No tricks, just treats! If you come in costume this weekend, you’ll be treated to a free cake donut of your choice in the bakery! Donut choices are apple cider, pumpkin or buttermilk, plain or sugared. We’ll be ready for you and can’t wait to see what characters come out (besides our usual customer characters that we love!).
Emma Grace filling up the children’s cart with free apples and other non edible items like stickers, pencils and coloring books
Closing Date Information: It’s hard to believe that closing is upon us. Our last day for the year will be Sunday, November 4th. We will be open that final day until our normal closing time of 6pm. In the past few years we have opened on some additional weekends in November, but this year we won’t be able to do that. So….you have about 1 week to stock up on your winter needs of apples, winter squash, onions, take and bake pies, hard ciders, wine and brandies! After that we may be available by appointment for hard ciders, brandies, and wines, but won’t have much produce to sell. We have several varieties of apples which keep extremely well: Fuji, Cameo, Red Rome and Pink Lady. At the bottom find specific information on the best way to store apples.
In our final few weeks, we are offering some specials that will make it easier for you to stock up, buy gifts of produce or help us with our community hunger needs. We’d like to treat as many folks as possible to fresh produce by supplying our local food banks in South West Michigan. If you’d like to be part of this community effort, here’s how you can help. We are putting a “Buy Two, Get or Give One Free” special on onions, squash, and apples. This will start on Friday October 26th and will go until we run out of produce or close for the year. Here’s how it works:
- Apples: Buy 2 bags of the same size apples (any variety, can mix and match) and take a 3rd free or donate it for the food bank collection.
- Onions: Buy 2 bags, get 1 free or donate
- Squash: Buy 2 squash of the same price (can mix varieties) and get a 3rd at the same price free or donate it to the food bank collection.
Only need 1 bag of apples and want to donate 2? That’s even better. Our goal is to fill as many bins of produce as possible. Corey Lake Orchards will match everyone’s donation and at the end we’ll let you know how many pounds of produce we were able to collectively donate!
To get a head start, Corey Lake Orchards teamed up with the Triple River Cross Fit group this week to pick apples to send with pumpkins to the Kalamazoo Mission Center in Kalamazoo. This joint effort started last year when we picked 800 pumpkins and donated them, coining the phrase “everyone deserves a pumpkin.” Friday we will send enough pumpkins for their group, plus 50 bushels of apples that we picked. Thanks to the small buy quick picking group who helped pick apples for this.
Brock and Autumn, owners of Triple Rivers CrossFit
Michaela and Emma Grace helped
We recruited our own Barb from the market staff
Straw bales available: With the cold weather upon, many are looking for straw to use for mulching, animal bedding, etc. We have straw for sale for $6/bale or four bales for $20.
Fall Ornamentals and Winter Squash: Update: 10-17-18: We have sold out of pumpkins for the year, sorry. Try Riley Pumpkin Farm on Ferguson Road off Broadway (big sign on Broadway) or Bullseye in Three Rivers. We have butternut, acorn and spaghetti squash left. You can use your squash as a decoration first, then eat later!
Sweet Cider: We are pressing sweet cider now. Each week is a different mix and tastes a bit different….we work hard to blend the apples to make a nice sweet apple taste. You can freezer cider by taking out enough for expansion when it freezes (typically one cup in a gallon) and enjoy it all year. If you are trying to get lots of cider (10 plus gallons) please call ahead and order it. We made extra this week for those trying to fill their freezers.
Apples: Everything we have on the market now is listed below.
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- Jonathan: Pretty and popular, used for fresh eating and cooking, a favorite for apple butter and taffy apples.
- Northern Spy: The professional baker’s dream, cooks up well in applesauce, pie and other dishes. Stores well, easy to remember by saying “Spies for pies.” We are currently using it in our pies in the bakery.
- Honeycrisp: This seems to be many people’s favorite. It is crisp with an excellent sweet flavor and a “bite” to it. Great for eating fresh or using in salads. Sold by the pound only ($2).
- Red Delicious: America’s most popular apple “back in the day.” Best for fresh eating and snacks. Full-flavored sweet taste.
- Golden Delicious: A gingery-smooth, sweet taste under a thin skin. It’s the most popular yellow apple, good eaten fresh, baked or cut in salads.
- Cameo: Firm, crisp and sweet, tart. Great for snacking or baking. Keeps well in your refrigerator.
- Fuji: Has a fantastic sweet flavor and tart flavor, with a low acid content. An incredibly good keeper, it says crisp for weeks without even being in the refrigerator.
- PInk Lady: If you don’t know a Pink lady, you need to meet her! It is a cross between a Lady William and Golden Delicious apple. It has bright white flesh that resists browning when cut. Pink Lady apples are very firm and dense, with a tart flavor and effervescent finish. Very unique apple! Brenda’s favorite!
Apple Gleaning: In several of the orchards, you may pick apples off the ground or off the trees for $5 a bushel for what is remaining. This is a great and economical way to get animal apples, apple sauce apples, cider making, etc. There are apples left for gleaning, but…you need to be a bit diligent and able to get some of them from the tops of the trees. Please bring your own ladders as well as containers to put them in. We will loan you baskets to measure them. Please check in at the market first so we can show you which orchards are open. If you don’t have containers, we have drawstring half bushel bags you can purchase for 35 cents each. The apples will be here until a hard freeze hurts them or they are all picked. While the supply is dwindling with the amount of folks picking, you can still find apples.
