We planted 80 lbs of garlic, laid drip irrigation lines, and mulched the beds with 8 inches of wheat straw by 11 am. Wow!

It would of took Jenifer and I a day and a half at least to complete that task by ourselves.

Levi and I have a new chore to do each day around dusk, herd turkeys back into their pasture shelter. Out of our 26 bronze broad-breasted hens ( and one tom, although we only ordered hens) about 18 have decided the roosts in the pasture pen is not high enough and get out each evening looking for somewhere else to roost. The remaining 8-10 frantically try and figure out how they did it.

It is not hard to shut them up in the pen if we do it before dark, but turkeys are notoriously night blind and if we wait to after dark, it is much more of a hassle.

You would think that a 20+ lb turkey bedding down on pasture would be pretty much predator proof. I did until two years ago when I went to shut up the turkeys a week and a half before Thanksgiving and caught a fox dragging off a turkey it had just killed.

I went to get my shotgun, figuring the fox was gone. He circled back around me and took down another turkey.

He paid the price. Now we try and remove temptation from the local predator population rather than resorting to shooting them. But it is still an option if needed.

I picked this hog up yesterday from Sammy and Melinda Koenigsberg of New Town Farms. They had purchased some Ossabaw pigs from George Washington’s Mt. Vernon Estate earlier this year.

They had had some issues with their hogs getting out of the fenced in wooded area and rooting up their neighbor’s yards.

Melinda was just about as giddy with joy to see this pig leaving their farm as Jenifer was livid when I mentioned that I had bought a Ossabaw boar from Sammy last Saturday afternoon.

Jenifer was adamant that some part of our farm operation had to go if pigs were now in the mix and reeled off a litany of charges. Turkeys, cotton patch geese, broilers, vegetables, CSA, and at the very top of the list for about a day was me… I owe her flowers and probably some jewelry.

That is what it is called when you bust up garlic bulbs into individual garlic cloves and that is what we did most of the day Tuesday with the help of CJ.

It is not that hard of work. We get to sit around. sit being the keyword, listening to the radio, and busting up garlic.

It is repetitive and your thumb will get sore from peeling that much garlic. We have found that rubber finger pads, like they use at the post office for sorting letters, are a big help.

Jenifer has always been faster than me at peeling garlic, but CJ was a garlic popping machine. She put rubber finger pads on both her thumbs and went to town.

I call that just showing off….

Garlic Varieties

Most of what we will be planting Saturday will be a hardneck variety called Music and a softneck variety called Inchellium Red.

We will be planting much smaller amounts of 7-8 varieties of both hardnecks and softnecks to build up a seedstock supply. It will probably be two years before we have enough of those varieties to sell at market.

Garlic is our longest term annual crop. Planted in October and harvested in mid-June, it is 9 months to fruition.

Prepping Garlic Beds

I hear your thoughts – “Is he ever going to shut up about the garlic?”

I am a little obsessive I guess about garlic. Especially since I held back 85 lbs of some of the best garlic we have ever grown for seedstock last year but did not get it planted till late February because of a wet winter and ended up with very small bulbs and nubbins of garlic.

Jenifer has told me multiple times, concerning this year’s harvest, is that we got what we got and it is what it is so just let it go and shut up about the garlic.

I called my cousin Lindsey to bring me two truckloads of 2-3 year old aged leaf compost, which he did last Friday.

Wednesday, Jenifer and I spread, by hand, around 300 five gallon buckets of the stuff on the 18 100′ garlic beds.

The beds still have to be fertilized. The mixture I came up with is 8 lbs of worm castings, 4 lbs. of McGeary organic fertilizer, 2.7 lbs of azomite, 2.3 lbs of greensand, and .33 lbs of humate per bed.

That sounds like a pretty specific mix, like I know what I am talking about. Put down your pens and quit cutting and pasting. The standard rate for applying earthworm castings is 20-30 lbs/1000 sq. feet. Most organic fertilizers are 300-500 lbs/acre or 4 lbs. per 300 sq. foot bed.

The figures for the Azomite, greensand, and humate, I just weighed what I had on hand, divided by the number of beds I have, 18, and there you go. Totally unscientific.

