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 growing space. 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, which is full of garlic flavor! About a month before bulb harvest, we snip the scapes so that all the plant’s energy goes into sizing up the bulb. We preserve these seasonal delights in our Garlic Scape Salt to eat all year long.
To keep things manageable, we grow on a super-small scale, starting in a humble 40’x60’ garden plot in 2022 and slowly expanding towards crop rotation. We relate with the land as regeneratively as possible, encouraging soil biology with plant diversity and living pathways, keeping the mycelial structures intact with minimal tilling, cover cropping whenever possible, and avoiding pesticides and other non-organic practices. We’ve been up on the hill since 2021 & we’re always 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. Since then, our crop has grown as large as 3,000 bulbs and 8 varieties! Our cloves are planted each October, harvested in July, then presales start in August. If you’re not already, get on our newsletter & be the first to know when garlic sales go live!