DEAR FARMKETEERS:  Look at the night sky.  You might see 10 or 100 or 1,000 stars – but there are one billion trillion stars in the universe.  Some simply shine brighter.  And you, Farm Fans, well… you are the stars in the farm country sky.  You are the ones who brighten our night.

Aye!  You are the peaches in our pie!  You picked the farm clean this year.  Cleaner than ever before.  Farmer Steve says some 5,628 trees were in production, and not a single one had fruit left to harvest.  You people WENT TO TOWN on this farm.  Apples gone.  Peaches wiped.  Apricots kaput.  Pears demolished.  Plums poof.   Hazelnuts, paw-paws, cherries, berries, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, pumpkins, squashes, flowers, herbs, donuts, cider… all ADIOS.  Pictured above:  Peach pie featuring the last peaches that our friends at Stone Bend Farm put up from the harvest.

Truth be told, you missed one apple.  A beautiful Mutsu.  Last apple hanging.  But there’s nothing else to share this year.  No Ciderday Matinee like last December when we gave out free jugs of cider to whoever came to the farm.  No holiday apple gift boxes to send to friends.  We don’t have the apples!  So we are suggesting that you check out the free shipping special from our friends at Eve’s Cidery, the trendsetting, award-winning cider makers from the little hamlet of Van Etten, NY.  It will make great gifts from Finger Lakes apple country – and you’ll support a tiny farm with a national reputation.

Get FREE shipping now from Eve’s Cidery.  Enter code CIDERTIME on their web store checkout screen.  You can use the coupon as many times as you like until midnight December 31, 2019.  They sell out every year and Farmketeers always order a bunch of cases.  You can order any bottles you want, but Eve’s is offering 3 Holiday Packs to help you and your guests explore the world of heritage cider.  You can share different bottles for all palates.  Each sampler gets the 10% half-case discount AND free shipping.  Add another 6 bottles to your cart to get the 20% case discount AND free shipping!  They will ship directly from their farm in Van Etten to 40 states.  Do you keep hearing about new cideries popping up nationwide?  Eve’s has been at it for 20 years, since before cider was a thing.  Look at the press coverage Eve’s Cidery gets, from the New York Times to Wine Enthusiast to the Washington Post to Wine Spectator.  Use code CIDERTIME.

You know the old saw, “Great booze doesn’t grow on trees.”  Well this stuff does.  Eve’s Cidery produces their delicious vintages from organic estate-grown fruit – apples they grow themselves, many on trees from our fruit tree nursery at Indian Creek.  (You can order your own apple, peach, pear, plum, apricot, and cherry trees for spring 2020 planting.)

Well, that’s the spiel.  The farm is closed til strawberry season in May 2020.  Please accept our warmest gratitude for our best season ever.  It started last spring with the New York Agriculture Society Award, and ended with you picking and eating everything we grew.  This is the holy grail of small farming:  sharing what you grow with a vibrant community.

This is the final Fresh Crop Alert of the season.  You probably won’t hear much from us over the winter.

What do farmers do in winter?  Everybody wants to know, and the question is perenially renewed.  This year we lift the veil at last:  A farmer’s winter is spent in radically productive COGITATION.  “But wait!” you retort. “You can’t plow a field by turning it over in your mind.”  That’s true, Loyal ‘Creeknik!  But you can’t plow a field when it’s frozen hard either.  Therefore we tackle other problems in winter, more rarified and esoteric puzzlers like “Why is Red Delicious soooo delicious,” and “Why do they call it global warming when today is colder than yesterday?”  Once in while, this kind of armchair ‘basic science’ – not to diminish it, for that’s what professional smartypantses call it – yields transformative applications for daily life in apple country.  We have already been blessed with one such invention this winter.  A real Eureka moment that one of us had in the shower.  Just today, just in time!  And it’s a gobsmacking efficiency measure that we offer to you royalty-free – a very small gesture of gratitude for our best year ever.  Here it is:  Cram a toothpaste cap into the soap.  You will be 24.7 times less likely to drop the soap.  So simple, so astonishing.  It’s yours if you like it.  You earned it.  Great job this year.

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