Apple Weekend!

October 7 & 8
Saturday and Sunday, 11am - 5pm

Join us at Kirby's Apple Weekend for a great day of fun with friends and family! Let's celebrate the apple harvest with delicious food, and old-fashioned good times.

  • Free Wagon Rides

  • Apple Picking

  • Live Music 11am -1pm

  • Fall Treats (Saturday - JoJo's Bakery, Sunday - Catherine Street)

  • Cider Donuts, Cider, and Coffee

  • Fresh Popcorn

  • Free Pumpkin Games

  • Free Giant Strawbale Maze

  • Featured Local Crafts

  • Special Selection of Maple Treats from Merle Maple (Maple Cream, Maple Candy, Cotton Candy, BBQ Sauce, and Maple Sticks)

    On Saturday morning, try seasonal kombucha with Kat of Katboocha! 11 - 1pm

    Facebook Event page here

Annual IQF Fruit, Bulk Sale!

Our annual Individually Quick Frozen fruit sale is coming up! Get a great deal on frozen sour and sweet cherries. Here are the details!

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PICKUP YOUR ORDER:
FRIDAY AUGUST 11TH, 10AM-1PM
OR SATURDAY AUGUST 12TH, 10AM-1PM

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2023 BULK SALE

  • 20lbs Sour Cherries $52

  • 40lbs Sour Cherries $93

  • 20lbs Sweet Cherries $68

ORDERS DUE WEDNESDAY AUGUST 9th
Please call 637-2600 to place your order.

Learn more about our IQF fruit here.

The Market Hop!

Coming up in just a few days on August 5th and 6th is the annual Market Hop! Six area farm markets, including Kirby’s, work together to pull off a fun event that brings hundreds of people each year.

Hoppers tour the countryside as they visit six local, family owned farm markets, collecting farm-fresh goods at each one. The cost is just $10 which includes a re-useable bag to collect your produce, and a chance to win the gift basket raffle when you visit all six markets. Read more on our webpage here!

We hope you join us in this fun way to immerse yourself in our beautiful agricultural community of Western New York!

Mother's Day Gift Ideas

This special day of love and appreciation is coming up quickly! Here are just a few gift ideas that you’ll find in our market. Check out our livestream on facebook this coming Wednesday for a full tour of our gift shop!

Our most popular Mother’s Day gift? Year after year, our gorgeous hanging baskets are in the lead. Many of our customers come back every year to pick up a “flower bouquet” that lasts for months instead of days.

Gift Certificates are a close second! If the maternal figure in your life loves to garden, they’ll definitely love strolling through our greenhouse to choose their favorite plants. Or maybe they’ll save their gift certificate to buy fruit later in the season! There are so many choices.

Here’s a sample of items form our gift shop:

2023 Spring Soiree

April 28th, 6pm - 9pm

Join us for a twilight celebration of Spring, a magical evening of music and flowers in our Greenhouse, before we open for the season! This is a FREE event.

  • Live Music with Jay and Kayla!

  • Light Refreshments

  • Greenhohuse Talks and Tours

  • Kombucha Tastings with Katboocha

  • Plant Some Seeds to Take Home

  • Door prizes

GREENHOUSE TALKS:
- IPM (Integrated Pest Management) with Tim Kirby
- Our Favorite Flowers for 2023 with Linda Kirby
- What is Regnerative Agriculture? with Chad Kirby
- Vegetable Gardening Tips with Mandy Kirby
- Kirby's CSA Q & A, with Stacey Steward

Stay tuned for more information and schedule!

This is a big moment! The night before we open our doors for the season, join us for a cozy, friendly celebration of growing, and gardening. For the months of March and April, our greenhouse team is working away, planting thousands of annuals, perrenials, and vegetables to get ready for the season. We watch them grow from adorable little babies to the lush plants covered in flowers that you see when we open on May 1st. The Spring Soiree is a celebration of all of that hardwork, and a celebration of YOU, our customers. Thank you for sharing the love of growing things with us!

Our very first Spring Soiree happened in Spring of 2019, and we are EXTRA excited to bring this event back in 2023!!


Mechanic/Tractor Operator Needed

We are looking for a hardworking and experienced mechanic and tractor operator to join our team. This is a year round position with flexible work hours ranging from part time to full time. Our ideal applicant has 40+ hours of experience driving a tractor and 10+ years of mechanic experience.

Job Title: Mechanic and tractor operator

Job description: The mechanic and tractor operator will be in charge of repairing machinery that is used on the farm. This ranges from trucks and tractors to produce washing machines. The job also includes operating tractors with other equipment in orchards and fields. The jobs may vary day to day depending on weather and time of year.

Hours: 20-50 per week, discuss pay upon interview

What we are looking for:
-Experienced mechanic (10 + years)
-40 + hours of tractor operating experience
-Ambitious and hard working
-Flexibility in day to day jobs


Please email info@staceykirby.com for an application, or stop by our farm market in Brockport.

