Indian Creek Farm

DEAR ‘CREEKNIKS:  Do you remember the collect call?  Let us explain for our Generation Z readers.  A collect call was when you gave your friend or lover the privilege of hearing your voice on the phone – and the privilege of paying for it.  A splendid invention from yesteryear.

Harvest season is a grand collect call.  Such lovely fruits and vegetables come calling.  They waltz back into our lives after a year of silence – and we accept the charges.  We know the bill will come.  It is called winter.  The cost of seasonal food is the very changing of the seasons.  But for now, in the blessed month of October, we revel in the voices.  We lounge into pillow talk.  We whisper sweet nothings.  We blurt out, “I’ve missed you and I love you!”

You accept the charges from Brussels Sprouts!  Your heart flutters.  It has been a whole year since you heard from tall and slender, green-eyed Bruss.  You can lop your own sprouts starting now.  Growing just east of the pepper field.

Last week this sign meant, “Do not enter.”  This week it means high five!  Please tromp into the sprout field with the loppers and cut your stalks.  They are profoundly nutritious and, given their provocative appearance, work great as party favors.  You can make a fabulous entrance into any company wearing your pink boa and carrying two or three stalks.

Just watch what you say on the phone; spies are everywhere this time of year.  They come in the most outlandish disguises.  Prairie Spy, Northern Spy, and Spigold (left to right) are all ready for u-pick.  These are brilliant pie apples that store well.  Find them in Rows 16-17 of the Dwarf Orchard; red ribbons in the Vintage Orchard.

Autumn Gala is ready, too!  Also a wonderful pie apple.  If you enjoy Gala, featured in our caramel apples at Apple Harvest Festival, you will like Autumn Gala.  It is merely a mutation that ripens later.  Pick them in Row 15.

Another sneaky apple, Sir Prize.  And, no surprise, terrific for pies.  Very sweet and juicy.  Crisp and tender.  A cross between Golden Delicious and the even more mysteriously named PRI 14-152.  Sir Prize is hard to find, but we grow them at The ‘Creek.  Pick Sir Prize in Row 17. 

Cortland continues.  A fabulous fresh eater with over 119 years of New York history behind it.  Does not rapidly oxidize after cutting.  It retains bright white flesh, making it ideal for fruit salads, lunch boxes, and displays.  Pick them on yellow-ribboned trees in the Vintage Orchard.

Pumpkin season proper.  Farmer Steve predicts a mad run on the pumpkin patch this year – we will get picked out early.  So don’t wait til a week before Halloween.  Find your dream pumpkin in the patch or at the stand.

Last chance for tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers!  We did not get the frost last weekend, so veggies keep plugging along.  Time to put them up for the offseason.  Pick beefsteaks, cherries, heirlooms, Romas, Marzanos, poblanos, jalapeños, cayennes, serranos, habaneros, chilis, Italian eggplants, Japanese eggplants, and fairytales.  Find them all in the field above the Brussels sprouts.

Fresh-pressed cider every week.  This is old-fashioned, unpasteurized Orchard Ambrosia.  Get it by the gallon and half-gallon.  Freezes beautifully.  Also filling carboys now!  Drop off your carboys inside the double doors at the farm stand with your name and phone number.  We will fill them at the next pressing thereafter and give you a buzz.  So to speak.  Carboys are $8/gallon for 5 gallons or less, $7/gallon for 6+ gallons.

Extended donut weekend!  You can get fresh apple cider donuts on all 3 days of the long holiday weekend.  Saturday, Sunday, and Monday from 10 AM to 6 PM.  Slushees will be flowing, too.  And hot and cold cider.  Kapow!

Last super sweet corn of the year!  Down to the last few hundred ears!  Crop will NOT outlast the holiday weekend crowds.  Anyway people get weird about summer corn after cool October weather hits.  They only want corn in a can after that.

Farmketeer of the Week:  Olivia Royale, your local handcraft hatmaker!  See her work at @easylivinghats – Ithaca’s own travel and adventure accessories using all natural fibers.  Cute pear bag and sunflower hat pictured at The ‘Creek.

Our new buddy Bowie says, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”  Actually that was Anne of Green Gables.  But Bowie agrees.  “It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?”

So put on your farmy flannels and accept the charges.  Come kick around the orchards.  Lop yourself a sprout.  We are here every day from 8 o’clock til a half-hour before dark, which is sneaking up closer every day.  Sneaking up like a Northern Spy.  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

DEAR FARMKETEER:  Please say apple.  Out loud.  A few more times:  apple, apple, apple.  If there is someone who can hear you, no problem, it might start a conversation.  If you are alone, even better, let the word-apples bounce off the walls and back into your own ears.  Now you are ready for today’s sermon.

“It is not with the lyre of someone in love that I go seducing people.  The rattle of the leper is what sings in my hands.”  That’s Farmer Steve wearing a baby hat, reciting the great poet Anna Akhmatova.  Sheesh.  Some people really know how to put heavy thoughts into words.

Liberty – Another heavy thought packed into a word.  “Give me Liberty or give me death!” shouted Patrick Henry.  “Liberty or Death” says the Greek national motto.  Whether you are rebelling against the British, the Ottomans, or just your own inner hegemond, come pick Liberty apples now.  They are a 1978 cross between Macoun and a secret Malus floribunda variety.  Take your Liberties now in Row 15.

Fortune – Another whopper of an idea.  A heavy concept.  Is bigger better?  Is more ever enough?  Fortunes are positively gargantuan this year.  Abundant rain.  Crispy and chunky.  A touch of spice.  A cross between Empire and Schoharie Spy.  Think about that:  empire + spy = fortune.  Deep and dark stuff!  Find your Fortunes now in Row 15.

