Garlic

Sheep make the soil fertile for the garlic we grow and now that we've harvested it, I let the lambs into the beds to graze the weeds—appropriately enough called Lamb's Quarters*—that also grow well in the rich soil. 

We stopped hoeing about two weeks before harvest when the garlic was large enough to not be disadvantaged in the competition for soil nutrients, sunlight and water with the robust Lamb's Quarters growing alongside it.

*Lamb's Quarters grow abundantly upstate; like many leafy greens they are nutritious for humans as well as for sheep.  Lamb's Quarters are excellent steamed and taste mildly like asparagus. 

German White and Musik

German White and Musik are subvarieties of Porcelain, a variety of hard-neck garlic that has a thick bulb wrapper that tends to be parchment-like and tightly cover its few, but large, cloves. The outer bulb wrappers are often very white but some show a purple striping as you peel away the wrappers.  Cloves are easy to peel.

Many subvarieties of Porcelain garlic are strong tasting and can store for ten months or more at cool room temperatures. 

Marino, aka Merino

Marino is a subvariety of Rocambole, a variety of hard-neck garlic that has has a thinner bulb wrapper that may have have vivid mauve colors to signal its strong, rich and deep flavor.  They have smaller cloves and require more time to peel.

Most subvarieties of Rocambole garlic are flavorful and very hot. They do not store as long as those of the Porcelain variety.

Go to the Garlic Department of the General Store to order our garlic online—we ship—it's a great gift for everyone but vampires.

We grow our garlic organically with rain and sun in a loam soil—amended with aged sheep manure— and weeded by hand with a hoe.  As with most crops, the nurture of garlic, where and how it was grown, the type of soil—its fertility—the amount of rainfall, etc., will  better determine its taste than the nature of garlic as described above

Click Garlic for information on how we grow it.

"@UnSqGreenmarket I happened to pick some of that garlic up by chance, actually. It looks terrific and the @catskillmerino people are sweet"

Thanks bonnefourchette

We did it!  The garlic is in and up in the hayloft drying.

Go to the Garlic Department of the General Store where you can buy two Porcelain varieties, German White and Musik; and we have a Rocambole variety called Merino for sale too. 

Plus, we offer a Garlic Sampler with all three varieties that we grew this year.

We pulled 30 whole plants for market tomorrow. They're gorgeous.  They're big and they're bold.  With rain from gray clouds and light from our lovely star, this garlic was grown in soil made fertile with mellowed sheep manure. 

You know what to do with the head but the leaves may confound you.  Use them in a soup or a stew or juice them with lemon and carrot as I do.

Buy fresh garlic scapes at market in Union Square or online in the Garlic Department of our General Store.  Use them like you would garlic cloves.  See Garlic for  more on scapes, garlic cultivation and recipes.

Dominique planted the garlic in November, Sarah hoes it now and hopefully the girls at market in New York: Nina, Simone, Mary & Abigail* will come up to the farm and harvest it come July. 

Garlic grows well in soil fertilized with sheep manure and ours should be the largest and strongest variety in New York.

And me, I always wanted to be a top 40 DJ because I dig the Girl Groups.

*along with Ryan, their driver

Or a Poem in garlic.   I wanted to shoot the garlic coming up and I wanted to get Poem in the shot; I told her to sit and I lay down in the garlic bed with a Nikon 14-24mm zoom lens, at a focal length of 14mm, on my D700.  Here, the camera is almost on the ground and the lens about 14" from Poem's nose.  At three frames a second, in several bursts, with Poem always in motion, I took 79 exposures to get one I  could work with.   Back at the computer in Adobe Lightroom, I used a graduated filter on the sky to bring out the moodiness of the day.

Last Saturday, a guy asked me if I had any garlic yet.  "It's coming," I told him,  "when it's in, you can order it from Garlic Department  of the General Store if you can't get to the stand."

