Indian Creek Farm

TELL THE TRUTH and shame the devil. That’s what Mother always says. Let’s make Mom proud by telling the hard truth about pig farmers: they will meet their doom at 6 PM on Saturday. Tug of war versus apple farmers.

We laid out the reasons in last week’s Crop Alert: they have squishy muscles and dubious intellects. Still some are in denial even as the weekend approaches. So please be gentle when you are talking to a pigherd at the party — remember that his or her brain rolls around like a BB in a boxcar. (And can someone go check on the piggies Sunday morning? They’ll need tending.)

So, down to business: Tug of war at 6 o’clock. Before that, there will be music, food, and fun for all ages. Starts at noon, rain or shine. The party is free, while food and drink are sold separately. Logistical tidbits…

BRING YOUR OWN BEER (BYOB) — We will be serving fresh-pressed cider, but you can bring your own beverages. Please, no Coke Zero. That stuff is unholy.

BRING YOUR OWN FOOD (BYOF) — The Piggery will be serving their famous “brats” and potato salad. Pretty much a pork deal. After all, pig is their gig; but it’s not for everyone, so bring whatever you like. You can cook Not Dogs with Nayonnaise and Netchup on whole wheat Nuns for all we care. We’ll have several bonfires going. Mostly for looks but also for cooks. Picnics are encouraged; red gingham blankets are extra credit.

BRING YOUR OWN RAIN GEAR (BYORG) — Oh sure, we’ll share the one umbrella we have, but it could get crowded under there. This is your big chance to dress like a farmer, or at least like a farmer in a catalog. Could be a cool, wet day in the country. Grassroots started in the rain; Woodstock launched in the mud; Pigs-n-Apples might be a bit boggy, too. Don your mucks!

BRING YOUR OWN PUMPKIN TOOLS (BYOPT) — We are buying up all the kid-friendly carving kits in town. But if there is a huge turnout, and you don’t want to wait to start your masterpiece, bring your favorite implements.

BRING YOUR OWN APPLE PIE (BYOAP) — Pie contest! Submissions accepted 12-5, winners announced 5:30. Warning: we know the old trick about taking the sticker off a Wegman’s pie. We’ve tasted every store-bought pie in a 16-mile radius.

And now a little background on the Pig-Apple drama. Consider this recent exchange on Facebook…

The Piggery: “The pig is turning an apple — essentially garbage — into bacon! That’s magic.” – Jim Gaffigan

Indian Creek Farm: Never heard of no Jim McGaffigan. Sounds made up. Typical — you can shake a pig farmer’s hand but count your fingers when you’re done.

BLAMMO! Consider the fire stoked.

PIGS-N-APPLES 2012 should be livelier than a two-tailed puppy. Over 100 people have clicked “I’m Going” on the Facebook Event Page. Plus 43 “maybes” and 524 invited. Based on that data, our calculations predict there will be between 7 and 400 people, spread over 6 hours which means plenty of people-watching, fraternizing, and flirting — but not such a crowd that you can’t find a corner of the orchard for you and yours alone.

Either way, we’ll be here. We’ll try to make it fun for whoever shows up.

Hope to see you at The ‘Creek!

WELL, BUTTER MY BUTT and call me a biscuit — only one week til party time! The first annual Pigs-n-Apples Party will hit the farm on Saturday, October 6, and people have been clamoring for details. Who what when where?

So us guys at the newsdesk planted a spy in the planning committee. Her cover got blown and they trapped her in a peck box; but, with a flash of dimples and a kung fu kick, she escaped and returned to base. Here’s what she found out…

UPDATED SCHEDULE — We’ve posted the latest schedule on the Party Page and included it here. Keep in mind that organizing a party is like putting socks on a rooster. We’ll do our best to keep things on time, but if it starts looking like a soiree managed by bumpkins, don’t get your tail up and your stinger out.

