Garlic is in and Bulk Harvest Continues

Our garlic has all been planted.  The rain last week made things a little challenging because the fields were too wet to work in earlier in the week.  It meant that we had to fit planting in later in the week, onto days which we are already tend to be stretched pretty thin with regular production (weekly harvest, prep and packing). We managed to fit it in the schedule by spending pretty much every spare moment cracking garlic in preparation.

Despite demos we saw online where other folks crack bulbs by smacking the stem on a hard surface (which we were initially skeptical about because it seemed like an injury waiting to happen) we had pretty minor success with that approach and mainly stuck to the ‘twist the top and rip in half’ techique.  One crew member figured it out though and the stem-striking approach has become known as the ‘Zach Smack’.  In case you were wondering, Zach also won the largest clove competition with his entry weighing in at 130 grams.

Its a little hard to tell right now, but we think we may have over estimated how much space we needed for garlic.  Since the beds were already prepped we decided to just fill them, but we also changed transplanting methods part-way through the project and tightened up the spacing as a result.  With the most recent calculation we could have anywhere between 10,000 and 14,000 bulbs next year.. that is a lot!  It is probably not too much though, because this season we sold a lot more of the crop as green garlic or fresh uncured heads, so extra next year just means enjoying early garlic again in 2025.

Bulk harvest continues this week and we are officially out of space in the usual coolers and are turning on the backup ones here at the farm.  We also found some other storage space close to us, so once we’re ready its just a matter of figuring out how to move several half-ton bins down the road efficiently.  So far its looking like a winter full of good, homegrown food!