The Share:
Kale
Greens
Bok Choi
Cabbage
Leeks
Onions
Shallots
Garlic
Potatoes
Winter squash
Turnips
Beets
Carrots
PYO Parsley
Field Updates:
With just a few weeks before the end of the CSA,
Thanksgiving shares are selling like hot cakes.
Usually we don’t sell out of Thanksgiving shares until the last week of the
CSA but this year we are running out a little faster than normal. To make up for the increased interest this
season we have decided to slightly increase the number of Thanksgiving shares
available for sale. Even with the extra
shares available it is a good idea to get your order forms in as soon as
you can. Pies and cranberries are no
longer available to preorder but they will be available in the Dairy Store to
purchase.
We put in our very last planting of the 2015 season this
past week: garlic for the 2016 season.
Garlic is the only crop we save “seeds” from each season although what
we are actually saving each year is cloves rather than seeds produced through
sexual reproduction. This means that
each clove we plant produces a head of garlic which is a clone of it’s forbearer. When selecting garlic for replanting rather
than consumption we look for large heads with large undamaged cloves. First we grade our garlic into small, medium,
large and extra large seed stock. Medium
heads are put into the share immediately for consumption by our shareholders. Large and small heads are held in
reserves. If we have not saved enough
extra large seed this allows us to tap into the supply of large heads for
additional seed. Very small heads of
garlic are planted whole without being split into individual cloves. In the spring, instead of letting these
undersized and tightly planted garlics develop into individual heads, we will
harvest the garlic shoots when they are green and tender. Green garlic is an extra early crop that can
be used like scallions. Any garlic that
isn’t used for next years seed or green garlic is distributed in the share room
or sold in the Dairy store after the CSA season has ended
The process of preparing garlic cloves for planting involves
separating each clove from the head. We
call this “popping” the garlic. Popping
the garlic can be a fairly time consuming process. You may have noticed the farmers sitting in a
circle and popping garlic in the back of the barn sometime during the last
three weeks. You may have also noticed a
large amount of garlic related debris blowing through the share room like the
after math of a tickertape parade.
We grow two varieties of garlic: German Extra Hardy and Music. German Extra Hardy is a variety of white skinned
garlic with extra large cloves. Heads
tend to have 2-4 cloves each. Music is a
red skinned, slightly more compact variety with 6-8 smaller cloves. The flavor of Music tends to be a little more
pungent than the German variety while the large cloves of the German tend to be
a little easier to work with while cooking.
We plant an equal number of beds of each variety but since German Extra
Hardy produces fewer cloves per head this means we end up saving nearly twice
as many of these heads. This is why our
shareholders will likely see more Music in the share room.
Total we plant 8 beds of garlic. Beds are roughly 350ft long and we plant 4
rows or garlic per bed. Each clove is
planted exactly 1/2ft apart. In a
perfect world where every clove planted produces a sizable and healthy head of
garlic, we will have grown 22,400 heads with exactly half of those heads
containing 6-8 cloves (Music) and half containing 2-4 cloves (German). This means to replant 11,200 cloves of Music
we will need to save 1600 heads on average and 3,750 heads of German Extra
Hardy. Subtract the combined total
number of garlic heads to be saved for seed from the total number grown for
next season and you get 17050 heads left for distribution to the
shareholders. At 2 heads per shareholder
per week we should have just enough garlic to include in our share for 13
weeks. Of course all of the garlic we
plant doesn’t grow into perfect heads.
This year we began distributing garlic during week 12 of the CSA and I’m
hopeful we will have garlic straight through the end of the share.