12 to 5 – pumpkin carving contest, apple pie contest, apple slingshot
3 to 4 – corn javelin (kids only!), apple bobbing (kids only!)
4 to 5 – treasure hunt
5 – games over, winners announced at 5:30
6 – tug of war between pigherders and apple farmers

Admission to the party is free, and the events are free. Music will play through the day. Local food by The Piggery and Indian Creek will be for sale the whole time, as will non-alcoholic drinks including our own fresh-pressed cider! U-picking will work like a normal day and pre-picked produce will be for sale as usual.

PUMPKIN-CARVING CONTEST — Buy your own u-pick pumpkin and jump into the game. There will be kid-friendly carving kits and paints. These two cute kids already chose their pumpkins. Overachievers!

BRING YOUR OWN BEER (BYOB) — The beerhall table is built, and the plan for the party is bring your own beer. We made the monster table — 32 feet long! — out of an old oak tree that died on the farm. It will be one of the main gathering points, great for activities like the pumpkin-carving and pie contests, and of course socializing with farm friends old and new.

APPLE CIDER DONUTS — We’ll haul the Li’l Orbits machine up to the party spot and keep it cranking til we run out of batter or you run out of belly.

BAKERS, START YOUR OVENS — The judges will be accepting your homebaked pies (and bribes) til 5. Winners will be announced at 5:30.

LOCAL FOOD — There will be farm-fresh food catered by our pals from The Piggery, Ithaca’s most famous heritage-breed herd. Their wildly popular bratwursts and stuff will surely be a main attraction. But if you think that wrestling pigs has prepared those guys for a tug-of-war with the apple farmers, think again.

TUG OF WAR — The apple gang has been running teamwork drills all week, such as the delicate Duck-Wince-Crimp maneuver shown here. Takes a lot of trust, and look at the guns on that old farmer! He’s tougher than a one-eared alley cat. How will Team Pig stand a chance? Sorry, Piggery, sometimes you are the windshield and sometimes you are the bug.

After all, everyone knows that on a pig farm, the pigs do all the work, whereas in an orchard, the apples just sit there. We have to climb ladders all day toting 40 pounds of fruit. Plenty of mental exercise, too, remembering lyrics to old apple songs. Yes, we are all brains and brawn around here. But the Pig Squad, well, let’s just say they won’t hurt their backs toting their brains around.

Trying to beat Team Apple will be like slinging a hammock between two cornstalks. Totally pointless. How about slinging a slingshot between two fence posts? That we can do! Here is the apple slingshot field, ready for your best shot.

MASTER OF CEREMONIES, 2032 — The party planners have announced the emcee for the 20th Annual Pigs-n-Apples Party, which will be held here in 2032. You can meet Kollman Henry Cummins, age 6 months, at the first annual next week. No teeth but already eats apples (see one inside his cocoon?).

OTHER NEWS OF THE FARM

WHAT’S PICKING NOW? — The Vintage Orchard and Dwarf Orchard are bursting with ripe apples, at least half a dozen varieties, and it’s prime time to pick end-of-season vegetables and flowers. The farm stand is packed with fruits, vegetables, cider, donuts, and chit chat.

WELCOME HOME, PENELOPE — It was a long summer without Penelope. She had to go in for surgery. She is back just in time to give wagon rides at the party! Hooray, Penny, we missed you real bad.

BACKHOE IS BACK — It was a long few weeks without the backhoe’s hoe. Stitched her up yesterday, just in time to dig a huge pit of rotten apples and tomatoes for the tug of war! Team Pig will feel right at home when they nosedive in THAT.

BORN TIRED, RAISED LAZY — Zorro is still on the front porch. Just like last week. And the week before that. And the week before that. Moves as often as a cabin in the country. Well, you know what they say about guys like Zorro: “There’s snow on the roof, but there’s fire in the hearth.”

Hope to see you at The ‘Creek!

