It is going to be a long fall this year.  Ron plans on the 3 of us working until the snow flies.  He wants us to get a total of 5 rows ready for garlic planting.   We are only using one row this year and will then be rotating between them, but he figures the sooner we get them done, the less work we have to do next year. Personally I am hoping for an early winter.

Last Saturday Jo took her shot at shoveling and found out pretty quickly that it is seriously hard work.  I like taking the pick ax and breaking the dirt up first.  I find that cathartic and it certainly burns off the calories.  The whole process is great exercise but it is also very noisy. No conversations to make the work go by faster.  We have to use hand signals to communicate.  But Ron’s sifter does a good job of getting out the rocks.  We end up with lots of worms too.  Have to wonder what they are thinking.  First they are dug up and tossed into a bucket, then dropped onto a contraption that is constantly shaking.  Must feel like an earthquake to them.  We try to grab them up and drop them into the dirt, but sometimes we miss and they go right through the grid.  I try very hard not to squish them against the grate.  Yuck.

Depending on the heat index, it takes the 3 of us two days to get half way through each row.   So we need at least a solid weekend to get one done.

Exhausted work crew so ready to head home.  I came up with fabulously smart idea of using our slightly beat up canopy as shade.  Took a little maneuvering to get it to cover our working area and three of us, but let me tell you, that helped a lot.  Reduced the temp by about 10 to  15 degrees.  We were able to get at least an hour more in.   Then it was home for a welcome shower and clean clothes.

Friday I headed out to THF with Ron and Jo to do a final cleaning on a batch of our mushroom logs.  They had already been out twice that week and come home with pounds of shiitakes.  Made for some happy friends at work.  We were now just going to get whatever is let and dehydrate them.  I still have to find some recipes to use them in.  That will come this winter when I have a bit more free time.

This is why Ron is using plastic pallets to stack his logs.  Every time it rains, we end up dealing with this.

Jo and I tacked the job of getting the logs out of their 4 hour soak.  I make no attempt at keeping track of what the two of them are doing.  The logs are all numbered and they have charts and schedules and it all more than I want to be involved in.

You can see the all rocks on the right side where we dumped them in our efforts to make it a bit dryer and safer for our travels back and forth.   And can certainly see that we have a lot more work to do.  Ron would really love to have a bridge though.  Anyone out there have the know-how to build a good one, on the cheap?  No wood, of course as that will rot real quick.

The last step in mushroom harvesting.  This involves the generator and air compressor.  Ron blows the dirt and any stray bugs off and tosses them into a basket to carry home.  It generally is a two person job.  Like most things on THF.  It is after all, our family adventure.

After our long day on Saturday, about 4 hours working on THF and then more hours spent at the NY State Fair (my pedometer showed me having walked 16,611 steps), we were just about done with our planting row.  One more push on Sunday should do the trick.

So there we were once again, at THF about 7 am getting unloaded and ready for work.

For this project we need the sifter, the generator, extension cord, shovels, gloves, hats, pick ax, wheel barrow, and for me, bug spray from now on.  I have come home with numerous bites over the past few weeks.  Enough is enough.

We lucked out with the weather.  Overcast again so it wasn’t too hot.  And the breeze came and went just enough to cool us off when needed.  Still it was hard work.  Because we are always trying to make it easier to get the work done,  I thought of what I hoped would be a more efficient way of getting the dirt into the sifter.  We started to half fill some buckets and then dump them into the sifter.  It was easier than tossing each shovelful onto the sifter.  Jo was in charge of lifting the buckets of dirt, so she got a really good workout.    I did a lot of the wheel barrow work.  Taking loads of rocks to our  current tiny house.  We are looking to surround it with rocks.  It will look nicer and hopefully keep some of the bugs and critters away.

We had a good routine going and charged through the rest of the row.  And what a relief it was to be done.

You can just barely make it out, but Ron is holding up one finger on  right hand and five  on the left.  That means we are done with one row and have five more to go.   He has plans of expansion, you see.  This whole section he wants to be full of garlic in years to come.  So that means lots more rock picking and soil sifting for us.  And anyone else we can talk into helping us.   Just remember we feed our workers well.  And a workout at THF is better than a gym membership.  You will not only burn off some serious calories, but you will have a pile of rocks to show for your efforts.  And you take then home with you too.

