And just like that, it's the last full week in September!  Where does the time go?  I guess it left with summer (officially).  Welcome to autumn - where the nights get chilly, the apples get more bountiful, and I wait out my winter squash to find out if they will mature before the frost or if the whole thing was an ill-timed mistake!  Gotta get them in earlier next year!  A new feature to our blog appeared this week, inspired by two particularly good questions posed by viewers of our website (? #1, ? #2).  Some new apples arrived, others are very close, but not in time for this week's Three Springs Market update.

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! - Boo-yah!
  
• Old Fashioned "Must Eat" Apple Cider - our award winning cider has been hard to stock!  We are officially in demand!
  
• Fuji Gap!  the wait continues
  
• Smokehouse - These are always gone to soon.  2 more weeks?!
• Empire - The tart-ish, full flavored apple that fills all roles - baking and snacking
  
• 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 - see entry for "Smokehouse" - don't assume "next week" will ever come at this point
  
• Ida Red - Pie makers' treat!
  
• Yellow Bartlett Pears - A ripened pear is one of the sweetest fruits you can find at a farmers market!
• Bosc Pears - to rights, the very sweeting thing we pick at Three Springs!
  
• 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 - gulp!  any?!
  
• Onions - Candy are the yellow onions, Mars the red.  Both are sweet and fresh and full of flavor
  
• Eggplant - see "tomatoes"
  
• Potatoes - 'Eva' is the white and 'Villetta Rose' is the red.  Very versitile for baked, fried, and mashed!
  

"Close, But No Cigar"

Empire are always good sellers for us - especially for folks that prefer Macintosh.  They're new this week.  As are Bosc pears  - really tasty and as sweet as any tree fruit we grow for sure.  Still, we're just barely missing out on having Gold Delicious, Red Delicious, and (most importantly) Jonagold - a "top 5" apple at Three Springs.  Tuesday or Wednesday, you might see these making their debut. 

Some of you might be saying to yourself, "Please, Wenk - don't even kid me with Gold and Red Delicious!  What a joke!  Nobody likes that mushy garbage!"  To the contrary, without me getting on my soapbox...

Gold Delicious has been around a very, very long time and there's a good reason for it.  It's very delicious!  It's got a really super flavor that's sweet but not too sweet.  It's a terrific baking apple - good in any type of dessert you'd use an apple in.  It makes a superior apple juice - with a clarity that's as pure as a bell tone.  The fact that many people have been turned off to them with mushy, poor quality, supermarket versions of this variety is an industry-wide problem for we apple growers, but that's not to take away from Gold Delicious as a variety.  But, as LeVar Burton might say in a popular Public Television program of my youth, "you don't have to take my word for it!"  Check back in next week.

This week, I wanted to introduce everyone to some trees that will be growing fruit for you all in the future.  Pictured here (in alternating rows of new Jonathan trees) is a new variety that I don't know of anyone else growing and bringing to market.  It's a variety I fell in love with during my semester working at the PSU Horticulture Farm - part of its variety trial.  It's identity is to remain a secret for now, but readers of our updates and blogs will one day be able to say "oh, these are from THOSE trees!"  And I'll have a big smile on my face, because I know everyone's going to love them!

A quick note before I adjourn.  Poor sales at our Saturday afternoon market at Greenspring Station could no longer support our time and effort going there.  We hope our friendly and loyal customers seek us out at our other Baltimore area markets Tuesdays at Kenilworth Drive in Towson, or at Harbor East earlier that morning.

(But wait a second, he didn't offer any such retort for Red Delicious...)

... That's all folks! 

From Our Farm to Your Home,

Farmer Ben

Go!  State!  Beat!  The HAWKEYES!