Snowsweet – Not as deep sounding.  A mild-mannered, cold-hardy variety from Minnesota.  Possibly Lutheran.  Generation Z, born in 2006.  A hybrid of Sharon apples and Connell Red.  Described as “sweet, tart, and almost buttery” by the university’s Office for Technology Commercialization.  Hmm, maybe a heavy thought after all.  The apple as technology.  And what does “almost” buttery mean?  Very suspicious!  Pick Snowsweet now in Row 15.

Jonagold – Born in ’43.  Doesn’t get much heavier than that.  Were its parents honorable or deplorable during the war?  Does it inherit the best characteristics from its parents Jonathan and Golden Delicious?  Come decide for yourself.  Pick Jonagold now in Row 16.

Cortland – Our hometown apple?  There is no apple called Ithaca or Route 96 or Indian Creek.  There is an apple named King of Tompkins County, but we reject tyrants!  And it is from New Jersey.  So Cortland is probably our homie.  A child of McIntosh and Ben Davis, crossed in 1898 at the Cornell Geneva Agricultural Experiment Station.  “The flavor is tart and tangy, but not emphatically so, and juicy to the point of messiness,” writes Apples author Roger Yepsen.  Pick Cortland in the Vintage Orchard (yellow ribbons).

“I daresay this is the best corn of the year,” texted Farmer Dusky.  A bold claim from a corn rookie who has produced seriously supersweet ears already this season.  Attention, folks!  This is the last great wave of corn for 2017.  Load up on 2 dozen ears for only $10.

Bravo, you’ve picked all the pears.  Speaking of pears, this pair is doing an exemplary job.  Jessi Hersh and Stephan Herard, our donut models of the week, are demonstrating the bite-size nature of the donuts.  We received two Facebook complaints, out of thousands of donut lovers served, that these should be marketed as donut HOLES.  Problem is, these would-be donut holes have holes IN THEM.  So you see our reluctance to create a new class of topological object, a hole with a hole.  Way above our math certification.  Served Saturday and Sunday 10 AM to 6 PM.

At long last, hot nights have brought the tomatoes around!  Your brisk picking had kept up with the ripening, but this week we’ve seen a BOOM.  Please come scour the tomato field for beefsteak, heirloom, Roma, San Marzano, and cherries.  First come, first get!  These could be the last wave.  Mama Weather could again flex her muscles any day now.  DO NOT WAIT-O IF YOU WANT A TOMATO!

The eggplants continue.  You’ve picked the really big classics, but please keep sweeping the field clean of Italian, Japanese, and fairy tales.  Stir fry magic.  Pickle em, too.

Pepper fans have shown great patience.  The heat is finally bringing out some yellows, oranges, and even reds in the hot peppers.  The bells, meanwhile, are chiming quieter and quieter.  So please sweep the field for poblano, cayenne, jalapeño, serrano, habanero, and chilis, while keeping low expectations about the green, purple, and Italian sweets.

Farmketeers of the Week:  The Stewarts and Entwoods.  This double family outing caught our eye.  It was a momentary realization of our long-held ethos that The ‘Creek is like a state park with no entrance fee.  Come up, have a picnic, hang out, we won’t boss you around.  These lovely people were just sitting in the orchard grass talking and chuckling.  Good living.  Thank you for playing the game right!  Go Team S&E!

Pick your own pumpkins.  Some of you will fight it.  It’s not time yet!  If we all just shut up about autumn maybe it will forget to come!  Farm fans, this weekend is October.  These pumpkins won’t hurt you.  They’ve been waiting for you since spring.  Nothing can stop the clock.

Apple Harvest Festival.  We will have our booth down there for the long weekend.  You can find us in the middle of the chaos.  But we will look forward to seeing many of you at the farm, too.  You can have all the elbow room you want up here.  Note that the slushee machine will go down to the Commons for the weekend.  Donut machine stays on the farm.

Donuts with holes.  At least SOME of them have holes.  Some of them collapse in upon themselves.  (As it is with people, so it is with donuts.)  They are smallish donuts, to be sure.  Wee sweet bites.  The pokey little machine is called “Li’l Orbits” and isn’t that cute?  And aren’t they made with fresh apple cider pressed here on the farm?  And aren’t they humble fried toroids of dough smothered in cinnamon sugar?  And isn’t that okay for now?  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

YOUR HEART IS AN ANIMAL in a cage.  An apple-sized creature pulsing behind your ribs.  But what kind of apple?

Is your heart a Honeycrisp?  Stolen by Farm Kitty, never to be seen again?  You won’t find a single Honeycrisp hanging on a tree on this farm.  Farm Kitty picked all the ones you missed.  But you can still get Honeycrisp at the stand while supplies meet demands.  So u CAN has honeycripspss!

Is your heart an Empire?  A true Baby Boomer, born in ’45 at the close of the war, suited for temperate climes but tolerant of cold winters and Empire State taxes.  A cross between Mac and Delicious.  A shiny red lunchbox apple that does not bruise easily.  Does that sound like your heart?  Pick Empire apples now.  Row 13.

Is your heart a Macoun?  Nobody knows how to pronounce your heart:  mah-COON or mah-COWN?  But it is honeyed and fragrant and, for people who have been stung by your sweet snap, the loveliest heart in the orchard.  A 1920s cross between Mac and Jersey Black.  (Foreground apple was shined on shirt.)  Pick Macoun apples now.  Row 14.

Do you have the heart of a Sweet 16?  Generation X, cherry Twizzler on the nose, raw sugar on the palate, a flash of 70s zinggg.  A late Cold War cross between Northern Spy and Malinda.  Pick Sweet 16 apples now.  Rows 5 and 15.

