Garlic Harvest Extended & First Apples Ready! Pick Your Own Garlic, Eggplant, Flowers, Herbs, Last Raspberries, First Apples, First Peaches; Daily Donuts & Tart Cherry Slusheees.

– SUMMARY –

U-pick garlic • U-pick raspberries • U-pick eggplant • U-pick herbs • U-pick flowers • U-pick apples • U-pick peaces (first few) • Open 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM daily rain or shine • Fresh donuts every day 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM (except Monday) • Shop for garlic, eggplant, apricots, Yellow Transparent apples, lemon & tart cherry slushees, flowers, honey, syrup, pottery, and more • 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 during the season • Drive slowwwwwwwly on the farm • Thank you for being here

– FULL STORY –

DEAR FARMKETEERS: If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans. They will hear you out – then promptly amuse themselves tinkering with the dials, tilting the playing fields, and generally enforcing Murphy’s Law with all the mercurial zeal of a banana republic despot. Heck, those same almighties might even trick you – and millions of others – into unutterable infamies such as installing linoleum over nice wood floors. Gasp! Be mindful! Meantime, for our part here on the farm, we accept that our plans for a synchronized dance of weather and harvest will occasionally meet with an impish, even radically contrary response, so we humbly adjust our ag ec as needed. To wit: The u-pick garlic harvest has been extended to this weekend, since last weekend’s downpours kept some of you at home. Please pick garlic now! Last chance.

U-PICK GARLIC = NOW. We will strip the field on Monday. Hardneck varieties: Continental and German Red. Softneck varieties: Inchelium Red and Tochliavri. The softnecks are perfect for braiding. You can pull a head for tonight’s dinner or stock up for the whole year. If stored correctly this year’s garlic will last until about April 2022. Garlic Greg explains, “The best way to cure garlic is to tie cloves in bunches of 15-20 and hang in a dry, well-ventilated area such as a front porch. After the stalks have totally dried in three or four weeks remove dried stalks for storage. Keep at a pretty even temperature and as low humidity as possible, but don’t refrigerate or freeze.”

U-PICK GARLIC PRICING = $2/head (1-9 heads), $1.75/head (10-49), $1.50/head (50-100), $1.25/ head (100+). There are also garlic heads and garlic scapes at the stand.

U-PICK RASPBERRIES = WANING BUT STILL GOING. Summer crop will wrap up soon, but people have been finding quarts to pick every day. There are probably about 2000 individual berries hiding around the farm. There are several patches. They recharge with days of heat and rain. If you arrive just after a surge of pickers, do not despair. Look under the leaves! Check the next row! We provide picking containers for berry season because we sell u-pick berries by quarts and pints (by volume, not weight). Of course you can bring your own buckets or boxes for taking the berries home after you have checked out. You can also buy our farm totes in 2 sizes and 2 colors.

U-PICK EGGPLANT = COME NOW! There are several varieties and some of them got BIG with the heat and rain – come pick for stirfry, Italian cutlets, baba ganoush.

U-PICK APPLES = Yellow Transparent. We know what you are thinking. “Yellow” and “Transparent” combine to make the most unappetizing apple name since Edelborsdorfer. But truly, nothing creates a community orchard bumrush like Yellow Transparent apples – time to pick now! Your Siberian cousins REALLY LIKE these apples. The Yellow Transparent apple is a cold-hardy variety imported in the 1800s from Putinlandia before it was officially called that. It ripens in July for the short northern season. To cut the acidity, people in the olden days added salt (take note, foodies!) and called them salt apples. We call them Old Yellers. They are way better than Honeycrisp. They make a CREAMY apple sauce, first chance of the year. They are good stuff to be thankful for. Please come pick these apples. By the way, now is the time to order apple trees for planting in your backyard next spring; see our nursery web site. For example, Winecrisp has a nice name.

U-PICK PEACHES = JUST STARTING. Many of you have written to ask, “Is it time?” It’s hard to know what to say here, folks. The very MENTION of peaches in a Fresh Crop Alert – even burying it below the sleepy news of Yellow Transparent apples – risks inciting a premature stone fruit riot. Mind you, we understand the mania: Biting into a fresh summer peach is like biting into… a juicy bag of music, a drooly symphony of piccolos and violas and French horns and organs. And not just sacred churchy organs. Rock-and-roll organs. Take-me-out-to-the-ballpark organs. Even Parisian monkey grinder organs. Yes, a peach is a bag for all organs. (To quote a phrase perhaps never uttered in earth history.) At any rate, we are reporting today that there is a small first wave of peaches to be picked, a small starter wave, and it will be first come, first pick as usual. Stay tuned for the announcement of peach season proper in a week or two, followed by donut peaches in mid-August.

U-PICK FLOWERS = Some are in full flower, more coming along each day. Zinnia, snapdragon, scabiosa (pincushion), ageratum, ammi, dianthus, celosia, statice, gomphrena, marigold, strawflower, dahlia, aster. U-pick flowers are $8 per handful, vases available for $2 or bring your own. The flower garden is right next to the farmstand.

U-PICK HERBS = Basil, parsley (flat and curly), dill, cilantro, thyme, sage, oregano. The garden is at the farm stand. This is a modest patch suitable for the middling home chef who would pick a bag of mixed herbs for seasoning and dressing – not big enough for hordes of ambitious pesto pickers! U-pick herbs are $3 for a brown paper sandwich bag full, the kind the donuts used to go in. Or like your PB&J with Little Debbies and brown mushy apple slices back in the day.

FRESH DONUTS = Every day 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM except Monday. We’ve said it before, and it might even be true: This is a revolution in small farm fryer logistics. The Mark 2 Donut Robot is churning out fresh fried rings of fructotic splendor – sprinkled, if you like, with cinnamon sugar. “A sprinkle of sin, sugar,” is all you have to say. Again, no donuts on Mondays, when the Mark 2 Donut Robot observes its Cyborg Sabbath. Note: Donut peaches are not ready yet. Farmer Steve estimates mid-August. Stay tuned.

COLD SLUSHEES = Lemon and tart-cherry. Find them swishing round and round and round in the Donut Hole.

Three cheers for this dedicated locavore. Farm Fan @mtravisdunham posted: “I support #EatingLocal which is why I’m having fresh-picked raspberries from @indiancreekfarmithaca over lemon ricotta ice cream from @ithacaicecream #FingerLakesFood #YummyFood #UPick“

Three cheers for this enterprising Farkmeteer. @kitchensense posted: “Jam session complete. @drnategoldstein and I picked and jammed the raspberries. Used @christine_ferber_officiel_’ overnight technique to maximize pectin. Decided to keep the seeds for both visual and textural appeal. @indiancreekfarmithaca.” You can see the free newsletter about home cooking, Kitchen Sense, which includes over 600 recipes, some with ingredients from The ‘Creek!