IT IS A CUTE ENOUGH contraption, if a little homely. You could even call it a kinetic sculpture: the motor buzzes and sprockets whirr and paddles click back and forth. But in the end, art or not, our new gadget makes fresh donuts.

At least we think it does. Farmer Owen is still tinkering. We’ll fire it up this weekend to serve donuts at the stand, and at special events like the Pigs-n-Apples Party on October 6th. Have you clicked “I’m Going” on Facebook yet?

The sign is painted, and the fine print says these farm-fresh donuts are deep-fried. But don’t fret — it’s good to balance things out. Half of the people who yap about their healthy diets have been caught with a pack of Twinkies anyway. So let’s “donut” together, in broad daylight.

We’ll all look like tubby little spacemen soon. “L’il Orbits,” as they say. The donuts are supposed to come out a tad bigger than bite-size, somewhere between Munchkin and Gutbuster. Come try them. We need test subjects.

What’s the big idea? Donuts are another way to enjoy Orchard Ambrosia. The flavor evolves naturally with the seasons, and it is REAL GOOD right now, using a blend of Honeycrisp, Sweet 16, Cortland, McIntosh, Holiday, and Cox Orange Pippin. Plus homegrown Bartlett pears. Whoa.

Apple cider donuts… apple cider… and, of course, apples. Now picking in the Dwarf Orchard: Macoun apples in Row 11. Savor the Macouns with their rich cran-apple color, crisp texture, bright pulp and snappy sweetness.

Now picking in Row 10: Empire apples, developed at Cornell in the 1940s. Child of the classic American varieties, Delicious and McIntosh, Empire is an ideal lunchbox apple, tasty to kids and resistant to bruising.

Now picking in the Vintage Orchard: Cortland apples. It is a race against the clock, and against us! We started picking Cortlands yesterday, so come get yours. If these guys get in your way, just bark like a dog. That usually scares them off.

Got a paparazzo shot of this brawny orchard hand. Not clear what he was doing with those Cortlands. Should fetch a pretty penny from The Enquirer.

The Chinese word for paparazzi translates literally as, “puppy squad.” Tundra is in charge of the Indian Creek Puppy Squad. Here she is in her favorite spot, much like last week, where she is healing up nicely from knee surgery.

PARTY IN APPLE-ACHIA!

Well, that’s the news — DONUTS, CIDER, APPLES, and a BIG PARTY on October 6. The Piggery clan will be here, bringing their wildly popular local food and a whole mess of their devoted fans! Til then, pop over to the Facebook Event Page where you can see who’s going. Click “I’m Going” to help us plan how many donuts to make.

Hope to see you at The ‘Creek!

IT’S JUST US DUDES here today. The fellers and the hombres. One of the gals drove south; another flew west. And the rest? Where are les femmes de la ferme?

Don’t know, but we’ll have to make do. Find meaning in our work. Git ‘er done.

Tommy is picking Macs. High up in the trees, forty pounds of apples slung low on his hip, he freezes — Do I hear them? Is that the lilt of a lady’s lyric? No, only a bird.

Tino gets fuzzy-headed, too, when the lasses leave. But after a brief panic, he leads us lads in song. “Soooomewherrre over the rainbow,” gravelly and earnest.

We start to find our strength, and we even see flashes of exuberance. A kick of the heels, a few manure jokes, a chew of chaw. It’s an orchardmen’s stitch-n-bitch, and it will sustain us for now. Anyway, you tuned in to find out what’s fresh, so here are the top three things you need to know.

THE TOP 3 THINGS TO KNOW

PIGS-N-APPLES PARTY — Saturday, October 6, 2012. Local food by The Piggery, everybody’s favorite. All are welcome. Bring friends, families, young and old. There is a Party Page and a Facebook Event, too.