Do you have a Vintage heart?  You have seen too many hard times to count, just like the Macs and Cortlands on the century-old trees in our Vintage Orchard.  But you are reliable and cold hardy.  You see people reaching for the handsome Johnnies Come Lately – cough cough Honeycrisp – but you humbly truck on doing good work.  You trust that someone will remember that you are the backbone of brilliant ciders with a proud history back to the 1820s (Mac), or you are the bright white of fruit salads going back to 1898 (Cortland).  You are a great North American apple-heart and worthy of the truest love.  Orange ribbons (Mac) and yellow ribbons (Cortland) in Vintage Orchard.

FIRST TIME EVER!  Pick your own PEARS in super secret Row 19.  You earned this, Farmketeers!  Last weekend you picked the Bartletts clean with astonishing vigor, so we have opened the top-shelf pears for you to pick.  Seven years running we have kept these special pears in reserve, but this is your year.  There are 5 varieties ready to PICK – remember that they won’t be ready to EAT off the tree.  Pears need a couple days on your counter to ripen fully.  Because the trees are chaotically intermingled in the row without signs, we provide you with these photos.  Good luck.  (Above) Highland, Seckel, Anjou.  (Below) Shenandoah, Potomac.

Potomac and Shenandoah.  Two great pears, two great rivers.  They flow together at Harper’s Ferry, where John Brown led his armed abolitionist insurrection against slavery.  He was hanged.  Walt Whitman watched.  158 years later, you can pick these pears in Row 19.

Hot or not, it’s pumpkin season.  Wegmans has them on display, so the little guy must jump into the fray.  You can pick pumpkins in the new field starting now!  Early birds, you are living good.  Don’t let anyone tell you to chill.

Tomatoes, Eggplant, Peppers.  You know the story by now.  This summer’s cold nights have allowed pickers to keep up, but maybe this hot stretch will bring on a mass ripening event.  Please come out and check the fields for beefsteaks, cherries, heirlooms, Romas, Marzanos, bells, poblanos, jalapeños, cayennes, serranos, habaneros, chilis, Italian eggplants, Japanese eggplants, and fairytales.

Sweet corn continues!  How much longer?  Nobody knows.  Get cobs of summer on sale.  Two dozen “ears” for only $10!  This is not grocery store corn.  It’s freshly picked, super sweet, non-GMO, kickass Farmer Dusky corn.

Cider, slushees, and donuts.  These are all made of fresh pressed Orchard Ambrosia in various physical phases:  hot cider, cold cider, hyper cold fusion plasma slushee cider, and cider donuts.  You can take Ambrosia home in gallons and half-gallons.  Freezes beautifully.  Donuts are served Saturdays and Sundays 10 AM to 6 PM.

Farmketeers of the Week:  Mother and Child with Bag.  These Harlem-based farm fans took their traveling show of wholesomeness to the Columbia University Farmer’s Market, giving the new purple bags a New York City debut!  Sweet… cute… root-a-toot-toot!

October 5, 2017 –  “Cider Apples” – Tasting, tour, and picnic dinner at the farm with Eve’s Cidery, Indian Creek, and The Piggery!  Buy tickets and see event details on Eve’s Cidery web site.  Only 10 seats left!  Get tickets now!  Just $20 each!  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

DEAR ‘CREEKNIKS:  This Saturday is International Eat an Apple Day.  You know what that means.  Time for tough love.  Let us dispense with any lingering delusions you may have about peach season in Upstate New York.  Here is the number of peaches you will find to pick:

Now you smartypantses are going to protest in unison, “That is not even a real number!”  And you are correct.  The square root of -1 is an imaginary number.  It does exist, but it is called “imaginary” by people who think about these things professionally.  So you can use your imagination and go pick pretend peaches.  We will not interrupt you.  But in real life peach picking season is over.  We do have beautiful peaches at the stand.  This is the final weekend.

Bartlett pears have been well picked, but you can still find them.  Last chance.  They will not last the weekend.  On Monday, pear picking season will become the square root of a negative number.  Choose any number you like, even the very special -42, but it won’t make the pears come back.  We will continue to have beautiful and exotic pears stocked at the farm stand for some weeks, but u-pick = bye bye.

Apples, by contrast, are very real.  They are hanging on the trees in big numbers; X > 5000.  But, as you know, when Farmketeers mobilize on a sunny weekend, big numbers become vanishingly small very fast.  Honeycrisp apples are calling to you.  They will become imaginary after the weekend.  Last chance to pick your own sweet specimens.  Rows 12, 13, 18, and the “Honeycrisp 2017” orchard on the farm map.

You can also pick Autumn Crisp, Jonamac, Early Fuji, and Elstar in the Dwarf Orchard.  All delicious varieties.  Visit Rows 8, 12, and 14.  See that funny nose on the Autumn Crisp?  We consulted Autumn Stoschek of Eve’s Cidery, one of our most trusted colleagues in practical pomology, about the anomalous protuberance.  Was it a frost ring?  Apple sawfly?  “It’s making a baby,” she texted back.  More on this enigmatic Autumn person and her dubious apple knowledge shortly.

New this week!  The Vintage Orchard is open!  You can pick McIntosh and Cortland apples!  These are classic fresh eaters that many people love from childhood or middle age in the 1980s.  You will find Macs on big old trees with ORANGE ribbons.  They are famously tender and tart with a “vinous” or winelike acidity.  They are petite in size and a refreshing snack on the run.

Cortland apples are famous for extraordinary bright white flesh, which they retain after biting or cutting.  They do not brown (oxidize) quickly.  Perfect in fruit salads and sliced in school lunchboxes.  But use appropriate eyewear.  Find the YELLOW ribbons round the old apple trees.

