Staggering Farm Country Secret Revealed – Weekday Pickers Score the Best Booty 9 Times Out of 11. Open 8:00 to 8:00 Every Day, Donuts Served 6 Days a Week! Please Come Pick Last Strawberries & First Raspberries ASAP.

– SUMMARY –

Now open every day 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM rain or shine • Donuts now served EVERY DAY (except Monday) 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM • Picking on weekdays avoids barbaric weekend crowds and usually finds abundant & peaceful picking • Time to pick first raspberries • Pick last few lucky strawberries • Fresh garlic scapes • Sweet cherries • Lemon & tart cherry slushees • Local honey • Local syrup • Local pottery • Berries are sold by volume, not weight, so we provide containers for picking • COVID: Farm stand staff are 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) These protocols could change throughout the season • Drive slowwwwwly on the farm • Thank you for visiting… on WEEKDAYS if possible!

– FULL STORY –

DEAR FARMKETEERS: If there ever was a sign of a return to normalcy, it is the June emergence of the Raspberry Rhino.

But this is a hippo. So things are not quite normal yet. But we’re doing our best. You can come pick the very first raspberries of the season. These are the “prelude” variety, and as the name makes clear, they are but a hint of a bumper crop to come. Find them in the northernmost row of the main raspberry patch near the anomalous shack on stilts, and in the fenceline patch west of the southern strawberry field. You will have no trouble finding these on our farm map. Everyone knows exactly where everything is at a single glance of our map – and our signage will resolve any lingering doubts. There is something else we can clear up for you now: You know how donkeys are half-mule and half-horse or something like that? Rhinos are half-hippo, half-unicorn. Whaaaaat! Totally. You heard it here first. Farmers have so many great thoughts it’s hard to keep them inside.

Come pick the last few strawberries that popped out in the sun this week. You might be thinking, “I thought you said strawberries were picked out last weekend!” True. In last Thursday’s newsletter we said come pick strawberries nowww! Then, only two days later on Saturday, we posted on Facebook that the strawbs were picked and the donuts kicked. Then, on Monday we said, come pick strawbs again, we need about 20 pickers a day this week to wrap strawberry season. And today we’re sticking with that story. But more important than picking the last few strawberries is the moral of the story: On a small farm, with a bustling base of Fanatical Farmketeers, crops can change fast – so when we say come pick now, we mean RIGHT NOW! Weekdays, especially, are the time to beat crowds and often get the best picking. We invite you to consider visiting on the weekdays instead of weekends if you can. Here are 3 reasons in favor of weekday picking.

Weekday Bonus #1: Get first crack at crops, before weekenders lay seige to the citadel. For big crops like October apples, you might be fine showing up at 4:00 PM on Saturday after 699 other people have already hit the orchards. But for smaller crops like berries, and specialty delights like this kind of pepper or that kind of tomato – your fetish favorites – you really want to arrive soon after the Fresh Crop Alerts are sent during the week. Or sneak over here on Tuesday and Wednesday before the newsletter hits thousands of inboxes.

Weekday Bonus #2: We are now open EVERY DAY 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Come before work, come after work, come at lunchtime, come at siesta time. Stays light til late, cools down in the evening. Please note that “Monday ~ Sunday” is our way of saying, “Every Day.”

Weekday Bonus #3: Now serving donuts EVERY DAY EXCEPT MONDAY. This is a revolution in small farm fryer logistics. You can get yours Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 11:00 to 5:00. The Mark 2 Donut Robot is churning out fresh fried rings of fructotic splendor – sprinkled with cinnamon sugar if you must. “A sprinkle of sin, sugar,” is all you have to say. On Mondays the farm is open but the Donut Hole is closed like a barber shop.

Please note! We provide containers for strawberry & raspberry season. Berries 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 reusable farm totes.

Greg’s fresh garlic scapes. A local delicacy, to be sure, and an accurate depiction of a small farmer’s neurons during harvest season.

Stopped the Spread! A lovely message from Creative ‘Creeknik Kerry C.: “Just made the first round of strawberry jam with yesterday’s Indian Creek u-picked bounty – last year’s batch was named Panjamic – look how far we have come, Ithaca! Thanks for all the yummy harvests.” Thank you!