UPICK & PREPICKED APPLES — There are pick-your-own apples in the Vintage Orchard (McIntosh) and Dwarf Orchard (Autumn Crisp). The stand is packed with new varieties from the Dwarf Orchard, including Honeycrisps. We can’t give out free generic Lipitor like the supermarket, but we can sell our homegrown Honeycrisps for only $2.25 a pound, compared to $2.99 at the big chains. “An apple a day…”

FRESH CIDER — We can’t stop making cider just because the ladies are AWOL. If we can’t drink in the joy of their presence, or the presence of their joy, we’ll drink Orchard Ambrosia instead. Works in a pinch.

TWO MORE THINGS TO KNOW

“Eternal youth is impossible,” warned Kafka, as is eternal summer in the Finger Lakes. But you can stretch it out a bit by chomping the glorious fall raspberry crop. Pick your own while they last.

Here’s how to do smoked peppers in your own backyard. The sign says, “tastes amazing,” and everything on the internet is true, so give it a whirl.

SEND US YOUR FOOD PHOTOS

A few customers sent us photos of beautiful pies and stuff they made with our fruits and vegetables. Send us your photos and we’ll share them all in a crop alert! Email them to indiancreekit@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading. Hope to see you at The ‘Creek!

WHEN YOU NEED A SPOT of country wisdom, where do you turn? To The Farmers’ Almanac? The farmer’s daughter? Garrison Keillor? Here at Indian Creek, we turn to the plants. We watch and listen. And ever since Veggiestock, all the plants have been saying the same thing: “Throw a party! Invite everyone!”

So, we’re giddy to announce the first Pigs-n-Apples Party! We’ll be hanging at the farm with our pals from The Piggery on Saturday, October 6. They’ll be cooking!

There will be games for kids and grownups — like the classic bobbing for apples, demonstrated here by the presumptive champ in the tween category.

We’ll have a pumpkin-carving contest, corn javelins, apple slingshots, and treasure hunts. Actual prizes might differ from the trophy shown.

We’re giving a tuneup to Oliver the Adventure Wagon. There will be hay rides all afternoon. Can’t promise that we’ll have hay, but you get the idea.

We’re even building a supersize banquet table out of a fallen oak tree! So far we have only one piece of string in place, but don’t worry: there WILL be a table. And it WILL have decorations. And 34 of you can sit there, on tree stumps.

WHAT’S PICKING NOW?

Apple season is afoot, starting with the McIntoshes in the Vintage Orchard. Come pick now! Find trees with orange ribbons.

We’re going to have a big apple season with the new Dwarf Orchard coming online, so we rented a 26-foot truck to pick up all the new crates! Watching these two sluggers coordinate hand signals is like… oh, forget it, there are no words.

The Dwarf Orchard is already filling the farm stand with new varieties. There are the Jefferies (middle), a choice early apple with a rich, pear-like flavor.

And there are the… wait… Everybody say, Ho…! (Ho…!)

Honeycrisp! Wave your hands in the air. Wave them like you just don’t care. But we know you care. It’s just for pretend, the not-caring.

They are real beauties for only $2.25 a pound, compared to $2.99 at your local superstore. And no happy shopper music to make you sad.

This is what happens when you allow dogs and photographers into the sign studio. Bad dog! Bad human!

And this is what happens when you ask a toddler to carry jugs of cider.

Six seconds later… Now what, Mama?

This time of year we go plum crazy.

And, like your local grocery store, we have dinner-in-a-box. Heat and eat.

Please pick peppers. They’re taking over the place.

And raspberries, they’re busting loose!

And please cut some flowers — we have a million and one.

Tundra counted them. It tuckered her out. U-pick flowers are only $3 a handful!

SAVE THE DATE!

Thanks for reading. Remember to save the date — Saturday, October 6, 2012. From about noon til dark. Details coming soon. Til then, come out for fresh air and fresh food! Hope to see you at The ‘Creek!

HELLOOO, FARM FANS — Hope you are having a fruitful summer, and hope you are doing what you gotta do. We’re doing pretty well over here.

