The title of this post is redundant.  I’ve come to realize for the short time I’ve been doing this that there is no such thing as farming without adaptation.  I’ve also come to realize that the reason I love to farm is BECAUSE of all of the seemingly impossible challenges thrown my way.  In any given year, the nature of those challenges can change drastically, so what worked last season probably won’t be applicable next season.  It might, however, be applicable in 3 or 4 years.

As it stands right now, my current challenge is finding a field in which I can plant my garlic. There’s plenty of ground, but the overriding trouble is that none of it is dry enough to plow. I did have a field plowed for the garlic, but when I went out there after our last 2.5 inch rainfall, the field was porridge. With another 1″+ forecast for Wednesday into Thursday, I’m basically stuck. Another fun fact according to this precipitation map, we’re somewhere between 8-12″ over for the last 90 days. That includes Irene and Lee…Also note that we’re not as bad off as others.

With all of that said, I can’t and won’t complain about it (you can read some previous posts for some of that bellyaching). This is simply a challenge, and I’m going to meet it. If it means that I’m on my hands and knees planting garlic in mid-November through a thin layer of frost in a field that I didn’t prepare properly, then so be it.

Like the saying goes…come hell or high water.  We’ve got the high water and I’m gonna give it hell.

It’s that time again! Kathleen and I will be in Saugerties this coming weekend (24th and 25th) selling garlic at the 2011 Hudson Valley Garlic Festival. We’re in the same booth space as last year (B95) and we hope to see you there!

We brought more variety packs this year due to their popularity over the last two years. Unfortunately, we had some spring flooding that affected our Ukrainian Red, so it only appears in the variety packs.  In any case, we’ve got plenty of garlic to sell!

Keep your fingers crossed for perfect weather. Right now it looks that way!!

Truth be told, this has not been our best year. This spring was very, very wet and unfortunately, we wound up losing some garlic (primarily Ukrainian Red) to oversaturated fields. Because of that, we’ll likely be offering only German White and Spanish Roja in our usual 1/2 pound bags. We may have a small amount of Marjean that way as well. Otherwise, we’re going to try and get it together so that we have variety packs with a bit of Ukrainian.

This actually dovetails into our future plans…we’re downsizing to concentrate on raising our toddler for now.  So what we have this year is likely to be what we have for the next few years. We will likely cut back to a single festival as well. We have yet to decide which festival that is. We really love Bennington because of it’s laid back, but brisk pace. So we’ll see.

Anyhow, we’d love to see you there.

Blueberries are looking like they’re going to be a bumper crop this year as long as we can avoid significant mummyberry. I’m not convinced of that, because the amount of maintenance I put in on the blueberries was not as much as I would have liked. On the other hand, we had almost no mummyberry last year, so fewer mummies=fewer infecting bodies.

That said this looks closer to a 1000 pint year as opposed to last year’s 250 pint year.  Yipes. For those that want to know when they’ll be ready, the typical answer is 2nd week in July.

On the garlic front, the scapes on the german white are ready to remove.  They’re perfect eating right now.  I’m going to try and get some out in front of the stand in the next week.  They’ll be cheap. They make AMAZING pesto.

In other housekeeping, we’re just trying to keep up with stuff this year…Having a 2 year old makes it hard to get anything done.  We’re navigating through it.   We may wind up having to put the farming on hold for a few years, but this summer will bear that out. Stay tuned.

It was also odd in that my raw counts were off for planting stock. It seems that some years produce more cloves/head than others and this year I was on the low end of that equation.  In the end, I still wound up with just over 10,000 heads.  I dropped a variety (Music) due to the fact that I’ve had trouble getting the timing right with regards to harvest and just don’t want to go down that road again.  I’m also adding German Red and Russian Red.  I’ll probably have sale-able quantities of German Red in 2 years and Russian Red in 3-4 years.

-Music Awards 2010-

As for music (not the garlic), I held my annual “Songs to plant by” contest in my head.  I was debating whether I should bother with this because last year Yo La Tengo won, and to date I haven’t followed through on my obligations to deliver garlic.  That will change when I go to one of their Hanukkah shows in December.

So the winner(s) for this year are the Vehicle Flips, a defunct 90′s band that made some amazing indie pop records.  The track that stuck with me of the several that popped up on shuffle was Song for Pahaquarry, NJ (1824-1997) from the album For You I Pine. Perhaps it was just the timing, but a song that starts with the line “What is it like to vote yourself right out of existence?” resonated with me during this excruciating election season. Hyperbole seems to rule the political day right now, and this is the opposite of hyperbole.

Frank Boscoe is incredibly adept at telling a great story within the course of a 4 minute song and that’s something I’m always drawn to.  In this case, he takes a vote surrounding a township that had dwindled to a population of 12 and makes it into something personal rather than political.  The song conveys isolation which is something I can relate to after a few hours of crawling around on the cold dirt.

It also may have influenced my decision, but I know both Frank and John Lancia (the drummer).  I also worked with both of them on the most recent Gazetteers record (which you should check out as well).  Whatever…it’s my fake contest and I can do what I want!

So..Frank, John, Tim.  I owe you garlic.  Since I’m effectively sold out at this point, you’ll get it next year in the Aug/Sep timeframe. Congratulations on your dubious honor.

Come down and visit us this weekend. We’re in booth B95!

For directions and info: http://hvgf.org

And on another note, we’ve shut down the store for the year…What’s left will be sold at Saugerties.   Thanks again!

Hopefully if I can find some time, I’ll post pics from both festivals in a week or so. And then it’s time to plant next year’s crop.  That and I still owe Yo La Tengo garlic, though I doubt they know or care.  For all I know Ira is a vampire.

The blurry picture to the left is an indicator that I need a new phone camera, but it’s what I have.  This was taken Saturday before the gates opened, so you don’t see any people, but I can assure you, they were there in droves later.  I had heard that Day 1 saw 8,000 through the gates.  Incredible!

Thanks to everyone who made it out.  We hope to see you next year, or if you’re so inclined, Saugerties.

A side note,  our quantities of Ukrainian Red have dipped to a point where we can no longer offer stock online.  Spanish Roja is up for debate, but we will make a decision in the next few days.

The other note for you out of towners is regarding shipping.  Basically the price of shipping is built into the cost of the garlic over 10 pounds.  Before that each pound of garlic brings down your shipping cost. It’s complicated, but it works.

Any questions…ask.

I sometimes forget that building an internet presence means maintaining an internet presence.  What I’m referring to is the fact that I need to update the store portion of the site.  The garlic harvest is, in fact, in and it’s time to start taking orders.  Part of that process is making sure I have enough set aside for the two garlic festivals that we’ll be attending as well as enough to sell online.

Last year, I didn’t really get a handle on it until very late in the year.

This year, I’ve had a couple of inquiries locally that referenced our page and asked if we were sold out.  Not yet!

So, as soon as I finish this post, I’m off

to update that.

In the meantime, I need to remind folks that we’ll be attending both the 15th Annual Southern Vermont Garlic & Herb Festival in Bennington, VT Sept 4th and 5th and the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, NY on Sept 25th and 26th.

If you can make either of these events, they’re both a great time and you won’t leave either without eating a lot of garlic.  We hope to see you at either!