Never Learned Ya’ Nothing

Back in August…

We got the garlic planted this past weekend. We used to plant in mid-October – Penny remembers planting the day before Rye’s birth, on October 14, 2004, crawling along the rows, bent over her eight-month and 30-day belly  - but this whole climate change debacle has pushed our planting date to November 1 or thereabouts. By the by, when I say “we” and “our”, I actually mean Penny and the boys, each of whom has their own plot to sow and tend. Garlic has been a profitable crop for the fellas; this year, they traded away multiple pounds, primarily with Nate, possessor of innumerable esoteric wildcraft tools of the sort my sons covet. A couple weeks back, Rye was considering whether or not to agree to a particularly juicy trade for the last of his stash. “I can’t do it,” he said to Penny, almost mournfully. “I have to keep my seed stock.” Attaboy.

Da boyz, putting money in the bank

The thing I love about garlic (other than the obvious) is the profound demonstration of faith it demands. I mean, really: Planting in November, on the honed knife’s edge of autumn? It’s amazing enough to plant something in April and see it thrive, but to plant something on a day of the season’s first drifting snow, clawing through the thin crust of frost to the cool soil below… well, If that ain’t proof that humans are but a minority piece of all the magic in this world, I don’t know what is.

Next year’s crop. Or a fraction thereof, anyhow

More pragmatically, garlic is convenient because its cycle is so perfectly juxtaposed to pretty much every other living thing on this humble farm. You plant in November, after the last of the crops have been gleaned from the field and tucked into their respective places of winter storage: The root cellar, the cool, dry storage room that was once a sort-of bathroom, the basement, the freezer, the pantry. And you harvest in August, during the short, sweet summer lull between first cut haying and the pinnacle of late summer’s bounty. Furthermore, once you have your crop established, there is never any need to purchase inputs. Garlic is the easiest of all seed to save – just don’t eat or trade the last of your haul and you’re golden.

A rare sighting of the species known as the Crafty Penny in her favored habitat

Here’s another great thing about garlic, a trick I learned from Penny. Ok, so another trick I learned from Penny (she being teacher of almost all my tricks). The in-soil remnants of the prior year’s crop – the few random bulbs or dislodged cloves that were missed during harvest – are a powerful pest deterrent, particularly for brassicas. So every year, my crafty wife plants the broccoli in the space that was allotted to last year’s garlic and it grows hale and hearty, free of all the small crawlers that might otherwise plague it.

Don’t say I never learned ya’ nothing.