Garlic Harvest

The garlic is ready to come out, we started harvesting about 2 weeks ago.  I have two varieties that are earlier than the other two, the Elephant and my house blend of Chet's Italian Red and Inchelium Red (they look the same, and the first year I grew them I accidentally combined them).  We started pulling the red first, I like to braid them in large braids (50-100 bulbs) immediately, just for storage purposes.  Later, I will take a few of these big braids apart and rebraid them into smaller, nicer braids for sale.  I used to hang the garlic in bundles from the porch roof, but last year I ran out of porch roof.  The braids are much more space-efficient, and I  hang them on the inside barn wall where I can see all the heads easily.  I can cut off individual heads for market orders, and also go through them over the course of the summer and fall, and easily gently squeeze each one to see how it's holding up, and remove any bulbs that have a bad clove or something like that.    

The two interns were doing some other jobs here as well, and both were only working here part-time, so the harvest ended up going much slower than it should have. My WWOOFer quit on Sunday after two very partial weeks, so that actually made things a bit easier - when I know I'm flying solo, I can plan for it, unlike expecting help that doesn't actually come through.  Then, my student intern took a 5 day weekend off to go to the Bonnaroo music festival just down the road, (the 5th day was purely a day of recovery), so I just waded in and pulled the rest of the red garlic (they'd done almost 2/3 in that week and a half) on Monday and got most of it braided.  It's easier to braid if it wilts for a day or so first, but if I leave it piled on the porch floor the dogs will dig a nest in it and spend the night there, damaging a lot of bulbs so I have to braid everything I can't fit on the porch swing.  Then, Tuesday, after her Monday of rest, my student intern texted in late (from the camper in the yard) that she needed more sleep, she'd be up at 9 am, and finally showed up at 11am - her work day ended at 1pm!  That was the last straw of many, so she is no longer with us -  while she recovered from her day of rest, I dug all the Elephant garlic, braided and hung the rest of the red garlic, bundled and hung all the Elephant, and prepped my market order.  So, the lesson is, if the help is unreliable, don't wait for it to get better - just do it myself and have the job done right (and then probably fire the "help" so I don't keep getting disappointed!).  The Elephant should have come out a week ago, it is very delicate and if it goes much past prime, the skins start degrading and splitting open.  Most of my large bullbs have huge gashes in the skins, and a handful had them completely rotted off. Most of them should be marketable to households through the farmer's markets, but certainly not for retail purposes unfortunately.  

I am now without "help", but as I said, in many ways it's better.  Good help is invaluable, but unreliable help can add more stress to my job than it's worth.  This week and next, I (and hopefully Caleb) will be pulling the other two varieties of garlic, the Music and Siberian.  They are both hardneck varieties, so I have to hang them in bundles, the necks aren't flexible so I can't braid them.  Overall, I'm about halfway through the harvest.  Now that the garlic beds are emptying, I plan to till them up and plant some bush beans and sunflowers, and that should be the end of my planting season.  Then, I can finally sit back (relatively speaking) and wait for the fruits of my labor to start rolling in :)  

One last sidenote, an update on the goats - no one else has gotten sick since Sunday, and Spots is still with us, but she isn't at all healthy.  She still hasn't passed more than a handful of goat berries since Sunday, even though we have put 2 full bottles of Milk of Magnesia into her, and at least 1.5 cups of castor oil, over the last 3 days.  The oil seems to have the best results, actually (although still very little), and fortuitously I happen to have several gallons on hand for soapmaking!  She is in that frustrating place of not getting worse or better.  If she finally starts to really pass berries, I think her prognosis could be pretty good, but if she can't get that stuff out of her system, it's pretty grim - she's not eating much at all, probably because there's nowhere for it to go.  I think most cases like this, the goat dies from lack of food and/or hydration rather than the actual cause of the illness.  Again, I'll keep ya'll posted.