Garlic Time

For us, part of Labor Day weekend this year was spent cleaning and sorting this year's crop of white garlic. We had taken care of the smaller Spicy Red Korean garlic crop a while back (and sold most of it too!), now was time to turn our attention to the main crop. We bought this garlic at a sustainable living festival close to twenty years ago, and the variety name (if we ever knew it) is lost in the mists of time. It's a hardneck variety which we have taken to calling "Westminster White", since one of our customers said he always called it "Westminster garlic".

The process starts in July when we did the garlic plants out of the ground. The plant consists of the bulb of garlic cloves and a three foot stem. The garlic plants are bundled and hung in the barn to dry. Somewhere around the end of August, it's time to clean and sort the garlic, so we bring it out of the barn and set up under a shady tree.

Next, we cut each bulb off of the stem. Pruning shears seem to work the best for this.
Now each bulb needs to be cleaned. This consists of trimming off the muddy roots and slipping off the outer layers of papery skin .

Before:
After:
The final step is to sort the bulbs. The biggest and best get saved for replanting; garlic is one crop you only need to buy once. The remaining bulbs get sorted by size. The large ones will get taken to the farmers market and the small ones get set aside as backup in case we run out. Any busted bulbs or ones with bad spots go into our own private stash.

I didn't keep track of the hours this year, but we probably spent 6-8 hours on this task. As you can imagine it can be quite tedious; it helps to have more than one person involved. The end result this year was fifty pounds of wonderful, flavorful garlic.

This recipe is one of our favorite ways of using garlic. It uses a crock-pot so it's super easy.

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic
1 chicken (I use organic chicken from the farmers market)
2 stalks celery
40 cloves garlic, unpeeled (or as much as you like)
Fresh or dried herbs of choice
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Place sprigs of fresh herbs (optional) in chicken cavity. Place celery in stoneware. Put chicken on top of celery. Add garlic, unpeeled, around chicken. Chop remaining herbs; sprinkle herbs and pepper over chicken. If using dried herbs, I often combine them and rub them on the chicken. Cover and cook on low 8-10 hours or high 3 1/2-5 hours.

To serve, place chicken, garlic and celery on serving platter. Squeeze roasted garlic out of skins onto French bread (yummy!)

Our Year So Far

Well, it’s been a long time since my last posting, and a whole lot has happened! Here is a recap:


April

• After having our farmette on the market on and off for about a year and half, we found a buyer!
• Discovered that the farm we were hoping to buy was no longer on the market.
• Found a new farm to buy (bigger and better). 25 acres! 2 Barns! Farmhouse! Garage!
  
• In order to qualify for special incentives, had to settle on the new place by April 30.
• Managed to squeak through two settlements on April 29, selling in the a.m. and buying in the p.m.

Now, some of you may be looking at the calendar and saying, “Isn’t that a little close to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival?”, and you would be right! So here’s how it played out:

• Wednesday, April 28 – Moved tents, tables, etc. for our booth to the Howard County Fairgrounds.
• Thursday, April 29 – Two settlements in one day, am in Rockville (selling) and pm in Columbia (buying).
• Friday, April 30 – Moved plants and wool to the fairgrounds. Our box truck broke down (catalytic converter trouble), the friend’s truck we borrowed to replace it broke down (blew a spark plug), and for good measure Greg clipped Dalis Davidson’s pickup in the parking lot and broke her parking light. (Dalis, you still need to tell us what we owe you!)
• Saturday, May 1 and Sunday May 2 – Festival!!! Need I say more?
• Monday, May 3 – Festival over, we can finally start packing. Have to be out of the house by May 12, although the new owners say we can take our time moving the rest of the farm (bless them!)
• May 4–9 – Pack, pack, pack. No time to sort and discard. Move everything! Thanks to my sister Katrina, our friend Melinda Byrd, and Judi Stull, our realtor, for lending a hand.
• May 10 – Moving day! Hired movers to move the furniture and did the rest ourselves. Thanks to Don Alberg’s flat bed trailer, we were able to get all of the tractors, tillers, etc. moved.
• May 12 – Old house is empty and ready for new owners Daniel and Abby to take possession. We are unpacking at the new house and wondering how a bigger house can possibly hold less. Plans take shape for a big garage sale in the future. Need to get the gardens planted RIGHT AWAY for this year’s farmer’s market!

May

• Started planting gardens.
  
• Repaired old chicken house (shack?) and moved chickens from old farm.
• Started putting up fences for sheep. Although previously a sheep farm (Hampshires), in recent years it was used for horses. There is a new pole barn and two pastures fenced with board fences. Unfortunately, these fences do not connect to the barn, so the first order of business is to fence the area immediately surrounding the barn. Thanks go out to my brother, Irenaeus and his friend Don for spending so many of their weekends working on our fences, and to Ridgely Thompson for teaching them how to build braced corners.
• Farmers Market opened 5/29 (too soon!)

June

• Planting continues, and weeding starts.
• Fencing continues. By the end of the month, we finally have enough area fenced that we can move the sheep over from the old farm.
  
• Moved more farm stuff, including 100 tomato cages (5 foot tall cages, made of concrete reinforcing wire).

July

• By the end of the month, the new gardens are starting to produce. Weeding continues.
• Fencing also continues. Now we are wrapping woven wire around the outside of the board fence on the two pastures. Sheep are happy each time we expand their area.
• Harvested garlic at the old farm. All that’s left to move from the old farm now is the greenhouse.

August

• August finds us planting, weeding, harvesting, and going to market. Getting great yields despite lack of rain.
• Discovered the chicken house (shack?) is not predator proof. Found some dead hens and realized that a bunch more had disappeared altogether - started with 23, now down to 8! Started planning a new chicken house. In the meantime, Greg moves the chickens into rabbit hutches each night and puts them back again in the morning. Labor intensive, but we haven’t lost any more.
• Fencing in pasture #1 is within 30 feet of being done. Start thinking about pasture #2. We are going to build the flock by saving our ewe lambs this year, and they need some place to go during breeding season. (Not to mention it would be a good idea to get the ram lambs out of the flock before they breed their mothers and sisters.)
  

So what’s on tap for September? Planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, and going to market of course. Building a new chicken house; we've ordered some new chickens and they are arriving October 2. Moving the greenhouse. Fencing more pasture. Converting part of the lower level of the bank barn to a fiber workshop. Still need to have that garage sale. And the list goes on and on…