Queen of the mountain.  Dominique stands atop a manure pile that Hans pushed up with his 125 HP John Deere tractor.  The pile—mellow, sweet, and rich—represents manure and hay refuse from the area under four round bale feeders that fed hay to 150 ewes from November to March.  

I will distribute this organic material across the entire yard where the ewes spent last winter.  This fall we will plant the garlic there; next fall we will plant the garlic in the area where the ewes overwinter this year.  This is how garlic follows sheep around the farm.

I pull an old New Holland 125 bushel manure spreader with my 35 HP Massey Ferguson tractor.  The spreader is loaded from the pile using the bucket on the front end of the tractor;  the spreader is then attached to the rear end of the tractor and linked to a power-take-off  shaft that drives a chain to pull the load slowly into the rapidly spinning 12"  blades breaking up the clumps and throwing the material evenly behind me.  The spread manure and hay will be rototilled  into the soil increasing its organic matter content and consequently its fertility. 

At market strollers-by sometimes remark, "Oh look, they use both the lamb and the wool..."  "Yes," I reply, "and we grow garlic in soil fertilized with sheep manure—nothing is wasted here."

Mary & Abigail

Garlic is magic. To be planted now in November, garlic heads must be split into cloves; each clove when pressed into soil will mature into a head of garlic containing many cloves—one will make ten—a get-rich-quick scheme, growing garlic is.  The cloves we plant this fall will be harvested next July; of that crop, some garlic will be eaten and some will be sold and some will be kept for planting next fall.  So grows garlic and our green dreams compound like interest.

I had Hans plow and disc the field where the sheep over-wintered last year.  This is where we will plant the garlic this week; this coming winter the sheep will be kept in another field, the following year we will plant the garlic there in  the soil  they made rich for us.  On this farm, the garlic follows the sheep around.

We have 100's of pounds of garlic heads that must be split into cloves.  Last Saturday I brought  3 crates to New York so the stand staff, Andrea, Nina, Mary and Abigail, could split it when they weren't selling yarn or lamb.

I'm lucky, I can't help it, I'm evil and I confess I lied  to the staff when I said the name of the garlic they were splitting was German White when its real name was Truth Serum. 

But Mary and Abigail did seem to be have a good afternoon telling the truth to one another.  And by the power of sheep, we should have some Truth Serum for you next July, but if you're keeping a secret, we recommend the German White garlic instead.

Sunday I drove up to Saugerties, N.Y. to buy some seed garlic at the 21st annual  Hudson Valley Garlic Festival. I met up with Dominique who was helping out at the Garlic Seed Foundation stand; we walked around the vendors looking for a Porcelain variety called German White because it has a big head with fewer but larger cloves—making it easier to peel—than the  smaller Rocombole variety.  German White grows well upstate and it is one of the strongest varieties known—achtung!—it's the variety we're selling in New York now and we're almost sold out for the year.  Knickerbocker garlic mavens rave-on about it's fire, about how it lights up the heavens for them, "Why is it so special," I'm often asked, "Because it's grown in composted sheep shit, sir."

We easily found what we were looking for; I bought  some German from three farmers there.  I  had taken my day off in a farmers' market, a postman's holiday for sure. But for me, one who abhors the swell of the crowd, this day, damp and grey, was lovely because quiet; it reminded me of what Wallace Stevens wrote but about snowy days, it was raining and it was going to rain, the forecast had kept the sugar people home. 

Sugar people are people who melt in the rain, or so they say up in Sullivan County. When caught out of doors by a surprise shower these sweet persons grimace and yelp when struck by rain drops as if they're being pelted by molten steel.  The sugar people were not in Saugerties this morning, nor were there many hardy souls wandering around in the drizzle either, but there was no one in/on line at the clam stand; I had steamed Little Necks in a garlic butter sauce for brunch to make my day.

But those long-faced stoic vendors idleing about their wet bulbs, I know that look so well.

