The leaves are falling and our supplies are starting to give way.  As many have you have already learned, the Honeycrisp are history for another year.  I'm emphasized it before, but we really wish we did have them and we'd rather have them than not.  Some folks are really upset by this news, and while we understand, we did everything in our power to have them as long as we could.  Could we have done better?  Perhaps, but we'll know better 'till next year.  In the meantime, we've got Gala to get us "darn close" to Thanksgiving, and popular choices like Jonagold, Fuji, and Staymen continue to be readily available now and well beyond this week's Three Springs Market update.

 Schedule - just 2 weeks remain!

• Saturday - Harbor East Farmers Market 8am-12noon
  
• Sunday - Headhouse Farmers Market 10am-2pm
  
• Sunday - Greenbelt Farmers Market 10am-2pm
  
• Tuesday - Kenilworth Farmers Market 3:30-6:30pm now extended through Nov
  

Market Produce

• Gala - now moves to the top of the "best sellers" list for Three Springs
  
• Jonagold - still staff consensus "best Honeycrisp impression"
  
• Fuji - following closely behind Jonagold in Honeycrisp similarity
  
• Staymen/Winesap - cult classic!
  
• Nittany - it takes more than 3 1/2 dismal hours on a Saturday to damage our Nittany pride!
  
• Mutsu - Yellow and "Sweetang-y"  grower inside joke!  Am I allowed to go there?
  
• Golden Delicious - STILL NOT MUSHY!
  
• Red Delicious - sweet. red. apples
  
• Empire - supplies still looking good for now
  
• Rome Beauty - firm and yummy for all your culinary pursuits
  
• Cameo - tastes terrific and has that "market apple" look to it - becoming rarer in store shelves because it doesn't look like a "supermarket" apple.  Who cares?
  
• Bartlett Pears - clinging to life!
  
• Bosc Pears - sweetest of all our fruits, close in texture to asian pears
• Onions - Only 'Candy' yellow remain
  
• Potatoes - 'Eva' is the white and 'Villetta Rose' is the red.  Very versatile for baked, fried, and mashed!
  
• Winter Squash - finally getting picked!!!!
  

"Traveling Without Moving"

No fun trips this week, just the day to day routine of a fruit farm that is stuck between the rapid pace of a growing season and the big exhale that signals the start of a little bit of down time.  Perhaps as a way to look forward for me, I'm making "down time" the subject of this entry, since we're asked about it frequently.

So what does the farm, meaning "you guys", do in the winter?  Well, the work doesn't really end, it's more the pace at which we work and the kind of work being done.  There are a number of vital things that we must do every winter that we either can't do during the growing season or do not make time to do during our growing season.  The first of which is tree pruning.  Nearly all of our fruit trees are pruned every year.  A few blocks of processing apples might only be pruned every other year, but it's likely going to be every single tree pruned every year.  Most of our larger pruning jobs are handled by our dillegent harvesting crew who do a pretty good job of recieving instruction and pruning the trees the way we like them to be pruned.  We pick and choose which crew would be right for which blocks based on their level of skill at the job.  We, as farm managers, will cover the delicate jobs ourselves - younger trees, mostly.  At its youngest stages, trees are less able to recover from a blotched pruning job, so we insure that this isn't the case by establishing the tree architecture ourselves.  Furthermore, there's always a decent amount of machine shop work - patchy repairs that get "fixed", making new equipment, building projects, etc. that are good winter work.  We'll be building a cold storage this winter which will be another huge asset for us.

Another significant thing is planning.  Farmers know that there is no real point in having a "5 year plan" or something of that nature, because things will always come up, new opportunities arise, new regulations, changing markets etc. - it's a fruitless endeavor, so to speak.  We do come together to talk about the general direction or general goals we have and do some nuts and bolts planning at least a year or two in advance - crops we'll grow, trees we'll plant and where, buildings/equipment that might need purchased etc. 

Last, but not the least of which is attending meetings and staying on the cutting edge of research and marketing in our industry.  We take this very seriously and devote a large amount of time to it.  Just for example, meetings we'll currently plan on attending (without the aid of a calendar to catch the ones I can't remember now):

• Great Lakes Fruit Expo Conference, MI
  
• Mid Atlantic Fruit & Vegetable Conference (State Hort. Assoc. of PA)
• Pennsylvania Assoc. for Sustainable Ag (PASA) Conference
• Adams County Fruit Growers Mtg
• P.R.O.F.I.T. PSU Organic Apple Research Update
• Intensive Fruit School PSU

Plus the likelihood of a good Ag Issues breakfast/Ag Innovations demonstration or two along the way, in addition to our frequent private meetings with our local PSU research/extension professionals, private business consultant, vendor meetings for markets, and marketing excursions.  I'm hoping to catch FutureHarvest this year too.  I don't bring this up as a testimony our devotion to growing - we hope that comes out in our products.  It's just an illustration that our farm maybe isn't as different from where you work in a lot of ways that you maybe hadn't considered.  The difference is, we do all of our travelling, meeting, and marketing seasonally - and why wouldn't we, we're a farm afterall!

And of course, we do find some time for rest and relaxation!

From Our Farm, to Your Home,

Farmer Ben














Go!  State!  Beat!  The Hooisers!

• Spaghetti