More apples means better cider.  Orchard Ambrosia expands its mind as things get complexified through fall semester.  You can drink it hot or cold at the stand and take jugs home.  Pressed fresh every week.  Freezes beautifully.  It is old-fashioned, unpasteurized juice.

Cider slushees for a hot September weekend.  Weather will be in the 80s.  We are serving slushees every day.  Here Dr. Robert the Bruce attempts to civilize our enterprise by drinking a proper slushee with Chestnut Crab apple perched on the rim.

Cider donuts.  Set em up and knock em down.  These are not big cakey donuts.  They are more like oversized vitamins that you pop into your mouth with a decisive pop and then you feel like life might turn out half-decent after all.  Served mostly fresh and usually hot Saturday and Sunday 10 to 6.

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant.  The detailed tomato report from Farmer Steve:  “Molasses.”  In English that means the beefsteaks, cherries, heirlooms, Romas, and Marzanos have been plugging along, but unseasonably cold nights have allowed pickers to keep up with the crop.  Please come pick, but do not expect an ocean of red tomatoes.  Peppers:  Tons to pick, from sweet bells to the hot hots.  But they, too, have not reached full redness in large numbers.  Eggplants:  Same idea, you will find beauties, many on the smaller side but great for many recipes.  Please enjoy the veggie crops while they’re here.

Farmketeer of the Week, @chef_gregorymark, knows how to enjoy his veggies.  Greg directs the venerable Harlem nonprofit Westside Campaign Against Hunger.  He loves the farm and comes up every year for a picking session.  Check out his “ajvar” or Balkan ketchup, made from roasted peppers, roasted eggplant, roasted garlic cloves, lemon and olive oil.  A savory dip for flatbreads or spread on a meat dish.  How about on your weekend brunch home fries?  Thank you, Chef Greg, for teaching us to think outside the Heinz.

The sweet corn family had a relaxing week at the lake and they are ready for a busy weekend.  Get 2 dozen ears for only $10 – and don’t take corn season for granted.  Another week?  Two weeks?  Hard to say.  Load up now and enjoy.

Join us for a free puppet show Saturday 1:00 PM at the playground!  Bring the kids and kick back while Lily Silly puts on an original performance with handmade puppets and live guitar accompaniment.  No tickets required – just come relax and enjoy.  Here is the Facebook event.

Special Event!  Tickets now!  Only 30 seats available!

October 5, 2017 – “Cider Apples” – Tasting, orchard tour, and picnic dinner at the farm with Eve’s Cidery, Indian Creek Farm, and The Piggery!

Buy tickets and see event details on Eve’s Cidery web site.

With the American cider revival under way and hundreds of new ciders finding their way to market each year, folks are making cider with whatever apples they can get their hands on. But is it good cider?

In this interactive tour and tasting we’ll take a look at why it matters where and how a cider apple is grown using our noses and taste buds.

Autumn Stoschek of nationally acclaimed Eve’s Cidery will lead a tasting of apples and ciders produced at different locations with different methods.  Steve Cummins of The ‘Creek will give you a tour of the orchards and our fruit tree nursery.  Heather Sandford of The Piggery will feed you a family-style picnic dinner here on the farm.

Farm Fans, you can pay a jillion bucks a ticket to attend a shee shee farm-to-table hoo hah.  Or – for just $20! – you can share a pokey little outing with 3 loopy farmers who have put their hearts into local food and beverage to great effect.

Get tickets now – only 30 seats!

Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

DEAR ‘CREEKNIKS: In retrospect, it might have been a little impulsive. But can’t a farmer just DO something once in a while without planning 7 years ahead, gaming the weather, and groveling for another operating loan? Well, we rolled the dice and did it. We planted a crop of pianos.

And, as you might have expected… We got a little too much rain for these tender shoots.  Within two days the pianos had swelled to bursting.  (But not before a little holiday weekend magic.  Young lads, unbidden, tickling the ivories, unburdened by the worries of the world…)

We know what you are going to say:  We should have planted more pianos.  You are right.  Don’t worry – we are on the job.  We are scouring Craigslist for freebies, and we will build a vine-roofed pole barn for each new planting.  Should be ready in 7 years.  Meanwhile, these first plantings are your silent beacons for finding the Dwarf Orchard and playground.  Yes, the pièce de résistance by our much-maligned Department of Signage and Collective Morale.

Last night Farmer Steve said, “You can say whatever you want in this crop alert.  It won’t matter.”  He said as soon as Farmketeers see the word HONEYCRISP, they’ll drop their email gadgets and bumrush the ranch.  In 3 days or less the prized apples will be scarce as deviled eggs after a church picnic.  Come one, come all.  But, first find, first pick.

Free rubies, emeralds, and sapphires!  That is what the human brain hears when you whisper U-PICK HONEYCRISP.  Trying to arrange an orderly weekend of U-PICK HONEYCRISP is like slinging a hammock between two cornstalks.  Why bother?  We will see all million of you in Rows 12 and 13 of the Dwarf Orchard.  Be nice as you box out your fellow pickers.

Besides U-PICK HONEYCRISP, what else is picking?  In Row 11 you will find the wonderful Gingergold.  If you like ginger and gold, you will like Gingergold.  In Row 12, pick Jonamac – a cross between Jonathan and McIntosh – alongside NYS674 which was eventually renamed “Autumn Crisp” by the Mad Men at Cornell after the labcoats had completed their Frankenappling.  Autumn Crisp is a cross between Monroe and Golden Delicious.  We PREFER it over Honeycrisp.  Finally, ask at the stand about the special trees of golden Gala mutants called “Blondees” in Row 2.

