The pic above shows the crew 'cracking' garlic. This is always a fun job, because it allows us to sit down and doesn't require much thinking so chatting is easy! But, it is a pretty big job and many hands help quite a bit. Before planting, each head of garlic that we held back for seed has to be broken open and all the cloves separated so they're ready to be planted out individually. We got through about half of it today, and we'll save the rest for next week. We plan to plant our garlic in another week or two. The goal with garlic is to plant it early enough that it sets root and establishes itself enough that it isn't easily moved around by freeze/thaw cycles or rain/wind erosion. BUT, we don't want to plant it too early that it starts growing greens because those will be damaged by the cold winter temperatures and will be wasted energy by the bulb. We've found that for our specific location, usually the second week in October works well, but we're also willing to let that slide a week early or later if it works with our schedule or the weather better.
We'll see you all at your pick up this week, don't forget that the time frames are a bit earlier, and if you're picking up in Libby tomorrow, we'll be at the 4Bs Antlers parking lot rather that at the typical Farmers Market location.
Pick up times are:
Thursday 3-5:30 at Antlers
Friday 1-4 at the Farm
Next week, we'll be attending the Troy Farmers Market's Bounty Festival market, so that will be a new pick up option for boxes next week! It's Friday, Oct. 13, 2:30-5:30.
Cheers, Rudy & Bonnie