Lots and lots of rocks, that is.   We are concentrating on getting one row done right away so we can plant our 2017 crop of garlic.   After our efforts earlier this month, Ron spent some time looking for a local farmer with a proper rock picker.  A big one.  He made calls and searched Craigslist.  It was a most frustrating process for him.  Dick, our farmer friend and huge help,  found him a likely prospect.  Ron stopped to talk with guy but just could not get him to agree the to  project.  He used his best schmooze, pulling out all the stops, to no avail.  He just did not want the job.

So it was back to we 3 doing the the work.   Everything was dependent on the weather.  We learned the hard way that screening soil did not work when it was too wet.  The grid clogged up fast and nothing got done.  But too dry and we wasted energy trying to shovel the dirt itself.   Dealing with the actual rocks was hard enough, but when you add trying to dig up the rock hard soil too,  it was a losing proposition.  Not worth the effort.

We made a good dent in our row, getting about 8 feet dug up and sifted.  Then Ron tried again to find a farmer with a rock picker. He had stopped to talk with a couple of guys standing by a promising looking machine.  They gave him the owner’s name and phone and Ron got on the phone.  Again with the schmoozing, telling him all about this crazy project being done by a new local farmer.  Throwing in the military background too.  And again, no dice.  Just did not want the job.  Apparently these rock pickers are not the easiest things to use.  They involve a lot of stopping and emptying out of the collector.  Not just a simply matter and driving back and forth across the field.

So Ron went to Dick, wondering if he had any other ideas.  The next day Dick called back to say he had been over to talk with the farmer,  Mr. L.  They are friends and go out to lunch on a weekly basis.  They looked over the machine and talked, but still he was not interested.  Dick decided he would run over the field again with his rototiller bringing along about half a dozen local teens as rock pickers.

While it looked lovely, it sad to see all of our previous hard work now gone.  We had to start all over again.  But this time we knew what we were doing.

It was the perfect day for working too.  Overcast with a nice breeze.  The first 4 holes were pretty easy.  That was where we had already dug everything up.  Once we got past that part, the going got just a bit harder.

Ron being anxious to get this project done, he talked me into heading out to THF after work last Tuesday.  He thought we could nibble away at the job by working a couple of hours each night.  That did not work out as well as he had hoped.  It was so stinking hot that we barely managed to put in two hours.  Ron was exhausted from the heat and we took the rest of the week off.

Do you see the rocks we are collecting?  I am using a pick to dig out a couple of big ones.  You cannot use a shovel because you hit rock after rock and cannot get any purchase.

On Saturday the plan was to put in a good 3 – 4 hours of work and then head to the NY State Fair.   We were expecting brother-in-law Don to come out too, but not at 6 am start time we had.  Quick set up and we were off to the races.  Bless their hearts,  brothers Don and John arrived about 8 am.

The whole work dynamic changed and we barreled through the next few hours.  Suddenly it was 10 am and Ron was calling it quits.   I could tell John was itching to keep going, but we had plans for the rest of the day.  We need to get him to come out for the rest of the project.  The man is a fiend with a shovel.

In case you were wondering why we are being this crazy; Ron insists that garlic cannot be grown in really rocky soil.  You run the risk of it being misshapen and stunted.  He read this on the internet so it must be true.  I think I need him to find that article for me.  Need to read it myself.

Poor Ron.  He had rock solid plans (pun intended) for the 3 of us to get at least one row in our soon to be garlic patch ready for fall planting.  This involved shoveling dirt and rocks into his sifter.  The nicely filtered dirt falls down in a pile and the rocks, of all sizes tumble into our wheelbarrow.

We had already spent two long hours the previous Sunday giving it a try out.  The plan itself sounded pretty straight forward.  Letting the machine do most of the work was fine with me and Jo.  Of course it didn’t work out that way.  Never does.

So we shoveled away, dumping the dirt onto the sifter.  Jo’s job was to help the process along.  After weeks of little to no rain in our area, we finally had a good soaking last week.  And there in lies the problem.  We weren’t dealing with the dry dirt we were used to.  This time we had clumps to deal with.  Jo had to break them up by hand before the went off the end into the wheelbarrow.

But we kept at it and by the time the heat really hit us, we had dug out five holes along our row. Thank goodness we don’t have to go down too deeply when planting garlic. Our goal was to get about shovel deep and let it go at that.

