of the week, Eunice and Christine.Just bopping around the farm making bouquets.  “Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.”  John Harrigan wrote that.  Biscuit = Share flowers for double power.

Tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.  You can pick your own or find some at the stand if we can keep up with the picking.  These veggie crops should do well until the frost.  There were 32 varieties of tomatoes at last count.  Sweet peppers and hot peppers.  Fairytale, Italian, and Japanese eggplants.  Field abundance ebbs and flows daily with crowds and weather.  Biscuit = Harvest vigorously before the frost, just like the old homestead days.

Fresh tomatoes make stuff scrumchy.  Kale with lemon juice, shrimp, cherry tomatoes, brown rice, shredded carrots, roasted broccoli, sesame oil, and homemade peanut-lime dressing.  Dish of the week by @dishes_n_degrees.  Biscuit = Meal in a bowl will make you feel whole.

Orchard Ambrosia, Nectar of the Dogs Gawds.  Fresh pressed unpasteurized cider.  100% fruit.  No sugar added.  Nothing added.  Just apples and pears, cold-filtered into jugs.  Get gallons and 1/2 gallons.  Biscuit = Some bevvies, like some people, are sweet with no sugar added.

This week’s donut models, Lee and Bri.  Nicest people you’ll ever meet.  Trekked to the farm from wayyyy over in Lansing.  Fresh back from Alaska.  Why did they get this week’s free donuts?  Walked up to us at the farm stand, no warning, and gave a big fat high-five.  “We loveeee your Fresh Crop Alerts,” said they, “we just wanted you to know.”  Biscuit of wisdom = High-five a stranger, you just might win a dozen fried starch treats.  (Donuts on Sat & Sun 10 to 6.)

It is harvest time.  Big time.  Please come share the bounty with us.  Bring friends.  Take stuff home for your neighbors and your teachers and your frenemies.  In the old days, autumn was all about the harvest.  It can still be part of the rhythm of life.  Biscuit of wisdom = We are open every day til there’s nothing left to pick.

Put The ‘Creek on ya car.  Biscuit of wisdom = Put The ‘Creek on ya carrrrrrrrr?!

Love to y’all.  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.  (Bonus biscuit = Strawberries are a spring crop.)