The other day, a couple who own a fruit stand in Olympia stopped in to take a few boxes of tomatoes off our hands, planning to resell them at their own stand.  As they told me about their unsuccessful attempts to ripen melons in hoophouses, to get an decent tomato crop, to get bell peppers to color up, I couldn’t help but shake my head and remember how lucky we are to live in a land of such plentiful sunshine!  The weather of this Labor Day weekend may have you left you grumbling at the rain, but when you take a look at all the sunshine stored up in the fruits of the season at the market, you may be able to find a smile somewhere in your soul.

What has the sun done for us?  Ripened an incredible crop of tomatoes for us (um, best offer on 1100 pounds anyone?).  Colored up orange, yellow, and red bell peppers, not to mention our “Carmen” peppers, an incredibly sweet Italian pepper.  We’ve still got delicious melons, fresh-as-can-be sweet corn, and tender French Filet beans.  We’ll be getting ready to harvest our winter squash in the next week or two.  Fall greens like collards and kale are full on, and spinach and broccoli are close behind.  We’re turning over the high tunnel to fall greens.  Look forward to salad mix on your table through Thanksgiving if not longer.

In the orchards, we’ve been busy harvesting.  Red Globe and Cresthaven peaches have come and gone and we are anxiously awaiting the ripening of the O’Henry (one of Guy’s favorite peaches).

We have two apples that we grow in ‘wholesale’ quantities—Gala and Honeycrisp.  For these,we bring in apple picking crews from larger orchards to get the fruit off.  This past week, we hired four pickers on Wednesday to harvest thirty bins of Galas.  Just to give you a sense of scale, we usually sell three to four of those bins at the market (3000 lbs) and send the rest to the packing house.  And if you’re doing the math about how many pounds each of those young men picked, you are right—a lot of fruit:   roughly three tons per picker!

With Honeycrisp, our total production number is even greater than Gala—somewhere between 90 and 100 bins, with six to seven of those heading to the market.  We’ll do a first picking of the Honeycrisp this coming week followed by Jonagold (Guy’s pick for best all-around apple).

Other apples to look forward to that we grow in direct-market quantities include Ambrosia, Cameo, Spitzenburg, Braeburn, Fuji, and Winter Banana.