Saturday morning we were up and out at 5:45 am.  First job was to get another batch of logs into the tanks for a 4 hour soak.  These logs are the newest ones and we don’t expect to see any mushrooms from them until next year.

Then we got ready for real work.  On Friday we got pouring rain out on THF.  Most of NY State has been in drought or near drought conditions for 2016.  The expected rain is a good thing for us overall.  Great for our pawpaws and elderberries, but not so much for sifting dirt.  The rain did make it much easier to do the actual digging.  When we were garlic planting there last year, it was some seriously hard work breaking up the compacted dirt.  Rocks do tend to be easier to pick out of dirt that is not bone dry.

This time the clumps were even worse.  And the wet dirt was actually sticking to grate on the sifter and clogging it up.  So both Jo and I were kept busying trying to break up the clumps and force the dirt to drop down on the ground and not end up in the wheelbarrow.

It was just 7 am and already very muggy, so after an hour of work, Ron called it quits.  The effort we were being forced to put out was just not seeing an equal return in progress.   To make the day seem less than a waste, Ron and I went down the row and cut out along one edge while Jo put all the tools away.  With more rain expected over the next week, it was clear that this project was going to have to wait for some dryer soil.   Or find ourselves a much longer sifting table.  I figure if it was at least 6 feel longer, a few more of the clumps were be shaken apart.  As that is not going to happen, we shall find other projects to keep us busy while we wait for an improvement in our work conditions.

“Lucky” for me and Jo, Ron’s got a long list of things that need to be done.  There are always more rocks to pick out of our field, logs to soak on a weekly basis, frames to build, garbage to pick up, weeds to pull, research to do, grass to mow, planting areas to lay out, trees to cut down, and brush to cut back.  This does not include chores dealing with our home garden, daily life and work, farm paperwork, my blog, and learning more about Ron’s plans for the future.  Those plans of his, they cause me sleepless nights.  Wondering what will he come up with next is my constant worry.

We started with a open field.  Ron hadn’t even planned to start growing anything out on the farm in 2015.  But plans change and there we were, getting ready to start our garlic.  We are after all, supposed to be a garlic farm.  That is the line that Ron used to sell me on this adventure.

Ron did some figuring based on the pounds of garlic he ordered and the space needed.  First step was to use his manly brush hog to cut a swatch through the knee high grass.

That of course was the easy part.  I have already shared the story of the tilling and rocking picking in our soon to be garlic patch.  And what fun that was.

By March we were seeing the first signs of our growing garlic, popping up through the straw mulch.  That not only would help retain moisture, but would prevent any ground heaving from the winter cold.

April arrived and the garlic was growing strong.  The straw was actually doing a pretty good job of fighting off the weeds too.  Just not around the edges.

In May the garlic was looking fabulous, strong and healthy.   If all goes well, we can expect a good crop this year.

It is June now and we are now going to harvest the garlic scapes.  They make some of the best pesto around.  This year I threw in some of my backyard garden kale and it was very yummy.   Added bonus with the kale, the pesto is that much better for you.

This year I ran the scapes through my food processor and then frozen them in 8 oz containers.  Now if I have the craving for pesto I can just grab a bag from the freezer and throw them into the processor with the rest of the ingredients.  I still cannot be sure if it is best to make the pesto and freeze it or make it fresh each time.  Too many experts giving their opinions.  I will have to figure it out for myself.

A farmer and his garlic.  A heart warming site.

Sunday July 31 and harvest day is here.  Raining,  but doesn’t matter.  It is time to get the garlic out of the ground and into the drying tent.

It is damp out at THF which  makes the harvesting just a bit slower.  We have to gently wack each bulb to get as much of the dirt off.  Before long all three of us are pretty muddy.  We planted three different varieties so we have to keep them in separate piles.  We grew German White before and really liked it, but added German Red and Italian Red to the mix. Some serious tasting will need to be done to decide which one is our favorite.

Lovely piles of garlic.  They smell so good.  We are delighted at how well it grew.  Were not certain it would.  Our field sat fallow for at least 10 years, so that helped.  Of course we had a series of cover crops planted as green manure and added no chemicals.  Once the garlic was planted in October, we pretty much let nature take its course.  We did start watering once the summer hit hard.  A serious lack of rain in our area this year has caused worry for farmers of all levels.  Whatever we did, or didn’t do, we ended up with a good harvest.  Of course we cannot be sure until we try them all.  They have to taste good or all is for naught.