Employment Opportunities

This Spring, we have openings in our greenhouse and farm market . We’re looking for self-motivated, self-directed, caring individuals to join our farm market family as soon as possible. We’re excited to meet you, and get started on another season of beautiful plants and produce!

Interviews will be conducted the week of April 26th, please email your applications no later then 4/26.

You may request an application at info@kirbysfm.com.

Cashier

Previous produce or retail experience helpful, but not necessary.

Tasks and Responsibilities:
Customer service is always our first priority. It is important to make yourself available to greet and acknowledge every customer, assist customers, and answer questions.
• Process sales accurately and efficiently through register
• Level II responsibilities: specified per individual
• Ensure that each customer receives outstanding service by providing a friendly and pleasant atmosphere
• Maintain solid product and service knowledge
• Maintain an awareness of all promotions and advertisements
• Answer the phone and keep appropriate record of calls.
• Maintain produce and gift shop displays
• Check in merchandise when it arrives
• Maintain a clean and welcoming environment (sweep, dust, straighten up)
• Help open and close the market
• Help with miscellaneous seasonal work (cleaning plants in Spring, for example, or weighing pumpkins in Fall
+ You must be able to work some evenings (2-7:30pm), weekend shifts , and holidays

Cashier Assistant/Stockperson

Previous produce or retail experience helpful, but not necessary.

Tasks and Responsibilities:
Customer service is always our first priority. It is important to make yourself available to greet and acknowledge every customer, assist customers, and answer questions.
• Ensure that each customer receives outstanding service by providing a friendly and pleasant atmosphere
• Maintain solid product and service knowledge
• Maintain an awareness of all promotions and advertisements
• Answer the phone and keep appropriate record of calls.
• Maintain produce and gift shop displays
• Check in merchandise when it arrives
• Maintain a clean and welcoming environment (sweep, dust, straighten up)
• Help open and close the market
• Help with miscellaneous seasonal work (cleaning plants in Spring, for example, or weighing pumpkins in Fall
+ You must be able to work some evenings (2-7:30pm), weekend shifts , and holidays.

Greenhouse Customer Service/Stockperson

Our quality service comes from friendly employees that have the knowledge to meet our high standard of customer service. Previous gardening, horticulture, or retail experience helpful, but not necessary.

Tasks and Responsibilities:

• Customer service is always our first priority. It is important to be available to greet and
acknowledge every customer, assist customers and answer questions.

• Ensure that each customer receives outstanding service by providing a friendly and
pleasant atmosphere

• Maintain solid product and service knowledge

• Maintain an awareness of all promotions and advertisements

• Maintain full beautiful displays with the nicest plant selections

• Complete tasks from daily task list

• Must be available part of each weekend


The Farm Market is Open!

As of June 16th, our farm market is now open to shoppers! All of the same social distancing rules still apply.

  • Masks are required

  • Only touch what you know you’ll bring buy. Please don’t handle the produce if you’re undecided. Thank you!

  • Maintain six feet of distance between others

  • We have hand sanitizer available at every entrance, please help yourself!

We are so grateful to our customers for the patience, kindness, and support we’ve seen this season. It’s just wonderful to know that we can count on you to help us keep our customers, employees, and families safe in these strange times.

Online Store Updates

Facebook Live Videos

As things are so different this Spring, we’ve posted a series of facebook live videos. Get a good look in our greenhouse, and listen to some of the different things we’re doing to keep our customers and employees safe.

Safety precautions for shopping in the Greenhouse.: Stephanie and Katelyn explain how we’re keeping our customers and employees safe while we carefully open the greenhouse to shoppers. You can also read details here.

Different ways to Order: Chad and Linda explain how you can purchase from our market, including online, by phone, and at the store (the fan is a little noisy, turn up the volume!).

Video 1, Greenhouse Tour: An overall look at the whole greenhouse with Linda and Chad on April 29th. Everything is quite a bit bigger now, but it gives you the idea!
Video 2, Geranium Hanging Baskets : A tour of our Geranium aisle with Linda and Kaitlyn on May 8th! See the different colors and types of geraniums available in hanging baskets.
Video 3, Petunia Hanging Baskets - A detailed look at what we have in hanging baskets for petunias (Supertunia and Superbells) with Chad and Kaitlyn on May 6th.

Facebook Live Greenhouse Tour 4/28/20

Chad and Katelyn took us along on a greenhouse tour at lunch today, with facebook live! It was wonderful to see the greenhouse filled from one side to the other with gorgeous plants. We are so excited to start putting them in your hands, through our online store! May 1st is a big day!! All of our flowering annuals will be online by then. You can still watch the video of the tour anytime:

Since our greenhouse is closed to shoppers this Spring, we plan to share live tours pretty regularly. You’ll be able to see how the plants are doing, and exactly what a “Great Balls of Fire Merlot” geranium looks like (at least as well as a digital image can communicate). Do you have any requests? Let us know, and we’ll be sure to include it in one of our tours!