What else is on the market:
- Onions, including Red Marble Cippolini and Borrettana Cippolini are in. These are incredible for cooking or roasting. Our large sweet onions are now cleaned and bagged (10 pounds for $9) for you to take and have been “cured” to keep. This is a great year for onions.
- Bosc Pears: This is a beautiful, large, firm, sweet eating pear, that keeps very well. (Not a canning pear.)
Bakery:
As we near the end of our baking season, we would like to remind everyone to order their holiday or winter stock of “take and bake” pies. Over the past years, we have found that this is the best way for you to have pies on your holiday table or get you through the winter until our bakery reopens in May! And it moves the wonderful aroma of a pie baking to your own home. We will be accepting orders thru October 31st and pies will be available for pickup until we close on November 4th. When ordering your pies, please order at least 3 days in advance of when you would like to pick up your order so our bakers will be able to make and freeze them fresh for you! All our “take and bake” pies are large 9” pies, the available flavors are: apple, dutch apple, blueberry, cherry, cherry berry, peach, pecan, pumpkin, rhubarb, and strawberry rhubarb. Call us at 269-244-5690 to order, or stop at the market or bakery and fill out an order form.
You can also order frozen gluten free cinnamon rolls, pies and dinner rolls for your holiday needs that we carry from Gluten Free Sensations in Three Rivers. We have an order form for these you can pick up, or call to order.
Bakery offerings for the weekend will be:
- Cookies: M&M “Monster” Cookies, Ginger Molasses, S’mores, Coconut Pecan, and Lemon
- Pies: Apple, Blueberry, Cherry, Pecan, and Pumpkin.
- Breads: Vegetable, Whole Wheat, Whole Grain, Cinnamon, Vegetable, LaBrea Breads, Focaccia, Hamburger and Hotdog Buns, and Sunflower Seed Bread!
- Yeast Donuts
- Pumpkin Cake Rolls
- Assorted Muffins
- Cake Donuts: Buttermilk, apple cider and pumpkin. available on Friday, Saturday and Sunday only until we close for the year.
- Gluten Free Sensations items in bakery freezer including pies, cookies, brownies, and cinnamon rolls!!
- Slushies (now in 2 sizes based on customer’s requests for larger size!)
- In the bakery freezer, Plainwell Vanilla Ice Cream, for pie a la mode!
Hard Ciders, Wine and Brandies: Kalamazoo customers, you can now get us at Salut Market on Westnedge Hill. Many of you had asked where oh where you could get our hard cider closer to home. If you’ve never been into this amazing bottle shop, we seriously recommend it. Lots of specialty wines, cheeses, and other foods, and now our hard cider too.
Find Hard Cider Happy Hour in the brandy building. Based on the chilly weather, we’re moving our hard cider tasting to the brandy house which is enclosed and heated! Ask at the market for directions if you haven’t been in our brandy house before. Come find us 4-6pm Friday, 3-6pm Saturday and sample cider or get a growler filled. If you bring growlers from home and we’ll put our sticker over them, or buy one from us! We have Hometown Hero (Blackberry/Elderberry/Rose Hip), Blueberry, Preach (Pear/Peach), Brunch (Maple/Vanilla), Hopped, Ginger, Standard Dry, Standard Sweet, United Squash Federation, Cortabella (pure Cortland apple cider) and Standard Semi-Sweet in bottles. We’ve sold out of some ciders and a few more are close to sold out so be sure to get what you love while you still can.
If you’re looking for our cider outside of our farm, you can visit Rooster’s Wing Shack in Three Rivers, The Riviera Theatre in Three Rivers, Salut in Kalamazoo, and as always, The Local in Centreville, Michigan. We also have cider at Hoffman Street Grocery in Three Rivers! We are so grateful to our local partners who sell our ciders.
Brandy Tasting and Tours are this Saturday from 1-3. We also have our full line of Hubbard’s Brandy as well as Double Cherry Wine available behind the shelf at the market.
Everyone at Corey Lake Orchards thanks you for buying local and we hope to see you before we close for the year!
***Storing Apples:
Apples are best kept in your refrigerator, preferably the crisper drawer or in an unsealed plastic bag. Refrigerate apples separately from vegetables because apples naturally release small amounts of ethylene gas that can be damaging to lettuce and other produce. If you have a root cellar, you can keep larger amounts there if it is cool, dry and dark.
For every 10 degrees above 30°F, the apples’ lifespan decreases dramatically. You do not want the apples’ temperature to fall below 30°F, however, because that will make them freeze and turn to mush when they’re thawed. Their cell walls will all collapse. Therefore, apples are best stored somewhere around 30-35°F, in a humid environment.
If storing apples in the fridge, place them inside a crisper drawer and lay a slightly dampened paper towel on top of the apples. Apples are one of the few fruits that really do benefit from being stored in the fridge as quickly as possible. Keep them in the crisper drawer with aforementioned damp paper towel, or else keep them in perforated plastic bags in a cold shed or cellar.
There is trust to that old adage: “One bad apple rots the whole bunch.” Apples give off a lot of ethylene gas, and so just one bruised and rotting apple will give off enough to swiftly ripen (and rot) the others. If you have any bruises or soft spots on an apple, set it aside for eating. Don’t store with the other apples.
Ultimately, if you’re planning on storing a lot of apples for the winter, look for firm, long-lasting apples. These are usually thick-skinned, tart apples. We recommend storing Rome or Fuji, properly stored they will last until spring