Now we have to cut off most of the stem and get the bulbs into boxes and back home.   Jo and I tackled that part of the project.  We wanted to get it done before the rain came down even harder.

With Ron’s Transit in the shop, we had to stuff our boxes and bags of garlic into the car’s trunk.  We had planned on needed 3 boxes for all the garlic.   We ended up using garbage bags to hold what would not fit into the box.  Next year we will need a better plan.

Garlic is all pulled.  We tossed the stems back onto the straw.  They will decompose nicely and add more good stuff back to the soil.  Besides, too tired to even think about bringing it all home to our compost bin.

Ron had to put together another couple of drying trays.  The ones we used over the last few years are now pulling pussy willow duty.  Once he was done, Jo and I got dirty all over again pulling each bulb out of the boxes and setting them onto the trays.   It will be at least a week before the dirt has fully dried and starts to fall off, but it will be  3 – 6 weeks before the garlic is ready.  All depending on the weather.  The more rain we get, the longer it will take.  Cannot wait, fresh garlic.  Nothing is better than that.  Most of this lovely stuff will be used for seed stock.  After all, 2017 is the year we plan to actually sell some of our yummy products.

This is next year’s garlic patch waiting for us to get started.  We will be planting double the amount in just a few months.  There will be more rock picking in my future.  I so cannot wait.

Well, Ron had another wild thought. He found a listing on Craigslist for a tiller; several emails later and he had arranged to meet with woman selling it out in Auburn. Ron took Jo and off they went yesterday. With the newly repaired Transit. We just got it back again, they had to replace the transmission that they just put in two weeks ago. Right now, every noise is cause for alarm. My fingers are crossed that it will stay fixed, for the next 3 years at least.
As they were going to be in the neighborhood, and I have told you before that I am a huge fan of making a trip worth it, I had them stop at Costco and pick up a cat tree. I had spotted it 2 months ago but we were in the Camry so no way it was coming home with us. Ron and I were out there last weekend. As we were making a run to the Syracuse Regional Farmer’s Market (fabulous place), the Real Food Co-op, Wegman’s, and JoAnn Fabrics, Costco was an easy add to the day. But again no Transit so even though the cat tree was now on sale, it stayed there in the store. But, yesterday they not only had the Transit but the trailer as well.
I had a lovely morning with the house to myself. Got caught up on a couple of my shows while I did laundry and assorted chores done. On Friday night I had decided to get a start on dehydrating our garlic. Ron helped by busting apart the heads for me and I peeled them and ran them through the food processor.

All those slices look beautiful but they are sticky beyond words. I spread them out on the plastic sheets, set the temp on low and left them alone. Don’t tell anyone but the dehydrator is sitting in our garage. No way we could leave it set up in our dining room. I do love the smell of garlic, but not that much. I ran a batch of leeks through it last week and that was almost enough to chase us out of the house. The garlic would certainly have sent us running.
Back to Ron’s wild thought- he wants to try growing our garlic out on THF next year. Not waiting until 2016 to get it started. The garlic he ordered arrived in a big box on Thursday and this might have been the kick start. You have to order garlic early if you want to get that certain variety you want to grow. We are going to be growing 3 varieties – German White, German Red and Italian White. So not only are we growing this out on THF but we have to a plan to keep each type separate so we can easily identify them come harvest time. This morning we loaded up with the usual tools, but adding our mini grill, hotdogs and buns. We were going to have a cookout. Ron showed me how to use it and I ran the bush hog over a small section of the field and then he fired up the tiller. This was a learning process as he had never used one before. It became quickly apparent that we really do need to have a rock picking party with lots of attendees. Jo and I did our best, but

there was no way the two of us could keep up with Ron’s progress.

Ron would love to find a way to sell these things. Organically grown rocks. Surely there is a market for them.
After several hours in the hot sun, we were so done with this.

It was time for our cookout. Ron got the grill going and we sat under the trees and enjoyed our hotdogs. The only problem we had was underestimating how much water we needed. Next time we have to bring bigger bottles.

Jo has to work tomorrow but Ron and I are going back out again tomorrow morning. We have lots of room on the grill too add a hotdog for anyone who has a couple of hours to spare . Any takers?