Okay, this is my last strawberry rant. If you just found our site and are reading this in August - sorry - you missed one of our best berry years ever. I just tasted a berry that was sun-kissed sweet with melt-in-your-mouth tenderness. I confess to have eaten probably hundreds of berries this season, but I'm still not jaded because their flavor has been exceptional. If you're reading this in real-time, I encourage you to gorge yourself for another week! Have strawberry shortcake for breakfast! With homemade biscuits, and fresh whipping cream, you have several major food groups covered and will be doing just fine. And then, after the season's end next week, vow never to eat a strawberry until next June, when you can get fresh, organic, local strawberries that taste like they're s'posed to taste! Okay, if it's December and you want a little color on a fruit plate and don't mind that the taste is faintly reminiscent of a strawberry with slightly bitter undertones and the texture of a cucumber, sure, go ahead and buy some berries that were picked green and traveled 2000 miles to get here! Just know that the real thing lies dormant under a sweet bed of Michigan straw with a little snow blanket to keep it settled, waiting for those first Spring rays of sunlight so that it can wake up and start following its true nature into becoming the plump red shining jewels of sweetness that we have had the good fortune to provide this Spring and will do out best to bring you next year. Believe me, it's worth the wait.
This Saturday may be our last market for the year. We don't quite know how the lettuce will "pick out" but if this Saturday isn't the last, then next Saturday will be. That means that we have trucked on down to the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market for six and a half months this year; that Ken King and designated family members have rousted out of bed at 4:00 AM for almost 30 Saturdays and 25 or so Wednesdays; that friends and family have pitched for just as many Tuesdays and Fridays helping to harvest and make salad mix for next day's market; that countless seeds have sprouted, grown to fullness and offered up their ripe richness to harvesting hands; that brightly-colored rows of vegetation have decorated the garden in a changing patchwork throughout the season; that bowed backs have moved slowly through the rows, keen eyes and nimble fingers creating order in cultivation or harvest; that hundreds of boxes have been filled, trucked to market, emptied and dispersed, a
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