Pick Strawberries Nowww! Open Every Day for Strawberry U-Picking, First Come, First Pick! First Donuts of the Year this Saturday and Sunday.

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Everyone welcome • Open every day now through October • Current hours are 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM rain or shine • Pick your own strawberries or get prepicked quarts at the stand • Lemon slushees • Basil Pots • Fresh donuts Saturday and Sunday 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM • Strawberries are sold by volume, not weight, so we provide containers for picking • COVID: Farm stand staff are fully vaccinated, and current protocols include: (1) The farm is an outdoor experience and we are not requiring masks, (2) We recommend that non-vaccinated people wear masks, (3) Practice social distancing inside the covered farm stand area (4) Note that these protocols could change throughout the season • Drive slowly on the farm • Thank you for supporting small farms

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BELOVED FARMKETEERS: Aloha from the Fabled Queendom of Strawberristan! Where daiquiris flow like bitcoins through loopholes in the tax code.

The farm is open. This is the first Fresh Crop Alert of the year. Come pick your own strawberries. There are LOTS of berries to pick right now! The usual spiel applies to strawberries and all crops that will follow in succession: first come, first get. The newsletter reaches some 10,000 local food lovers every week, and enterprising fruit fanatics have already started picking – even before this first edition of the 2021 season, which itself could incite a bumrush on the berry patch. Therefore you simply have to come and hunt for berries yourself. We can’t guarantee you a cornucopia. And we might not be able to pick up the phone if you call for a berry report. Please just come out and hunt around. Look under the leaves. People have been leaving with beautiful hauls each day, and the berry patch recharges with hot weather and sunshine.

A word on good strawberry sense: Please don’t taste-and-toss. If you happen to smuggle a few berries into your yum-tum-tummy while you are picking, please don’t toss the remnants in the field. If you take a bite, please stick the stems in your pocket, or if that’s too ewww for you, put them in a baggie or something. Pack in, pack out. We are asking everyone to remember that there are pickers and farmers coming through after you.

We provide containers for strawberry season. U-pick strawberry prices are same as last year: $4/pint, $7/quart, $35/peck. Strawberries are sold by volume, not weight, so we will ask you to pick into our pint, quart, and peck containers. Of course you can bring your own buckets or boxes for taking the berries home after you have checked out. For other crops later in the season (most of which go by weight) you can bring your own bags and boxes for picking, or buy our farm totes.

COVID update. Farm stand staff are fully vaccinated. Current protocols include: (1) The farm is an outdoor experience and we are not requiring masks, (2) We recommend that non-vaccinated people wear masks, (3) Practice social distancing inside the covered farm stand area (4) Note that these protocols could change throughout the season. Thank you for being the best customers anywhere. It will be good and happy to see you here again.

Another point of business, a simple word about inclusivity – everyone is welcome. That has always been the case at The ‘Creek. We’re not normal and you don’t have to be either. Come one, come all. Just be kind. Photo by long-time Farmketeer Hannah.

And now back to agriculture. Top crop for many of you is donuts. You can get them Saturday and Sunday 11:00 to 5:00. The Mark 2 Donut Robot will be churning out fresh fried rings of fructotic splendor – sprinkled with cinnamon sugar if you must. Simply say, “A sprinkle of sin, sugar.”

New this year. Basil pots! Get them at the stand.

What else is ready to pick? For now just strawberries. But soon there will be a cavalcade of crops – lord willing the creek don’t rise and she don’t bust out the Dust Bowl. It begins with strawberries then garlic then raspberries and peaches and plums and tomatoes and peppers and pears and apples and eggplant and pumpkins and sprouts and all that. So, now starts the harvest. Please come say hello to the new season.