Pears are still picking.  We’re counting on you to wipe them out this weekend.  Note that these Bartletts, unlike apples but like other pears, ripen from the inside out.  Bite one on the branch and you’ll think, “Meh.”  Give it the brown bag treatment for a couple days, and you’ll think, “Heck yeah.”  Pick them now BEFORE they turn to mush.  Poach for fancy!

You peach monsters pretty much demolished peach u-pick season.  A lucky few will find the odd scattered late ripening peach.  But we have the farm stand STOCKED with juicy peaches at the same price as u-pick, $1.75/lb with breaks at 20 pounds ($1.50/lb) and 40 pounds ($1.25/lb).  Could be the final weekend.

Well, hello, homemade ice cream and peach cobbler!   A neighborly greeting to @ithacaicecream for posting this beauty featuring peaches from The ‘Creek, flour by our friends @farmergroundflour, and Sweet Melissa’s own homemade ice cream!  An Ithaca and Trumansburg favorite.

Donut season!  Served hot every Saturday and Sunday 10 AM to 6 PM.  These are infused with fresh-pressed Orchard Ambrosia.  Three cheers to this cheerful gang.  Full disclosure:  They got a free dozen for promotional services rendered.

Fresh Ambrosia is now served in 4 physical phases:  hot liquid cider, cold liquid cider, transitional frozen plasma cider slushee, and solid cider donut.  Vaping is not available.  Maybe next year.  Meanwhile, mix and match.  Hot cider with hot donut?  Cold slushee chaser?

Pay as low as $2 a pound when you buy a Pre-Picked Pepper Peck for only $15!  In the grocery store you can pay up to $4 a pound for sweet peppers.  Look at these beauties.  We’ll do the picking and pecking.  You give ’em a home.

Corn season still going:  get 2 dozen ears for only $10!  This is Farmer Dusky’s super-sweet corn grown right behind the farm stand.  Just like peach season, corn season could go POOF without warning real soon.  Enjoy this summer delight.

Farmketeer of the Week!  Local explorer @scout.ithaca had the award on lockdown with her Instagram story about an outing to The ‘Creek, starring Zorro and donuts.  Full disclosure:  She got free donuts for promotional services.

Thank you, Scout, for sharing your adventure.  Y’all can follow Scout’s scoutings at @scout.ithaca.

Squash for science!   Thanks to Farmer Professor Jen, our resident theoretical physicist, a sweet dumpling squash from The ‘Creek recently appeared in the rarefied air of the journal Europhysics Letters.  Jen’s paper with collaborator Dr. Tyler Engstrom explores mathematical connections between the folds in your brain, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, and the shape of sweet dumpling squash!  Who knew?!

“Ghost slabs, vortex unbinding, and fugacity.”  Just some of the great fun to be found in Jen’s paper, Surface creasing of soft elastic continua as a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.  Heady ideas to ponder, Farmketeers!  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

LET IT BE KNOWN to future historians that in the year 2017 of the Common Era, you the people, Farmketeers of Indian Creek, did not shirk your solemn duty.  You did not ignore the clarion call for locavores.  You responded with verve and vim – zest and zeal even! – to our crop alert about peaches.  You needed two short days to strip the orchards bare naked.

You did leave the leaves.  But little else.  Last Thursday morning we announced, “7,000 peaches need picking.”  We hadn’t told you about the other 4,000 peaches that were too green to pick.  BUT YOU PICKED ALL ELEVEN THOUSAND PEACHES, ripe and unripe alike, with a collective gusto rarely seen since the mall mobs for Cabbage Patch Dolls.  If only the aisles of Congress were rows of an orchard – and y’all could go clean out the bums.  Ripe and unripe alike.

You have made liars out of our signage department.  You are welcome to scour the upper orchard for the last u-pick peaches, but most of you will have better luck picking up a peck at the stand, where we will have stock while supplies last.  Which brings us to pear season…

Can you do for the pears what you did for the peaches?  Every year we cross Bartlett Bridge from peach season into apple season.  Shall we go together now?  Let’s all pick Bartletts.  Can you put this beautiful crop to good use?

Pick Gingergold, Dayton, Akane and other apples.  There will be a goldrush for gingergold – the first sweet specimens of September and widely regarded as among the best early apples.  Please strip these trees to prepare the orchard for peak apple season, when the Dwarf Orchard and Vintage Orchard will be dripping with 70 varieties.

New!  Apple cider slushees!  Nothing but our fresh-pressed Orchard Ambrosia, cold-spun into a chilled fusion plasma.  No added sugar.  No junk.  Just apples and pears.  And you can get yours FREEEEE when you put an Indian Creek bumpersticker on your car.  Ask at the donut stand.

Donuts gain confidence and a sense of meaning as cooler weather floats in.  You can get them every Saturday and Sunday 11 AM to 8 PM.  They’re made with Orchard Ambrosia, which you can get in gallon and 1/2 gallon jugs every day of the week.  Gets better with each passing week, as new apple varieties enter the mix.

Farmeketeer of the Week = @sumwhereinoz.  This picker showed high levels of emotional intelligence in scoring a great haul of tomatoes despite a pokey ripening schedule owing to so many cool nights.  Took perseverance.  Plus 5 points for farm brochure in photo background.

Pick beefsteak, heirloom, and cherry tomatoes.  Roma and Marzano are trailing a tad.  Might find some, but not buckets.  Anyway, please pick what we have on the vine.  Can’t take these juicy summer fruits for granted.

Peppers, too.  All kinds ready to pick.  Green bell, purple bell, sweet Italian, poblano, jalapeño, cayenne, serrano, Thai, and more.  As the weeks go by, they’ll go from green to yeller to orange to red.  Load up and put up.

Dusky’s supersweet corn has been a hit.  Take home 2 dozen ears for only $10.  Pictured here boiled with local butter and parmmmm nom nom.