You guys have picked most of the low-hanging pears, and we picked the rest for cider. But there is one tree — one! — with pears left to pick. It’s the tree at the crossroads, over the “Tomato, Eggplant, Peppers” sign.

Starting now, you can also pick crisp and delicious Sansa apples in the Dwarf Orchard. Go to Row 7, about 15 trees into the row, where you’ll find sweet Sansas right at eye-level. Ask for directions at the Stand.

You probably won’t need a ladder or apple basket in the Dwarf Orchard — the trees would fit in your living room! It’s going to be a huge autumn in the Dwarf Orchard, with 1600 trees and 60 varieties of apple. Stay tuned for the big announcement, and get your sneak preview by picking Sansas now.

You can also grab a bag of pre-picked apples at the stand. Get a 5-pound sack and take them home.

But don’t take Jasper home, he lives here!

Don’t take the bees home, they live here, too! You can cut your own flowers for 3 bucks a handful. Makes an el cheapo gift for your teacher, mom, friend, or boss. Especially if those are all the same person!

Follow the yellow-petaled road to the tomato, pepper, and eggplant field.

Or buy a box of “field run” tomatoes at the Stand. Those are the tomatoes that come running across the field when we blow the whistle each morning. They jump right into the truck and we pack them up.

How about fresh cucumbers — Gourmet Armenian or Traditional English. What, no Gourmet English? That’s an oxymoron! Ouch! Low blow! Okay, let’s all be friends. The English have tons of gourmet food, like bangers and mash, kippers and kedgeree, and… fish and chips. Yum, yum, and yum!

Cider alert! We’ll have fresh-pressed Orchard Ambrosia on Sunday — and hopefully for the rest of the year!

So come out to the farm this weekend. Pick some food and kick around, but please pardon our construction — something very cool is about to be built!

COMING SOON TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU!

Tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion to the series that began with Eggplantapalooza and Pepperoo! What will Peppa, Tom, and Eggder decide to do?

A BAKER’S DOZEN is a dozen plus one.  A farmer’s dozen is a baker’s dozen—minus 9 that got chewed by rabbits, plus 14 you stacked by the wheelbarrow, minus 7 that got brown rot, plus 12 that escaped the frost, minus… See?  See where our heads are at?  All over the place.  There are so many moving parts on the farm, sometimes we have to ask, Is anything certain?  What do we know for sure?

We know that many seek beacons in the dark night of the soul; others, like canteloupe, are quite heady and prefer to dim the stimuli.

We know that plums inspire confession.  William Carlos Williams:  “I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox / and which / you were probably / saving / for breakfast / Forgive me / they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold.”

When you first encounter a tree-ripened tomato, you might think, “Hmm.”  And then, “Yum.”  If your next thought is to enhance that local tomato with a sprinkle of black pepper from the global spice trade, and it is not even fair-trade organic pepper, don’t beat yourself up too much.  It takes a while to think perfect thoughts.

A five-tipped leaf atop a tomato.  Doesn’t it just want to float off the screen and land on your homework and turn into a golden star?  Maybe you got a few of those along the way.  If not, be your own sticker, and give many out.

Fold an onion skin in half 100 times.  How tall is it?  Six or seven inches?  How about 800 trillion times the distance from Earth to Sun?  That’s right, it is deep space tall.  You multiply the thickness of the skin, a snippet of an inch, by 2 to the 100th power.  You can fight us all day on this one, but we learned it in Farm School.

Mathematics is a tool of great power, second only to corn, which can be made into fuel,  Twinkies, and a kind of dog.  Oh, sure, you can rattle the cage about transgenic high-fructose corn slag.  But lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a tune and I will try to sing out of key if you are being an insufferable battle axe at the dinner table.  We’ll fix the world, but first, dessert.

Love is the same forever and always.  H. L. Mencken said:  “To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, women offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters.  Take them away and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moocow.”  For these old cucumbers, paramours since early Spring, the notion is true and the feeling is mutual.

