Feel that chilly wind blowin'?  It signals the changing of the seasons, not only outside your window but at your favorite farmers' market.  Out with fresh summer produce and in with your favorite autumn comfort foods!  Plenty of apples, cider, potatoes, onions, and so much more.  But as for the peach season, see link.  Sadly, you can all but say the same thing about our tomato crop as well.  We'll try to carry on without them, but they will both be seriously missed.  But, since we get so many interested folks asking questions, read on to see cider making pics!

Schedule

• Saturday - Harbor East Farmers Market 8am-12noon
• Saturday - Green Spring Station Farmers Market 2pm-5:30pm
  
• Sunday - Headhouse Farmers Market 10am-2pm
• Sunday - Greenbelt Farmers Market 10am-2pm
  
• Tuesday - Kenilworth Farmers Market 3:30-6:30pm
  
• Wednesday - Wakefield Park Farmers Market 2pm-6pm
  

Market Produce

• Honeycrisp! - As peaches bid a fond adieu, Honeycrisp inherits the "rock star" status on our display for the near future.
  
• Old Fashioned "Must Eat" Apple Cider - our award winning cider this week is equal parts 1) Jonathan, 2) Gala, and 3) everything else.  Yum!  I've been tweeting updates on each batch for weekend markets.
  
• Fuji Gap!  more coming later
  
• Smokehouse - The folks who love Smokehouse, really love Smokehouse!  An old-time favorite
• Jonathan - the most underrated apple we grow!  Small in size, big on old time flavor.  Slightly tart but with distinctive crispness and flavor.
  
• Grimes Golden - The response from Relish magazine readers was staggering!  We can't ship Grimes to the 15 states we were asked to, our market customers wouldn't get theirs!
  
• Ida Red - Pie makers' treat!
  
• Yellow Bartlett Pears - A ripened pear is one of the sweetest fruits you can find at a farmers market!
  
• Gala Apples - Syrupy sweet, not watery sweet and still in high demand
  
• Gingergold Apples - A tasty blend of sweet and tart, just a few weeks left
• Rambo - we're bringin' it back!
  
• Tomatoes - Just a few for this week!  I'm sorry - it's not looking good
  
• Onions - Candy are the yellow onions, Mars the red.  Both are sweet and fresh and full of flavor
  
• Eggplant - just a few, if that
• Potatoes - 'Eva' is the white and 'Villetta Rose' is the red.  Very versitile for baked, fried, and mashed!
  

"How to Make the Cider"

In a preview of a forthcoming blog entry, we have some cider pics to share.  These were taken Monday morning on the farm of Eden Valley just over the county line near Dillsburg, PA where Lemuel Christophel custom presses our apple cider.  

Lem also comes from a farming family and our Philly customers can shop with his family at The Food Trust's Overbrook and Clark Park markets on Saturdays.  In addition to other odd jobs he keeps up with over the course of the year, he owns and operates his own cider press, Circle C Cider.  He made some upgrades to his equipment and showed me around a little bit.

His operation was aided this year with the addition of a used accordian-style press to replace the vertical press he used each of the last two years.  This model is more effective - higher yields of cider and also much faster.

The apples are inspected as they are dumped on the conveyor as you see in the first picture.  The next stop for the apples is the washer unit, insuring only good, clean apples get pressed.  The wet apples next stop is in the grinder where the whole apple, core and all, is finely ground.  This ground product, or pumice, is pumped through a tube - the end of which is directed into the folds of the accordian press.   As the full section of the accordian presses, the other side opens  - ready for the next batch of pumice.  The dried, used pumice is applied to the field to decompose and add nitrogen.  The cider, meanwhile, is collected and pumped through the UV light which removes 99.9999% of bacteria and pathogens - right on par with any kind of pasteurization, the most common of which is thermal (heat) pasteurization.  More on this in an upcoming blog!

From Our Farm to Your Home,

Farmer Ben

Go!  State!  Beat!  The Owls!