Our neighbor Shawn, of Five Pads Farm up the street, has 250 pounds of his local garlic to move.  He sent us a text saying, “Hey, buddy, how can we move 250 pounds of garlic?”  Best thought we could come up with:  Sound the horn in this crop alert.  Help a guy out, Farmketeers?  Get it at the farm stand every day til it’s gone.

Shawn makes honey, too.  Well actually the bees make it.  It’s bee-utiful.  Crazy old coot doesn’t wear the suit when he’s communing with the bees.  Likes to keep it real.  Hive after hive buzzing around in the backyard and Shawn’s out there like it ain’t no thing.  Only wears the suit for the garlic harvest.  Get his awesome local honey at the stand any day.

New bags just in time for apple season!  Classic red and new purple.  These bags excel at holding 30 pounds of apples, pears, pumpkins, and squashes with tomatoes and peppers stacked gently on top and flowers on toppa that.  Slung over the shoulder leaving hands free for texting and slushee.

Purple is the collector’s edition for 2017.  Get it this year.  New color next year.  Take the rainbow grocery shopping.

Remember, free slushees at the donut stand when you put a farm sticker on your car!  There’s a small blue circle and a big purple bumper.  These will let the rushbutt in traffic behind you know that you support local farms and will THEREFORE BE DRIVING AS SLOWLY AS YOU PLEASE.  Meanwhile, we hope your loved ones are safe and clear of Hurricane Harvey.  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

DEAR FARMKETEERS:  Please say hello to Tom Ato.  He is here to accept the honor of ‘Creeknik of the Week on behalf of a pair of pickers who shall be named really soon… At the end of this Fresh Crop Alert.  For suspense.  No peeking!  Did you just peek?!  Sheesh, show restraint!  What, are you 5 years old?

Tom is photographed here against an artful backdrop – a bouquet made by the hand of a child savant at Eve’s Cidery.  The youngster explained unbidden that the red fluffy plant is called “Love Lies Bleeding.”  What do you know about such matters, my cherub, you’re like 5 years old!

But let us not dismiss the next generation.  Rather, we address the young with sober wisdom.  Here goes.  Nobody wants to pick apples before September.  And people really don’t care about cider til then, either.  So don’t plant a bunch of early ripening varieties.  We leathery old apple slingers have learned the hard way that if we stood out on the highway flagging cars down shouting, “We will pay you to pick apples and keep them!” we would have few takers til the turn of the month.  Nonetheless, today we announce that THREE DELICIOUS VARIETIES are ready to pick:  Sansa, Akane, and Zestar.  They are red.  They are good.  And you’ll find the first heirloom varieties at the stand.  Will you perform your locavore duty?

Peach picking goes BOOM right now.  You’ve been hoovering up the orchards diligently, but the next wave has ripened apace.  Please start in the upper orchard and clean out Row 3 which is RIPE-RIPE.  Then Rows 4 and 5, in which every peach is either perfect or just days away from perfection – all ready to PICK NOW.  There are 200 trees with 35 peaches apiece meaning 7,000 peaches that need a home STAT!  These will go fast.  Weekend will be humming with pickers.  And the jaws of the season will snap shut soon with little warning.

Saturday Sweet Corn Cookout!  11 AM to 6 PM!  Come have convivial chat with Farmer Dusky as he serves up his freshly boiled corn topped with herb-infused butter made of herbs from the ‘Creek and butter from a local maker.  Get 5 ears for $5 or 2 ears for $3.  Dusky will also have a vegan option in place of butter.  Come meet your farmer and eat super-sweet buttered corn.  We were going to call this event an “Old-Fashioned Corn Boil” but that just sounded medical and baddd.

Sweet Corn Sale!  Get 2 dozen ears for only $10!  Dusky has been picking fresh corn into the wee hours because the crop is coming on strong.  Load up.  Share with friends and family.  Good enough to eat off the stalk.  Makes any meal taste like SUMMER.

The pepper patch is rated R.  We have an OBSCENE profusion of purple peppers which you will please pick pronto!  Also abundant sweet peppers in the green bell and sweet Italian categories.  Poblanos, too.  They are the ones you substitute into any recipe that calls for sweet peppers – if you want to add piquancy and (technically speaking) pungency to your life.

Look at the muscles!  On the pepper.  The roofer’s not bad either.  But this picture is from 2014 so do not be fooled:  The hot peppers are not red yet.  Plenty of jalapeño, habanero, serrano, cayenne, and Thai to pick, but on the whole the hots haven’t donned their red hot dresses yet.

Tomatoes are starting up and ready to pick.  Beefsteak, Roma, San Marzano, and heirloom are all pickable.  Handful of cherry tomatoes, too.  The big boom probably happens in a week, but please start picking now.

Lilies are ready to cut – and you can bouquet them with other flowers of the field.  This is a steal because at $5 per bouquet, you can sneak lilies into the mix instead of paying $3 per stem or more for these extravagant beauties.

Donuts Saturday and Sunday 11 AM to 8 PM.  It’s basically fried dough with apple cider dumped in it but people are nuts about it.  So we oblige and we fry.

Cider is flowing every week.  We are pressing the freshest apples of the season.  They get sweeter and more complex with each passing week.  Just like college students.  Welcome back, kids.  If you tire of the Ivory Tower, you’ll find us here in the Fruit Dungeon.

