Summit Springs Farm--Garlic Salvation

I invite you to read the first entry in an occasional diary--that of a newly minted farmer, my nephew, John Sayles. ( NO, not that John Sayles.) Together with his wife, an experienced farmer, they are creating their own organic spread in Maine.   

October 2007

     Once we’d returned home for good from our season at Riverbank
Farm in Connecticut and taken a few days to unpack and organize some
things inside, garlic became our priority…getting beds ready, planting
the cloves, and mulching the beds.  We picked a spot on the western
side of the house, an area recently cleared and plowed by our helpful
neighbor and fellow farmer, Pete Bolduc.  The area was now carpeted with a
spray of weeds and grass, so we measured out what we needed--two 5-ft
wide, 100-ft long beds--and began weeding.

     We still don’t have a tractor, so we’d decided to try a
technique called “double digging” for the garlic.  Here’s how it
works:  You dig a trench about a foot wide and a foot deep across the
width of the bed.  The soil you remove goes into a wheelbarrow for later
use.  Once you’re a foot down, you then use a pitchfork to loosen the
next foot or so of soil.  Then, you move back another foot, and begin
digging your second trench, this time placing the soil you’re removing
into the first trench, then loosening the next layer, etc.  In this way
you move down the length of the bed, really aerating the soil and
preparing it for planting.  It’s a great idea, and while Sonya continued
to weed, I started digging.

      In the early afternoon, a friendly lady appeared on Summit
Springs Road, out for a walk with her little dog.  She introduced herself
as Litha Thurlow, our next door neighbor, and asked if she could check
out what we were doing.  We introduced ourselves and explained that we
were getting set to plant garlic using this “double digging”
method.  She looked doubtful, and asked ,“Do you want me to ask my husband
to come over and do this with his tractor?  He’d be happy to do
it!”  We, being young and foolish, thanked her but said no, we wanted to
keep going by hand and see how this great technique would work.  She
promised to mention it to him just the same, and after a bit more
chatting, she resumed her walk.
        Several hours after this, as the afternoon was winding down,
our morale was considerably lower.  We were exhausted and sore and had
only completed about 120 square feet of the 1000 needed!  At that rate,
we were looking at almost a week of digging just to prepare the beds.  I
thought to myself at one point, “well, this is how it was done back
in the old days”.  That’s not right, though.  A farmer a hundred
years ago would have used a horse or ox to make his beds.  We were trying
to use an organic gardening technique on too large a scale…we
couldn’t go on.
        Inside, we decided we needed a rototiller, fast.  The parents
of a good friend of mine are avid gardeners, so I gave them a call.
  Yes, they had a rototiller they would be happy to loan us for the job.
  The next step was how to get it.  Our newly purchased used Chevy was a
state away in New Hampshire, receiving a new transmission (that’s a
whole other story, folks…)  We sent e-mails, made phone calls and left
messages, looking for someone with a truck we could use.  The best bet
was Sonya’s step-dad, but he and his truck were away on a fishing
trip.  We went to bed hoping he would return from his trip sooner than
later.
        The next morning at around 7:30 I was in the kitchen when Litha
pulled into the driveway in her Jeep.  Following her was her husband,
Larry, on a small tractor with a rototiller attachment.  Hallelujah!  I
wandered outside in my slippers.  Litha said “We just couldn’t let
you two do that all by hand!” as Larry pulled in and grinned at me.
  I told him what we had in mind, and he got right to it, finishing our
beds (and then some) in about an hour, in spite of some good-sized
rocks and a sheared-off bolt on his tiller.  As soon as he was done, we
hustled our hero inside for coffee.  We discovered that he’d been
living in the house next door all his life, some sixty years.  He told us a
few stories about some of the folks who’d been at our place before
us, including one character who’d been a bootlegger, cooking up booze
in the barn.  We sent him home with a loaf of fresh bread and applesauce
from our apples.  We love ya, Larry!
        Suddenly, we were ahead of schedule.  We were soon outside,
planting our three varieties of garlic in Larry’s beautiful beds:
  Italian Purple, Music, and Legacy.  We also applied some composted shell
fish as a fertilizer.  We actually ran out of seed garlic and had to use
our own winter eating supply from Riverbank Farm to finish out the
planting.  The next day, we took a trip south to Cape Elizabeth to gather
seaweed.  We harvested about 10 five-gallon buckets of the stuff, rinsed
it thoroughly, and spread it over the planted garlic to add nutrients.
  Finally, we mulched it all with grass clippings and chopped leaves
from the yard.  Summit Springs Farm’s first crop is now in the ground!
  It will winter over under the mulch and be ready for harvesting in
mid- to late-summer of next year.

( Music garlic variety courtesy seedsavers.org.)

Comments

[Sonya]

Let's hope not!

[KathyF]

Is that garlic going to taste fishy?

Great story!