On Monday morning in Astoria, Simone, Bianca, Becky and Nina piled into Ryan's ratty old Mercedes, "ratty and old"—like a good mink coat—is the only kind of Mercedes to own, for the 1 hour trip upstate to the farm.  The day was glorious—spring-like in July—perfect  to pull 1000's of  heads of garlic.  And the harvest time was right too: by next week some of the heads would have over ripened, split and lost their delicate skin.

This year the Porcelain variety was huge and the smaller Rocambole variety will be larger than most  other garlic sold at Union Square. And what was equally impressive were the size and number of earthworms we pulled up entangled in the roots of the garlic heads.  Earthworms inhabit fertile ground; we must thank the sheep for the soil's richness.

Last December, after I roto-tilled the aged sheep manure, mixed with hay refuse, into the  clay soil of the yard where the sheep over-wintered the year before, Dominique planted the cloves in the dark, promising soil. The garlic that we grow here follows the sheep a year behind.  This coming fall we will plant the garlic, to be harvested next summer, where the sheep were quartered last winter.  And so the Earth spins around its star across the heavens.

Last week we brought green garlic to the stand that was not planted last November, but was planted the November before, 19 months ago!  It comes from the heads that we didn't harvest last June because weeds overgrew them.  Now, from those same plants,  we have more garlic than we would have gotten had we picked  it then: underground, each unharvested head ripened into many cloves which sprouted anew. The lost garlic business is a banker's dream of compounded interest.  These unintended, but welcome plants, are called "volunteers" by vegetable growers.

This week we will have more volunteers, but the week after we will begin to draft this year's better weeded crop pictured here with the lambs in the background.

A soup for the early summer when local garlic is green:

• 1 pound green garlic
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 pound fingerling potatoes, peeled (or any boiling potato)
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 quarts vegetable broth
  

Cut each garlic stalk in half lengthwise, then mince; but save some of the upper green leaves and cut them into squares to add with the minced garlic.

To the oil in a saucepan over moderate heat, add the garlic and saute for about 7 minutes. Add the broth, potatoes and season with salt and pepper.  Cover and gently simmer. Cook until potatoes are tender, about 25-35 minutes.

Serves 6

In botany, a scape is a flowering stem.  The scape of garlic, Allium Sativum,   begins to curl after having formed a bulbil that will soon flower.  Scapes should be broken off to enhance the final underground growth of the bulb, or what we call the head, which we will harvest in early July when the cloves have fully and distinctly developed.  Until then, cook with the whole plant, called green or spring garlic, using both the immature head and the green leaves.

A seasonal and local recipe:

1/4 pound peeled garlic scapes, finely chopped
3T fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt to taste

Garlic in April

Four-inch tall Shaman garlic sprouts thrust from the ground where the sheep overwintered in 2007-2008.  Last December, a year after the flock had been quartered there, Shaman cloves were planted in the rich mixture of soil, hay refuse and droppings. The sheep build fertile soil for the garlic.  Next December we will plant where the flock overwintered this year—a different place on the property.  Round and round the sheep and garlic go.

Look for Shaman garlic in mid June.

The box is almost three times larger than my pick-up truck with the cap on; it is an easy step up to the bed and I can stand inside the box.  Nevermore will I crawl into the back of a truck on all fours to load and unload it. 

And now I have room to bring the garlic that we harvested in July to market.  The revenue from the garlic should help pay for the truck.  The garlic grew in compost where the sheep overwintered the year before last: the cloves are sharp, strong and very good voodoo.

Two weeks ago Dominique and I pulled the rye-straw mulch off the garlic.  The shoots were pale, spindly and 2 inches tall, now look at these “little soldiers.”  Garlic will grow 4 feet in height and flower in what is called a scape just before harvest in early July.

In the photo, behind the garlic to the left of the nearest silo is a lean-to shed that we call the shepherd’s room; it is also where we dye the yarn.  Further left of that you can see the boys hanging out in a barren area (sheep will eat grass down to dirt) around a round bale of hay.  This year the grass is slow coming on; it has been cool and dry.  But yesterday, after a dry spell of two weeks, it did rain; in a day or two, when the soil temperatures rise, the grass will begin to grow faster than the sheep can eat it and at pasture they’ll be.