‘Creekniks of the Week = Lindsey Smith and AJ Smith.  These Farmketeers obviously have a nose for produce.  They found Tom Ato exactly 4 years after bringing us Eggder R. Murrow (pictured), who went on to an illustrious career as anchor of the Farm O’ Clock News.  Now that is some seriously quirky sh-t!  Thanks for being weird, you guys!  By the way, everyone, eggplant is pickable but got picked slim.  Field will recharge soon.  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

LOYAL ‘CREEKNIKS:  ‘Tis the time of the Nightshade, for the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers are ready to pick.  ‘Tis the time of the Dayshade, too, for the sun will be darkened and not a soul in the heavens or principalities can stop it.  The last time we saw a cosmic convergence of this magnitude was 5 years ago this month.  It had never happened before, but as soon as Veggiestock ignited, it seemed so inevitable.  So right.

Tomatoes are ready!  Cherries, beefsteaks, and assorted heirlooms are ready for u-pickers.  Romas and San Marzanos are not ready yet.  Please come load up on your first tomato haul of the year.  To get motivated for a mindbending vegetable picking experience, jump back in time to VEGGIESTOCK!

Eggplants are ready.  Come pick your own Italian, Japanese, and fairy tale eggplants.  To get inspired for the task of picking, revisit the unexpected exuberance of EGGPLANTAPALOOZA!

Peppers are ready.  Pick your own green and purple bells, sweet Italian fryers, poblanos, jalapeños, habaneros, serranos, cayennes, Thai chilis, and others we are forgetting.  The hots will still be in their green dresses.  Red dresses – and true heat – will come later, as you will recall from the fireworks at PEPPEROO!

Peaches are picking.  The second wave has ripened after a stretch of sunny days.  Did you get the inside tip a couple days ago?  Follow our special farm Facebook page.  It’s the BEST way to score midweek intelligence leaks.

First apple cider of the year!   We will press the first batch on Friday so you can get it in gallons and half-gallons on the weekend and probably Friday afternoon if the crew has a good morning.  This is “Orchard Ambrosia,” nectar of the OMGawds – our locally somewhat famous unpasteurized beverage containing only fruit.  No added sugar.  We squeeeeze fruit with water pressure and out drips ‘Brosia.

Dusky’s sweet corn is an OMGawdsend.  Just absolutely crushing it with this first-time corn crop for The ‘Creek.  Eat it right outta the pot or, like these juveniles of the farmer species, right offa the stalk cavewoman style.  Zero butter and even less salt than that.  (But try Old Bay Seasoning!)

Emily’s lettuce continues to delight.  Another rookie crop, and it’s as tender as the tenderfoot’s uncalloused hands.  Two varieties in stock, Red Sail and Romaine.

Williams’ Pride is the name of the apples you can pick.  On your way to Row 10 in the Dwarf Orchard you can fight about whether it is properly Williams’, William’s, or Williams.  When you get there, you will finally pick your first apples of the year, because these are RED APPLES which seems to be what you Farmketeers have been holding out for.  The yellow and green apples which kicked off the season were treated with precisely the contempt we have come to expect.  Sigh.

Donuts got their earliest start ever this year.  They roll off the “L’il Orbits” machine every Saturday and Sunday 10 to 8.  Purists, go home.  Everyone else, sprinkle with our totally original cinnamon sugar mix.

Apparently some of us farmers are roadtripping to Tennessee for the apocalypse, er, eclipse.  Whoever’s left will be moping at the chess table and/or hanging around to help you at the farm stand.

Look at these pancakes.  Our Farmketeer-of-the-Week, Kelly, worked a really long time to perfect the shape and work out the peach-to-blueberry ratio.

Okay she didn’t win for the cakes.  But the grilled peaches…  Old family recipe calls for cutting in half, slapping on grill, sprinkling with feta (classical cheese of the OMGawds), then drizzling with balsamic reduction.  Who’s gonna lock up next week’s prize?  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.

DEAR FARMKETEERS:  Four years ago today, the tomatoes of Indian Creek convened a plenary session.  It was a gathering without precedent in their inchoate tomatocracy.  Even elders and youngsters were consulted.  You see, the weather had lost its way.  Chilly nights and cold soil had sown uncertainty and anxiety.  When would the tomatoes ripen?  How would they know when to jump the vine?  In a test of their ability to govern – after so many years of merely complaining about federalistic tyranny by the weather – they would have to create a plan for ripening.  A process fraught with consequences for all.

They met, debated, created, and thrived.  Thousands of tomatoes were picked at peak ripeness.  Thousands of pickers were fed.  Now fast forward to the present.  Runaway global cooling has again beset Finger Lakes farms with cold nights.  ‘Creekniks are asking, will the tomatoes be ready THIS Creekend?  Next Creekend?  Ever?!  Tonight the tomatoes will decide.  We will bring you the news when it gets to us.  The tomatoes have sworn:  The decision will not be left to the ORANGE ONE alone.  Each beefsteak and heirloom and cherry and saucer will have a say.  Kumbay-diggety-yahhh.

Meanwhile, Farm Fans are seeing the world through peach-colored glasses.  There are peaches to pick, but pickers are keeping up.  You know the story:  To the clever and diligent go the spoils.  Such as sneaking by YOURSELF up to the orchard on a quiet TUESDAY afternoon and scoring a sweet HAUL of donut peaches BEFORE the crop alert hits inboxes.  This week’s Farmketeer-of-the-Week-Runner-Up did just that.  She had the top prize in the bag, but we didn’t get a photo and you know how the internet works:  Pics or it didn’t happen!  If that was really you, @scout.ithaca, get ’em next time?

Rookie Indian Creeker Emily is harvesting her first beautiful crop of lettuces – Red Sail and Romaine.  Get yours at the stand and support a starter upper.  Fresh, crisp, and tender.  2 heads for 3 bucks.

Dusky’s sweet corn is best eaten naked – no butter, no salt, nothing needed.  Good enough right outta the pot.  In fact Dusky eats it right off the STALK.  Boo-diggety-yah.