Helpful links:

COVID-19 Adjustments, Spring is still blooming!

It’s impossible to know what the future holds, but for now we’re planning to take online orders through May, available for curbside pickup or drive-through pickup. Our market and greenhouse will not be open to shoppers until we feel it’s safe for our customers and employees. We are very excited to be able to bring you our plants and produce with minimal contact. Building a drive-through and moving our entire greenhouse inventory to our online store was no small feat!

We’re all dealing with new circumstances, and new challenges, and everyone at Kirby’s sends you a giant hug with every flower and berry we grow. <3

We plan to post weekly, or more frequent updates here, as a reliable place for current information. We don’t want to make you wait any longer than necessary for the first fresh, homegrown, fruits and vegetables!! So check back every Monday night to learn what’s new in the online store. Without further ado….

Available Now (4/27), Order in Our Online Store

  • Vegetable Pre-orders - Until May 1st, you can order your vegetable plants in our online store, and we’ll set them aside for you. As of May 1st, you can choose which day of the week you would like to pickup, no earlier than two days after you order.

  • Hanging Baskets are now available in our online store! The rest of our flowering annuals will be there by May 1st.

Here are some helpful links!

Delicious September Produce

What's in season now? Read on!

New: Pumpkins, Cider, Gala Apples, Babygold, Cresthaven, and Gloria Peaches
Also in season: regular, plum, and cherry tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, sweet corn, plums, pluots, zucchini, kale, cucumbers, Zestar, Gingergold and Paula Red apples.

Call in your canning orders now! This is the week!

It would seem that Fall is really here! Today we got in the very first of our delicious apple cider, and yesterday the first truck load of pumpkins came in!. Locally grown concord grapes are starting out very slowly, but we will have them for several weeks. 

Early apple varieties that have been in the market for about a couple of weeks, (including Gingergold, Paula Red, and Zestar)  are now joined by Gala. This is the perfect apple for back to school, since it's small and sweet. 

This week is a week of abundance, with plenty of tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, sweet corn, and peaches. Call to place your orders for canning, this week is your safest bet! Next week the regular tomatoes will be fewer, but we'll have plenty of plum tomatoes for a while. 

We are now picking our last peach varieties as well:

  • Babygold, a clingstone variety, is available in the market in small numbers, but can be picked to fill any order. Our favorite for canning! Their firm texture holds up well when canned, and you don't have to peel them. 
  • Cresthaven is a nice all-around freestone peach that's great for baking, canning, and jam.
  • Our third variety is Gloria, an unusual peach variety that doesn't get soft. But it's excellent for baking, retaining it's shape with a pleasantly tender pie texture. 

We also have a lot of plums, also known as prunes, which are great for canning, eating fresh, drying, baking, and roasting (my favorite).

Happy September!

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The 2018 Farm to Table to Excellence Dinner

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When: September 22nd
     5pm :  Cocktails, Live Music, and Wagonrides
     6:30 : Dinner is Served

Where: Kirby's Farm Market
Purchase tickets at Wegmans

Why: To raise funds for BEST, an organization that "enhances the Brockport Central School District’s goals of creating and expanding programs, activities and opportunities to help provide the BEST educational environment available for our students". And to enjoy good food in good company!

We are very excited to work with the BEST organization to put on another Farm to Table Dinner this year! In just two weeks, our hard working greenhouse will be transformed into a beautiful rustic-elegant dinner party setting.

There are so many reasons we love this event: working with the wonderful volunteers of BEST to benefit Brockport students; sharing the beauty of our farm with our community; and enjoying every moment of a first class dinner that features the fruits (and vegetables) of a season of hard work - are just the top three.

Read the menu below, you'll be excited too! (Small adjustments might be made to the between now and the event, depending on Mother Nature.)

Menu

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  • Assortment of New York State cheeses and fruits
  • Charcuterie of artisan cured meats and salamis with marinated olives
  • Crostini display with assortment of bruschetta, goat cheese with balsamic reduction,
  • pickled vegetables with smoked Gouda cheese, Tomato with herbed ricotta
  • Veggie crudités with a large assortment of fresh Kirby farms produce and veggie dips

Salad: Mixed greens with watermelon Carpaccio, candied pecans, feta cheese and a Riesling vinaigrette

Entre’: Beef Tenderloin (Robb’s Farms) with grilled peach chutney, llyonaise potatoes
tossed with caramelized onions and pancetta, broccoli au gratin

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Vegetarian entree’: Quinoa stuffed Thai eggplant with roasted red pepper coulis and Balsamic reduction, on a bed of rice pilaf

