– SUMMARY –

Farm is open 7 days a week 8:00 to 8:00 rain or shine • Pick last few raspberries now • Pick flowers • Pick sweet peppers • Pick first jalapenõ and Serrano peppers • Pick Pristine apples • Pick Yellow Transparent apples • Fresh donuts Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 11:00 to 5:00 • Stuff at the stand = garlic, shallots, cukes, peppers, eggplant, PA peaches, honey, syrup, pottery, flowers, slushees • COVID protocols include (1) Keep SAFE distance, (2) wear MASK in closer quarters, (3) monitor your KIDS, (4) we provide CONTAINERS for picking • Drive slowwwly on the farm • Thank you for supporting small farms

– FULL STORY –

DEAR FARMKETEERS:  If you could have it your way, how would you make a buck in this life?  Or make your mark?  Or make the grade?

Would you open a for-profit theology practice on Capitol Hill – advising your clients on abstruse matters of the spirit?  Would you sell handmade greeting cards to old ladies at analog craft fairs in a digital world?  Would you become valedictorian of your massage school class?  These are all good options!  But for us farmers, our lot is to be sellers of fruit.  Purveyors of produce.  Hustling green peppers and hawking Red Delicious.  A struggle at times, to be sure; but, also a kind of Goldilocks existence – neither the noblest profession, nor the meanest.

Speaking of meanest, thank you for being the nicest.  It is really nice when all our nice customers are so nice.  It is hard enough trying to wrangle a peach crop without a bunch of meany-heads exercising their innocent narcism on our farm crew.  U-pick is a kind of therapy, indeed, but please do consult a specialist if you feel really out of balance.

Or speak truth to flower.  This is as fine a time as any in history to ask, “What am I meant to be doing?  What is my gift?  How can I do right and feel right?”  While Crown Princess Ivanka has counseled Americans to “find something new,” we say speak truth to flower.  Tell a zinnia or snapdragon your deepest truth – they are good listeners – and listen for their quiet counsel.  It worked for Adrianna.  One of our favorite former Farkmeteers left us for nursing school and graduated this spring… just in time to be a front-line responder in the covid crisis.  Good luck and be well!

Yes, you can cut your own bouquets in the field by the farm stand.  Current flowers include zinnia, snapdragon, celosia, ageratum, gomphrena, scabiosa/pincushion, cornflower/bachelor buttons, dianthus/carnations, strawflower, aster, marigold, verbena, and statice.  You can also get them at the stand in bouquets, designed by fruit farmers in the rare dull moment.  Thank you to @chlorothrill for picking and sharing.

You can scrounge for the last raspberry stragglers.  Don’t make a special trip just for the berries.  The summer crop is pretty well picked over.  Look what @the_vet_epicure made with her haul:  “Raspberries from @indiancreekfarmithaca went into this delicious raspberry frangipane tart by @1wanderer.  The layer of raspberry jam under the almond filling really made the dish (a trick we learned from #greatbritishbakingshow).”  Thanks, Vet!

Not to be outdone in the raspberry department, behold these beauties by @dolcedelightithaca: “Local fruit makes the best pastries 😋 peach raspberry galettes for dessert any one?”  Whoa.

Get your garlic.  You can find Indian Creek garlic and shallots at the stand.  Also Garlic Greg is making these beautiful braids, each includes about a dozen big bulbs plus flowers and herby botanicky things.

Pick sweet peppers and first hot peppers.  You will find sweet bell peppers, Italian fryers, nassaus, and the like, plus the first wave of jalapeños and Serranos.  The hots are still green, of course, but you can pick now.  (Note, please refrain from picking eggplant for a week or so.  You did a very throrough job picking the first wave – so thorough that we need to let the patch recover, and let the baby eggplants size up nice.)

Come pick Pristine apples.  They are the first real apple-ish apples of the year.  Lovely lemon-yellow orbs of fruitological blushitude.  Descendants of the venerable McIntosh and Golden Delicious varieties.  Perfect for eating fresh, saucing, and cooking.  Easy to pick in Row 10 of the Dwarf Orchard.  Easy as pie.  Tart, crisp, juicy, and firm.  And isn’t that blush prettier than a store-bought doll?  (True apple experts – and aspiring foodies – will also pick the Yellow Transparents, a.k.a. “salt apples” that we introduced last week.  Find those in the Vintage Orchard near the shack near the raspberries just off the road where it turns at the pear trees after the old peaches just past the stone wall that’s buried in the weeds… Oh just ask at the stand when you get here.  We have maps and sharpies.)

The moment you’ve all been waiting for is not here yet.   And, no, we don’t mean a coordinated national response to the greatest calamity in generations.  (Though that has not arrived yet, either.)  We mean peach picking:  It is not time yet.  We do have PA peaches at the stand for the same price as U-pick.  So that’s something.  But we can’t turn you loose in the peach orchards yet because they aren’t quite ready.  Truth be told, some lucky visitors have picked the odd tree here and there in the old peach orchard because the peaches were dropping.  And we had a 40% loss to frost overall.  Plus a 90% loss of the donut peaches.  But we do promise to announce peach picking in a Fresh Crop Alert when it’s time.  And while you probably won’t pick a donut peach this year, you can pick a donut.

What time is donut time?  Donuts are rolling off the Mark 2 Donut Robot 3 days a week this year.  You can get them Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 11:00 to 5:00.  Nick the Donut Kid is churning out these freshly fried toroids of fructotic splendor – optionally sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  “A sprinkle of SIN, SUGAR,” is all you need to say.  You can also get lemon slushees every day at the donut-slushee window.  It’s a real hole in the wall.  Like, we cut a hole in the wall and stuck Nick the Donut Kid in it with his robot friend.

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