So. Much. Garlic.

I've spent the majority of the past two days working on the harvest. On Friday morning, we did a bit of harvesting for the Sorrento farmer's market that takes place on Saturday mornings. Graham and I picked some sweet peas, kale, collard greens, and carrots. The peas are interesting to pick because they develop from the bottom of the plant up. You can't just pick all of the pods you see and call it good. Rather, you need to give each one a little squeeze to see how firm they are. A pod that is ready to be picked is filled out and plump because there are fully developed peas inside. On the other hand, a squishy pod is full of underdeveloped peas and needs to stay on the plant for another day or two. Apparently, after the first peas are ready, then the plant will have newly mature pods every two days until they are gone. Then all of these plants go into a cold water bath so they can be rinsed off and protected from wilting. After the bath, the veggies get packed into a box and stored in the cooler.

The only other excitement during the market harvest was that the collard greens have clearly been snacked on by deer. They were fine last week, so that means that there have been deer in the garden in the past seven days... the coyote urine is not working. I really think some consideration should be given to getting the electric fence working unless anybody feels like guarding the property all night with a shotgun.

After market harvest, we continued on with the garlic harvest. We've been harvesting rare varieties like Red Russian, Polish Hardneck, Romanian Red, Yugoslavian, and Georgian Fire. All of these names make me wonder if the best garlic breeding happens in Eastern Europe. Apparently the Georgian Fire variety is so spicy that it's hard to eat even one raw clove. However, after it's heated, all of the spiciness cooks away.


The other main excitement of the day was baking Saskatoon berry muffins. A Saskatoon berry is much like a blueberry:



The muffins came out a bit denser and biscuit-like than I would have liked, but they were still tasty:



Today was a lot more garlic harvesting. We all agreed it was best to get the garlic out of the ground as soon as possible because we're expecting rain in the next few days. Hence, I am not going to have time off this weekend. However, Patrick and Colleen are kindly giving Graham and I our days off on Monday and Tuesday. There are rumors of getting to help another farm build a hay bale house on Monday and Tuesday, so the timing is perfect.

Here's one more picture for the road: