Jul 6, 20223 min read

The Great Garlic Harvest of 2022 {Week 6 CSA}

As pungent as it is massive, this year's garlic crop did not disappoint!

July is a momentous month on the farm. Two of our farmers have birthdays within the first ten days and we typically schedule our gigantic garlic harvest for the first weekend of July. Perhaps June dashed by you also, as summer often does, and this Great Big Garlic Harvest was suddenly around the corner for us. Zach recognized the shortage of hands we'd see on the harvest day and asked me to post on social for any interested volunteers. With very little notice and one measly social post on Instagram and Facebook, we ended up with twelve generous volunteers out at the farm on the morning of. What a fantastic surprise! It ended up being our fastest garlic harvest to date—no small feat for the 8000 garlic bulbs needing to be pulled, cleaned, piled, and then stashed away for curing. We fed our friendly visitors a colorful Prema salad and some warm-from-the-oven cookies, handed them several gigantic garlic bulbs, and welcomed them back anytime. Now, when we say the garlic is big, we mean it. This unknown variety of garlic has always been on the larger size... but not like this! Some bulbs are larger than my fist, with taste tests confirming the sharp, spicy pungency was not sacrificed for girth. Many of the cloves are the size of a typical bulb of garlic, so we're more hopeful than ever that we might actually have planted enough garlic to carry us through fall, winter, and next spring. It took five seasons, but by golly, we may have done it.

The garlic we planted comes from Mewaldt Organics out of Fallon. Bill Mewaldt says he stumbled on this potent garlic when he purchased it from a local Fallon grocery store in the 80's. The flavor and spice was so potent, he went back and bought more garlic just to plant it! When we first discovered Bill's incredible garlic, we felt the same. We ditched our various hardneck allegiances and now exclusively grow this mystery variety. We love that it has been grown organically for the over thirty years in the high desert, acclimated to our climate and preserved by the skilled and dedicated approach that Mewaldt Organics is known for. It will be a few weeks before these coveted cloves appear in your CSA boxes, as their size might demand a slightly longer curing period. Then there will be the Great Garlic Clean Up Party, where you might see a social post inviting all to hang out with us and enjoy the tedious (yet meditative) task of trimming and shedding the garlic to prepare for market and storage. Food is forever a labor of love! Garlic is one of our favorite crops to grow. Besides being an easy crop to get right, demanding little attention and literally repelling pests, it also highlights the festive nature of growing food. Saturday was a big day of work, with our crew arriving early and expecting to stay late, but excitement was the theme of the day. Our volunteers only added to the fun with their friendly demeanors and eagerness to compete for finding the largest garlic bulb. Harvesting something we grew for nearly a year, all in a single day, and recognizing its momentousness connects us with ancient cycles of abundance and celebration. Whenever new gardeners talk to us about how to get food going in their garden, we always tell them to grow plenty of garlic. Beyond being an excellent food and medicine, it offers us access to the joy of growing food in a way that other, more laborious crops, lend less generously. So if you're a garlic lover... this post is meant to excite you, too; if you're in the mildly interested club, may it intrigue you; and if you're actively avoiding garlic in all things, rest assured that the massive garlic coming in your CSA makes an excellent gift. ;)