Strawberry U-Pick Last Wave: Next 4 Days Could Be the Final Round of Substantial Picking! Come Picking Today and Friday to Beat the Weekend Berry Crowds; Donuts Now Served Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!

– SUMMARY –

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 • Fresh garlic scapes • Lemon slushees • Fresh donuts Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM • Local honey • Local syrup • Local pottery • 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 and local artisans

– FULL STORY –

DEAR FARMKETEERS: Early bird gets the worm! But second mouse gets the cheese! But third place is last winner! Yes, folks, this is the third weekend of strawberry picking – and possibly your last chance to pick a big haul that will put you on the podium of ‘Creeknik Champions.

Come pick your last big haul. What?! But strawberry season just started?! True. We are only a couple weeks in, and only one week after announcing a huge crop. But you all went berry bananas last weekend and did a exuberant job on the weekdays, too. Just yesterday we saw a family of four – each person had picked a whole peck! Hooray! All this action has brought Farmer Steve, Strawberry Whisperer, to predict that the next 4 days are your best chance at the best picking. Thursday and Friday to beat the crowds. After the weekend, who knows?

Serving suggestion: See what Farm Fan @whiskandscone made! “Did some strawberry gathering at @indiancreekfarmithaca and figured before my eldest ate them all (believe me she would), that I better put them into some strawberry cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting. No food coloring used here. These sweet, delectable summer berries provide all the coloring needed to make these that wonderful pink color…”

Market report: Doing home improvement?Pandemic lumber prices are out of sight. Haggling over a washing machine? Forget about it! Shopping for a barrel of light sweet crude? Dump out your piggybank! But our u-pick strawberry prices are charting a line as flat as Putin on a polygraph. Exact same as last year: $4/pint, $7/quart. And we’re down a dollar off the peck price, now at $35. A level peck is 8 level quarts. (Though you won’t fit quite that many in a peck of berries unless you smash them to smithereens.) Peck picking is one of the highest forms of u-pickery.

Please note! We provide containers for strawberry season. 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.

Fresh donuts are in season. You can get yours Friday, 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.”

COVID status. 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.

What else is picking? Strawberries are the game this week. But look at everything else that’s coming. Should be a great season, most of the crops are the biggest ever, and we’ll need you here throughout the season – especially weekdays between Fresh Crop Alerts – to help us harvest the local bounty. Please stay tuned and check our FACEBOOK PAGE for crop updates between newsletters. Please understand that we often cannot pick up the phone during the season to answer questions about exactly how many strawberries you will find when you arrive in 2 days, nor can we keep up with the HUNDREDS of social media messages and emails that come in during the season. There’s only a few of us, and many of you. We’re really grateful for you. It’s just that, for better or worse, Indian Creek is the kind of place you just have to pop in now and then to see what’s picking in real-time. Our regulars are tuned into that reality and they make weekday scouting runs to score the best booty.