Dessert: Apple Pie

Gold Sponsor Wegman’s Food
Catered by Garnishes Catering
Wine by Mahan’s
Craft Beer by The Stoneyard Brewing Company

Friday Field Update Vol.2 No.6

My evening view from the seat of a tractor

My evening view from the seat of a tractor

A beautiful sunset over our Albion farm. As you can see in the foreground, we are performing some serious renovation on the land. A couple years ago we overhauled a tiling machine that had been in our family since the 1970s. It digs a trench and lays a large perforated pipe in the bottom of it. Then we have to go over the entire trench and fill it back up with soil. Once it is in place and functioning, this tile will help remove any extra water in the ground that would make it too wet. It is quite an investment to install, but proves to be a priceless tool once it is in place. 

A lone honey bee sucking up the nectar and collecting pollen on her legs.

A lone honey bee sucking up the nectar and collecting pollen on her legs.

This sunflower I'm sure has been loving all the sunshine we have been getting. Only because I have been giving it all the water it needs! For a good amount of time in July I was consumed with irrigation. Irrigating apple and peach trees, our new strawberry planting, the broccoli, the sweet corn, everything! 

A baby ear of corn, just pushing out it's silk to be pollinated.&nbsp;

A baby ear of corn, just pushing out it's silk to be pollinated. 

For me, it's hard to imagine that this tiny ear of corn will be transformed into a fully mature ear, ready to eat in only 20 days. Nature never ceases to amaze me. All it takes is three weeks for it to become thrice as juicy, and grow ten times it's weight! And 20 times as delicious in my opinion. I recently learned that this is indeed where the baby corn in asian cuisine such as stir fry comes from! It is no trick, simply baby corn (baby carrots are usually just chopped and ground down large carrots). 

The growing point of this pickle plant is attempting to escape the trellis we have it wrapping around.&nbsp;

The growing point of this pickle plant is attempting to escape the trellis we have it wrapping around. 

The high tunnels certainly have exploded with growth and fruit over the past month or so. The plants are so carefully protected, fed, and watered that they are producing nearly perfect fruit, as you can see in the following images. I'll leave them nice and big so you can enjoy them as much as possible. :)

Seedless pickling cucumbers (pickles) from the high tunnel.

Seedless pickling cucumbers (pickles) from the high tunnel.

A red beefsteak tomato ripe for the picking.&nbsp;

A red beefsteak tomato ripe for the picking. 

Fruit Update

Starting from the left, we have a branch where a sweet cherry used to be, now happily harvested. Next is a beautiful Garnet Beauty peach, ripe and probably picked today. After that is a prune (plum) deceitfully purple, but so very green inside. And …

Starting from the left, we have a branch where a sweet cherry used to be, now happily harvested. Next is a beautiful Garnet Beauty peach, ripe and probably picked today. After that is a prune (plum) deceitfully purple, but so very green inside. And lastly, we have some gingergold apples, ready to pick in maybe three weeks!

Thank you for reading! 

Friday Field Update Vol.2 No.5

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For a little while there I was worried 2018 was going to be another 2016. Hot and extremely dry. But fortunately we got a little rain in the beginning of the week, and it looks like we are going to get a lot of rain this weekend.We certainly need it! We were about to start irrigating some of our older apple trees, which only need water when it’s really dry because their roots reach so deep. However, thanks to all this rain, we can focus our irrigation efforts on the fruits and vegetables with more shallow roots. Above is our irrigation gun attached to a reel. It’s watering the mums that were just planted, and then it will be watering the first four plantings of sweet corn as it is “reeled” in. When nature doesn’t make it rain, sometimes farmers have to. Water plays a huge role in the quality of fruit. Too much can make it soft, too little can make it small. And flavor can also be affected by how much water the plant is given.  

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The chrysanthemums have been planted! In this picture I am watering the pots after our guys plant them. They have a great system down, and it only takes a few hours to plant a couple thousand plants. After the mum is placed in the pot, it has to be watered with a good amount of force so that the soil fills in around the roots and makes it feel right at home. This group of mums was our first planting, and we will get a second planting in a short time to finish filling up the mat.

Friday Fruit Update

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Everything has really been moving along with all the heat we’ve had. The cherries are almost ready to pick! Some cherries in a different orchard are even darker than the one pictured here. The apples have lost their fuzz, and each variety is now starting to develop its unique shape.  This is the time of year where we go through the apple and plum orchards and thin. Thinning is just what it sounds like, removing the apples when there are too many on the tree. Each tree only can give so much energy to its fruit, so we try to make sure it’s the right amount. Notice the word try, nature has her own way with the trees that we can not predict. So we do the best we can, and hope mother nature doesn’t change it too much.

Thanks for reading everyone, and happy growing!