Farmer Steve says push the purple peppers.  They are leading the pack.  Plenty of other types are coming into season.  Hunt for your haul of sweets, bells, hots, fryers, and more.  Eggplants are ready, too, but Steve says, “say it in a small font.”  A little mention while they size up proper for another week.

Steve muttered something in his sleep last night about an “apple cider slushee machine.”  Who knows what that portends, if anything, for life at The ‘Creek.  Meanwhile donuts are rolling off the line every Saturday and Sunday starting at 10 AM.  (Caution:  Donuts and donut peaches are NOT adequate eye protection for viewing the solar eclipse.)

People, do we have to spell it out for you?  P-E-A-N-U-T B-U-T-T-E-R V-E-H-I-C-L-E.  As always, Farm Fans are fraidy cats when it comes to picking early apples like Pristines, so we stripped them off the trees for sale down at the stand.  Get some and use these sweet-tart specimens for their naturally appointed uses.  To carry peanut butter, roasted garlic mustard, red pepper jelly.  Come on, chickens!

A flower, a child, and a hammer walk into a bar… This week’s Farmketeer of the Week, Laura, put the kids to work with a great craft of smashing Indian Creek flowers with a hammer.  Sounds so therapeutic!

Such a lovely transformation.  Thanks for sharing your mashed flower blanket thing!

At least 100 people per week turn RIGHT upon reaching this sign.  Any theories?

To be fair, our signage can perplex at times.  By “AHEAD 500 FT,” we mean, to the LEFT some large number of feet and who knows how many.

Note live porcupine on farmer’s head.  Eating farmer’s hair.  We were on location this week filming a summer wildlife blockbuster for Go Finger Lakes, the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and Cayuga Nature Center.  Watch for the video!

Stay tuned to next week’s TOMATO update – as well as your TOTAL ECLIPSE PLANNER and the 5th ANNIVERSARY of the most amazing and transformative crop phenomenon ever witnessed in Finger Lakes farm country.  Rain or shine, hope to see you this Creekend at The ‘Creek.

DEAREST ‘CREEKNIKS:  First, we bring you a “first” – a brand new crop.  It’s called corn.  You’ve probably heard of it, but it’s new to us.  We’re growing our own sweet corn for the first time thanks to The Dusky.  Which is nothing like The Donald.

Here’s The Dusky.  He started a little sweet corn field behind the farm stand.  It will be open for u-pick soon, but you can find fresh-picked ears at the stand starting Saturday morning.

Demand will outstrip supply.  It’s good enough to eat right off the stalk.  Dusky ate 3 ears during trials today.  Gives you a gentler high than high fructose corn syrup and spares you the deleterious metabolic ructions.

Yes, demand will outstrip supply – as it does with peaches, too.  Here’s the peach status.  There are some peaches to pick.  People are picking them right now.  There’s no telling what you’ll find when you get here – except that we will have the stand stocked with New York peaches at the u-pick price, so nobody has to go home peachless.

Not everybody wins the peach picking sweepstakes.  But somebodies always do!  Behold this homemade peach galette made by @fauselimagery after an outing last week.

And look at this berry creation by @basepaired.  Most of you will find that raspberries are pretty much done, while strawberries are scattered around.  Just have to hunt.

Demand for garlic outstripped supply, too!  Total destruction at the harvest party last Sunday.  In a good way.  You Farmketeers are nothing if not thorough.  You picked the field clean.  One gentleman picked 200 bulbs to produce his homemade garlic powder.  Mama mía.

Meet the Kemmerers.  Farmketeers of the Week.  For years they traveled from Brooklyn on a week’s vacation at Taughannock, and they would always stop at The ‘Creek.  Recently they moved upstate – just up the road!  So they hit last week’s Garlic Party hard, launching their careers as regular pickers and real locavores!  Welcome, you guys!

Real locavores don’t wait til September to pick apples.  Ya pick ’em when they’re ripe.  Which is now.  Even if you are not emotionally ready for apples, they are ready for you.  Please pick the Pristines.  Easy work in the Dwarf Orchard.

This week a fellow complained that there was “nothing to pick” and we were “out of everything.”  Farmer Steve, always a good one for a quality retort with an appropriate blend of snark and resignation, offered the following off the record:  “Maybe he can go pick-your-own at W-gmans.  They never run out.”  Or perhaps we could pave paradise and put up a grocery store.  Except this farmland is protected forever by an agricultural conservation easement.  So we’re stuck with actual trees and fruit hanging off.  (But free stickerssss!)

Everyone is asking about tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.  Tomatoes will be ready when X=0.  The sign will hang straight and we’ll shout about tomatoes from the hilltops.  Soon.  Peppers same deal.  Eggplants are ready now for first wave action.  You can pick classics, Japanese, fairy tale… just please DON’T PICK THE BABIES!  Let ’em size up another week or two.  Plenty for everyone.

We have worked our way to the moral of the story.  The truth about these Fresh Crop Alerts.  As you are reading this, somebody is already picking your dream peach.  By the time our weekly update gets to you, crafty pickers and devoted regulars are already taking first crack at the good stuff.  They pick on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday morning – BEFORE the newsletter hits thousands of local inboxes.  We do our best to forecast what you’ll find when you get here, but the Fresh Crop Alert fills the parking lot with ravenous hordes in the early hours after sounding.  It’s a powerful public address system.  And with power comes disappointment.  Just ask The Donald.

A donut for your trouble?  Please come explore.  Find what you find.  If you don’t find a peach to pick, you can pick flowers, herbs, apples, and the first vegetables of the year.  Every week is different.  And every weekend you will find donuts – Saturday and Sunday 10 AM.  Playground is always open.  Glad you’re with us on this seasonal journey of local food.  Hope to see you at The ‘Creek.