Harvest

Harvest is in full swing, about 70% complete! Most of you would be complete your harvest in normal garden growing conditions. Our gourmet garlic varieties were harvested in the 1st and 2nd week of August (planted sooner in Sept), and our field garlic (Music and Red Russian) were planted late (too late!) due to the heaps of rain in fall 2019, impossible to get a rototiller in the field, so a planter had to be fabricated, welded and implemented as quickly as possible. Still hand planted, but no tillage. Necessity is the Mother of Invention! Coupled with a cooler dry spring, we were glad for that fall moisture!

Our field garlic is looking real good, and the days and nights are long with going to bed on a different day than we got up! I am thankful for knee pads that save the knees and essential oils that soothe the back during the few hours of night! All our family is out there working together, working hard to get each row off the field and onto the dryer in the shop before nightfall! Temperatures are getting dangerously low at night to risk leaving the garlic outside to cure in a shady spot.

Orders are beginning to be sent out this week! Most of the gourmet garlic is sold out already, but there are a scant few left of some varieties (Red Rezan, which is such a beautiful glazed bulb with high number of cloves, great for pickling or fresh eating). We have limited bulbils available in most varieties. I am not surprised that many growers don’t want to bother with planting bulbils as it is heaps of work with no payback for 4 years, but that is the mission of our business. To provide the customer with a young garlic bulb (even if it is a large bulb). To provide seed that is close to the bulbil generation so that you have garlic for several years to come. Just as we want to retain heifers in our cattle herd to keep our herd young, we plant thousands of bulbils each year and grow them up. That is WHY we love our medium sized seed as it almost always upsizes in well fed soil. A young medium bulb (meaning last year it was a 2nd year bulbil smaller round) is bursting with energy to be a large bulb next year. We spring planted about 2000 medium cloves in a 100% winterkill area this year in a poorer clay, too wet location in the fall) in mid May and reaped a lot of XL bulbs, mostly larges and some mediums. Impressive!

Out to the field we go…have a great day and thank you so much for supporting farm families!!