Andy & Kole are a couple of first generation farmers, learning as they go with a whole lotta f*ckin’ around & findin’ out. They’ve been lucky enough to put down roots up on a real good hill in Hardwick, VT with good community, good skies & good soil. With their insatiable interest in good food, it didn’t take long to fall hard for garlic…
Good garlic has been a game-changer for us. When you’re used to grocery store garlic mass-produced in China or California, you don’t know just how juicy freshly grown garlic can be. Not to mention the variety that’s out there! Each cultivar has its own unique flavor profile, storage life, growing habits, and personality. It might seem niche, but the fact that different kinds of garlic can create different experiences for the palette has been a revelation in our kitchen.
Garlic’s medicinal qualities have proven themselves as well. Ask Andy about how garlic cured her her ongoing battle with an NYC superbug of strep (yes, that’s a real thing). Now, she takes a little bit of garlic every day & successfully keeps the strep away.
We’re pretty obsessed with the way garlic grows. Garlic is a survivor. Living up close to Canada on a higher elevation our microclimate is cold, weathering extremes in temperatures, winds, rains, and droughts (aren’t we all these days?) and yet, garlic thrives! Garlic puts in roots in the Fall as everything else is dying around it, hunkering down all winter long, to be among the first to sprout up sturdy green shoots in the spring!
The bolting stem on the hardneck varieties we grow up North, puts out a flowering umbel full of little clove-clones called bulbils to ensure the garlic lives on even if the bulb doesn’t make it. This long, curved stem is called a scape and they’re delicious! About a month before bulb harvest, we snip the scapes so that all the plant’s energy goes into sizing up the bulb. We pickle the scapes & make them into pesto to eat all year long. We share our recipes so get yourself on the newsletter!
We’re working on a super small scale with very little equipment outside of a pretty trusty riding mower, a shovel and a spading fork. We’ve chosen to grow slowly, starting in a humble 40’x40’ garden plot. We’re prepping the soil on a larger 1/4 acre plot so we can expand as our seed stock grows. We relate with the land as regeneratively as possible, encouraging soil biology with plant diversity, keeping the mycelial structures intact with minimal tilling, cover cropping, and avoiding pesticides and other non-organic practices. We’ve been up on the hill for about three years, so we’re still watching, listening, and learning from this place.
After growing garlic casually among our other veggies & flowers for a few years, our first serious garlic planting was Halloween 2022. The following July we harvested 500+ bulbs of 5 different hardneck varieties - the start our seed stock. In October 2023, we’ll plant nearly all of that (1500 garlic cloves) right back into the ground so we can get some of this good garlic in your hands by September 2024! If you’re not already, get on our presale list…