We started getting the garlic area ready last Thursday with the help of Taylor and Marc who came out to help.

You may of met Taylor and Marc if you go to the Yorkmont market. They are sometimes selling pork for the Grateful Growers.

Last Thursday morning, the intended garlic planting area contained our late tomatoes, 200 feet of trellised rattlesnake pole beans, 200 feet of trellised suyo long cumumbers, and plenty of weeds.

We picked the cucumbers and beans for the last time and and took down the nylon trellis’s and the bamboo stakes holding them up, pulled up all the tomato stakes, and I tilled the area with the rotavator to incorporate the the weeds and crop residue into the top 4-5 inches.

Still have to finish cleaning out the greenhouse and getting stuff sowed in it. Jenifer and CJ started 1200 lettuce transplants last week that will go into the greenhouse hopefully.

Cover crop/ green manures still have to sown on land that is not in fall / winter production. Hopefully, that will start today. We are using crimson and ladino clover along with rye grain for cover crops this year.

Howard Rotavator

Garlic Planting

I am excited about planting this year’s garlic! Especially after last year’s debacle of not getting our beautiful 85 lbs of saved garlic bulbs into the ground until late February and ending up with really crappy bulbs in last June.
Seed garlic is costly. $9 – $15 / lb. I got 25 lbs from a local source 2 hours east of here.

I received 50 lbs of gorgeous hardneck garlic today via Fed-Ex. Huge bulbs of the variety Music. I arranged a group buy to reduce costs with 4 other farms so I only get to keep and plant 20 lbs.

I will not be at market on Oct. 10. I will be planting garlic. The signs are right. The moon will be waning and in the sign of Cancer, the most fruitful sign to plant in, Oct. 10th and 11th.

We welcome volunteers to come help us plant garlic.

I know it sounds hokey and superstitious. I am not sold on planting by the signs either. But it is better than listening to cable news with video footage of the latest car chase in California…

Early last week, we were looking at low temps. in the teens and highs around 40 degrees. Early this week, high temps. are pushing 80 degrees with lows in the 50’s…

Friday’s high is supposed to be around 40 degrees with rain… geesh.

Garlic Planting

We finally got our garlic planted. Close to a mile of garlic. The stuff Jenifer and I planted two weeks ago is already popping up out of the ground. We had some great help on Tuesday. Two of our working CSA share members, Jonathan and CJ, came out and helped pop open garlic bulbs into individual cloves for planting. If you have ever busted up a garlic bulb into cloves to use in your kitchen, that is what we were doing. 80+ lbs worth.
We have always planted garlic in the fall so this late winter planting is new ground for us. We will see how it goes.

It was sort of odd that we were spreading straw for the laying hens in the snow a week ago and this week we got sun-burned in 80+ degree weather planting garlic…

Snake!

I seen my first snake Monday walking back from the greenhouse to the house for lunch. It was a baby black rat snake wiggling across the driveway.
I engaged him in conversation and absolutely terrified him. Maybe he knew that I had killed a few of his kind. Baby black rat snakes are not black, but brown and dark brown. I had thought they were young copperheads in the past.

View the photos. Young Copperhead and young black rat snake.

Young Black Rat Snake

Young Copperhead

I shooed him out of the driveway into the leaves in the woods because their were loose hens roaming about. They would of loved to dine on the baby snake.

Which brings me to a point. I see egg cartons all the time touting that the chickens have been fed a vegetarian diet. Too bad for those chickens. Chickens are omnivores and will eat mice, snakes, bugs, etc. if given half a chance.

At least our chickens will, they are part of the food chain. They know the shadow of a hawk and realize they are not at the top of the food chain. We lose a few chickens to hawks and owls.

Speaking of snakes, I ran across this video a few years ago that involves cartoon badgers, mushrooms, and a snake. Ellie and Levi love watching it .The video loops and never ends so kill it before it drives you insane.

Name our Frog

We went to the Southern Garden show last Sunday and had a great time. We bought this re-cycled metal welded frog playing a fiddle. If I don’t forget,I will have it on my table Saturday. The sculpture reminds me of another farmer at the market who shall remain nameless….*cough*Donnie*cough*Cline*cough