DEAR FARMKETEERS, let’s hope you find this 1-page newsletter more useful than the 443-page Mueller Report, at least in the short-term.  Long-term, who can say?  But for the here and now, this little Fresh Crop Alert contains actionable intel, totally unredacted, that you may use to plan your weekend.  No mealy-mouthed dithering, no backroom horse-trading, no obstruction.  Just garlic.  And fruit.  And eggplant.  (But tons of collusion!  Just look at the peppers.  So sneaky.)

Garlic Party III.  Please join us Saturday, July 27, 10:00 to 4:00, for the 3rd Annual U-Pick Garlic Harvest Party.  This will be a casual, dress-down affair.  Wear your get-slightly-dirty clothes and bring your can-do attitude.  We need your help harvesting our best garlic crop ever.  It all needs to get pulled out of the ground Saturday.  You can catch free music and a garlic class.  Free admission.  The farm will be open for normal picking and shopping as well.  You can come pick a few heads of garlic with the kids or harvest enough to last the whole winter.  U-pick garlic prices are on the Facebook event; you can ask Garlic Greg questions about the day there on the event page.  But it’s pretty much come out and pick garlic.

You might see Garlic Greg himself in his native habitat.  He has been working the phones through the anarchist grapevine to line up live music for Saturday.  At 12:00 PM, also known as noon, Cayuga Klezmer Kapelye, featuring musicians Rima Grunes and Max Buckholtz, will wander the garlic field playing traditional and contemporary Yiddish greeting tunes.  You pick while they play!  Then at 1:30 PM, “Megaflora,” will begin.  They describe themselves as a “folk exploration of the Mesozoic era.”  So, Peter, Paul, and Mary meet Triceratops?  Folkasaurus rex?  (Back in those days, flora and fauna were still one.  Spinosaurus was as much plant as animal.  Garlic trees had teeth and wore bearskin pelts like the cave people they would evolve into.)

Medicinal Garlic Class at 11:00 AM.  Cali Janae, “Cal,” is a local herbalist and botanist with a real enthusiasm for plants and a unique spark when it comes to garlic.  (Note awesome allium tatt!)  Please join Cal at the big table by Stumphenge for a free class on garlic covering history and folklore, cultivation, and culinary and medicinal uses of this familiar plant.

Glean the last u-pick strawberries FREE on Saturday.  Garlic Greg is opening up the strawberry field to Garlic Party People.  Let’s get both fields cleaned out so we can turn our attention to the August collection – great new crops coming soon.  Look what Steuben Brewing Company did with their haul of strawberries:  “Surprise beer release today.  Strawberry Farmhouse Ale, refermented with local apple blossom honey and then aged on our lacto-fermented strawberries from @indiancreekfarmithaca…”  Cheers to fruity beers.

Raspberry picking has been fantastic – keep picking our best crop ever.  Farmketeer @zoewanders was “feeling a particular kind of summer joy that you only get from a belly full of fresh raspberries.  Thanks @indiancreekfarmithaca for the gorgeous berries!!”  Thanks for picking and nom-nomming.

Pick your own flowers.  Zinnias, snapdragons, verbena, gomphrena, celosia, cornflower, statice, strawflower, scabiosa, sweetpeas, salvia, aster, dianthus, and algeratum.  Look at these beautiful vases made by ‘Creeknik @pumapots, filled with u-pick flowers from The ‘Creek.

Pick your own eggplant.  The ripening of these first Nightshades ALMOST pushed us to jump the gun and sound the Horn of Plenty, a.k.a., the cornucopia.  But it wouldn’t be right til peaches and maybe tomatoes are on the scene.

Pick your own sweet green peppers.  If you find one in the field wearing a squash flower on its head, RUN!  Definitely not cool.  That would mean entropy is decreasing, a most unnatural state of affairs – far worse than a runaway climate.

Meanwhile, down at the farmstand, peaches.  These are Pennsylvania peaches to hold you over while our peaches cook a little longer.  But soon New York will have the climate of South Carolina and peaches will be ready in May.  So, hooray.

Also at the farmstand, apricots.  If you don’t love fresh apricots, we can’t be friends.  Okay, we can try.  But thing is, they’re objectively good.  You just have to know how to eat them.  Okay, you really just eat them.  There’s no tricks.  Try them on a picnic with your love(s).  The person(s) who make you feel safe and lucky and bold but humble.  The friend(s) who would split their last apricot with you.  Toss the pit to a squirrel.  A tithe to Gaia.  Love of all sentient beings.

Expanded donut hours.  Now every Saturday and Sunday, 10:30 to 6:00.  Nick the Donut Kid is feeling entrepreneurial.  Consider him a capitalist in training.  You are the teachers.  Thus donut eating becomes a high calling.

Love to y’all.  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.