On the horizon, you see silos which are next to the barn where the girls are lambing; they are due to finish up Sunday. On Monday or Tuesday, with eager Poem, we’ll slowly drive the ewes and their baby lambs down the hill to the green pasture at the left of the garlic field where they will graze through the summer months. We got through another winter.

Summertime
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high.
Oh yo' daddy's rich
An' yo' ma is good lookin'
So hush, little baby,
Don't you cry.

George & Ira Gershwin
Porgy and Bess

During a break from the freezing weather in late December, Dominique planted close to 9,000 cloves of 8 varieties of garlic in about 3400 row feet with a spacing between cloves of 4" to 5". Next, the planted cloves had to be mulched; but where would we get the straw this late in the year, and what would we pay if we could find it. Luckily, these questions were answered before the next hard freeze.

Instead of paying $8.00 a bale from a local straw scalper, Dominique got it from Greenmarket farmer, Phil Hoeffner in Montgomery, for $4.00 a bale, delivered. The negotiations were over the phone; she didn't know who we were buying it from until we saw his name on the truck delivering it..."hey, I didn't know I was talking to you"...from then on we were working with family.

Here Dominique breaks open a straw bale to mulch the garlic rows; this will help prevent the garlic from heaving-out when the ground freezes, thaws and re-freezes. The mulch will also suppress weed growth in the spring. If the garlic comes up I'll need a bigger truck to get it to market. I'm shopping for one in the price range of what the garlic will bring in, Yankee farmer that I am.

Today Dominique and I took the clean-up rams out of the two breeding groups and combined the ewes.  Clean-up rams (I use two or three per ewe group) are put in the breeding groups after the main breeding  rams have been with their ewes for two ovulation cycles, 36 days. Clean-up rams will breed ewes the breeding rams didn't settle; they guard against a possible infertility of the breeding ram.  The dates the breeding and clean-up rams go in and out of the breeding group are calendared.  I want to know when lambs are due and  who the sires are. 

Lambing will begin on the 31st of March, 2008 (the rams went in 5 months earlier) and continue through the 27th of May, 2008, 5 months from today which is the duration of a ewe's gestation.  Most of the lambs will be born in the first three weeks of April and will have been sired by one of the two breeding rams I used this year (#241 from the Sierra Park line or #378 from the Bullamalita line).  Any lamb born after May 4, 2008 will have been sired by the clean-up rams and be considered a 'syndicate lamb' as I won't know for sure which of the clean-up rams sired it.  The clean-up rams come from the same sire line (Sierra Park or Bullamalita) as the main breeding ram; even though I won't know the exact sire of a late lamb I will know the genetic line that sired the lamb.  That information will determine the breeding of that lamb when it becomes a sheep and is fertile 18 months later.  Good record-keeping prevents inbreeding and enhances hybrid vigor in offspring, which means seeing a big healthy lamb at its dam's teat in the Spring..

 

I love fresh garlic.

This afternoon Poem and I walked across the garlic field when we went to look at the sheep. As expected I broke through the ice crust with each footfall but surprisingly so did little 29 lb Poem, so fragile in places it was. I love to have fun with my dog and my dog loves to have fun with me--and it was Christmas day--we hipped and hopped breaking the ice like Brooklyn gangstas, like I was Biggy and she was Smalls. We were "goofin," as they said in Flatbush when Frank was king.

The exposed patches of ground, or really of sheep manure, were not frozen but stiff from the temperature that fell with the afternoon light. Where Poem and I broke through the ice crust, the manure underneath was soft, squishy and very plantable. The snow and ice crust functioned as a mulch, and mulch is what garlic grown in cold climates needs to keep it from heaving when the ground freezes. If we're lucky, the snow will mulch the garlic for us. Some days I have to smile.