These zucchinis were having quite the vigorous chinwag before the photo.  But the Feds don’t want you to know about it.  The “Brookings Report,” submitted by NASA to Congress, warned that the mere knowledge of contact with intelligent life could destroy the fabric of human civilization.  So who else — or what else — is out there talking, and who is listening, and who is not privy?

“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…”  That is the second moocow in this crop alert.  It is the most famous moocow of all, from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Our friend, who shall go unnamed (Joanna!), brought a striped tomato to dinner last night.  It came from her garden.  We gave her the business because, first of all, the tomato was not even local:  it had traveled all the way from downtown Ithaca at great cost to the environment.  Secondly, what you need to understand is that home gardeners are subverting the small farm economy.  We are trying to sell you tomatoes while you are getting them in the black market of your yard. Ithaca is full of smart people but sometimes we are like, Hello?  Anybody home?

Do you lead by eggplantxample?

E. B. White, who brought an imaginary farm to life in Charlotte’s Web, left Cornell in 1923, perhaps a few years too early to taste the fruit from our Vintage Orchard.  But when you wander around and pluck apples, you are part of almost a century of picking from these trees.  Wander, wonder.

A donut peach is no plain peach.  Hints of guava, coconut and pineapple inside.

Is man above peppers on the ladder?  In this case, yes.  But through the eons, no.

Garlic, breathe.  Garlic breath.  Not the same.

It is so Pocono.  These rowdy Pennsylvania peaches have turned Marigold Mountain into their own personal paintball field.  Takes all kinds.  Fact.

Did you know we have a beehive out back?  They are the hardest workers on the farm.  They work as hard as the dogs don’t.  Now that’s a biscuit.

IS THIS A FRESH CROP ALERT OR WHAT?

Yes, it is. Everything in this whole phantasmagoria can be found at the farm stand. And if you act now, you can pick your own PEARS and CANTELOUPES and TOMATOES and EGGPLANT and PEPPERS and more.

Party in Astoria? Eva Longoria? No, phantasmagoria. Good word for a cocktail party. Means a sequence of images like seen in a dream. Kind of like the days of our lives on the farm. And much like the “ghostly herd of dust bunnies” in The Locusts Have No King. But enough about books… School hasn’t started… Come outside and play!

YOU WON’T HEAR them say it, but the peppers were humiliated.  It really hurt when they were turned away from Eggplantapalooza.

The memory of that bad scene drove them to plan their own shindig.  No eggplant allowed! No scabby apples!  Peppers and only peppers.  They would call it…

PEPPEROO!  Starring the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with their frontman swinging from the rafters and pyrotechnics hotter than a Habanero in Hades!

Singing all the scorching hits from the Scoville Scale…

And a hot mess of fans bumrushing the stage!

The hip-hop artist Nuff Hott, festival impresario, watches from his sky box…

While the indie duet Jalapeño Popper naps backstage before their turn.

Pretty hard to sleep with all that racket, plus she keeps pulling the covers and he keeps kicking her shins. Anyway, the Chilis will be a hard act to follow…

With their famous triple stage dive that followers call the “Stir Fry.”

All in all, a perfectly piquant day for peppers. But who is this? Nuff Hott’s daughter Peppa? With Tom Tomato and Eggder Eggplant? Sneaking and peaking?

Will their friendship transcend the squabbles of their elders? Will the youngsters build a bridge between vegetables, as clever as their lean-to at Pepperoo?

Do they have a dream? An awesome dream?

Will they have a vision tonight by firelight?

STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE!

Hey, Farm Fans! There are peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant to pick, plus tons of fresh produce at the stand. Come out to the farm or ring the stand at (607) 227-8248 with your delightfully nitpicky questions about what there is to find and how much it costs and whether it can be pickled in vinegar.

Hope to see you at The ‘Creek!