Its Garlic Braiding Time............

Finally! The garlic is out of the ground. Well, it has been over two weeks now. And what a relief, that stress is finally gone. We harvested later than normal since the weather just wasn't cooperating. At last, the bulbs from our various varieties have been clipped and snipped and are now drying in the barn waiting for final cleaning before we sort and start packaging them.

My most recent garlic project was making our Garlic Braids, (Isn't this one a beauty?) This year we harvested some beautiful large softneck bulbs. In the past 5 seasons of growing garlic with Gary this is the first year I saw our braiding garlic so large, needless to say we're very pleased.

We are looking forward to the upcoming Garlic Festivals. We're at the Pocono Garlic Festival on September 3 and 4, Garlic, Cheese & Folk Festival on September 11, The Pennsylvania Renewable Energy Festival on September 17 and 18, Hudson Valley Garlic Festival on September 24 and 25, and finally the Easton Garlic Festival on October 1. Come and get yourself a beautiful garlic braid, stock up on heirloom garlic and Garple Elixir to last you through the winter.

It's going to be busy soon (not that we have much free time now). Aside for the festivals we're attending, next year's garlic will be going in the ground too. Our multitasking skills will be at their finest at the end of September and into October,, I'm already worn out thinking about this and most likely will so be looking forward to hibernation season soon thereafter.

Purely a vehicle for olive oil and garple...

So it's summer, and hot as heck outside. (I know I tell people I'm a warm-weather girl, but this is ridiculous! I almost melted outside watering the plants... it was already near 90 degrees at 8am! It's like a New Orleans summer here, but without the live lindy-hop.)

Luckily, it's nice and cool in my apartment back in DC -- where I live when I'm not helping out at Mountaindale Farms -- and as I scampered back indoors this morning I found myself with a hankering for some fresh bread. Really, though, my motivation was to find something that I could dunk in garple. I am officially addicted to that stuff. I think cousin Sonia is, too. (Maybe it's genetic.) By 8:15am I'd broken out the sourdough starter and a copy of my favorite 2-loaf recipe of late. Six hours later, I was dunking a thick slab of freshly baked bread into a generous bowl of olive oil and garple. Ohohoho, it's so good. (Oh, don't gasp at the 6-hour time lapse. Aside from about 20 minutes of kneading, most of that time was letting the dough rise.)

If you need some garple elixir for your own bread dunking, or for making the perfect salad dressing, or for taking a shot of each morning to remain hale and hardy, get yourself down to the Mountaindale Farm stand (or one of the festivals coming up this fall... if you can wait that long) and pick up a bottle.

Roasted, chocolate-covered garlic

Did that headline get your attention? Good. Because aside from garple and pesto, chocolate-covered garlic may be my favorite way to eat the stinky cloves. It's not difficult to make and it's pretty delicious. It's not particularly expensive to concoct and it's unusual enough that dinner guests will be impressed with your exotic addition to the meal. Yep, it just may be the perfect dessert. Folks seemed to think so when we had some at the end of our 4th of July dinner.

The key is getting good ingredients. I can't vouch for this recipe if you use crummy chocolate or old grocery store garlic. (I like Green & Black's 70% dark chocolate; Caroline is partial to Girardelli. Really, any good stuff will do.) So get yourself some chocolate and a few heads of Mountaindale Farms garlic and try this one out:

Roasted, chocolate-covered garlic

1. Peel 2-3 heads' worth of garlic cloves.
2. Toss the peeled cloves in a splash of olive oil and spread on a tinfoil-lined baking sheet. Roast in the oven/toaster oven at 350 until cloves are soft but still maintaining structural integrity (about 30 minutes). Spear each garlic clove with a toothpick, placing them on a plate with wax paper and cool.
3. Melt a bar of good chocolate in a small saucepan on the stove. When it's melted, remove the saucepan from the heat and hold each clove by the toothpick to spoon melted chocolate over it.
4. Place each chocolate-covered clove on the wax paper-covered plate and keep in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (or up to 2 days) for the chocolate to set before serving.
   

2 days? As if it would last that long....

(It was much less harsh than the chocolate-covered raw garlic Mike and I tested out last fall. I still mean to try out chocolate garlic truffles....)

It's a weedy field, but look at the size of that garlic!

Welcome to Mountaindale Farms. Check out our garlic. Pretty, eh? (There I am in the background. I swear I just stopped for a moment, I'm not usually taking calls in the field. No, really.)

Doesn't it look nice and sunny and pleasant in this picture? Yes. This was YESTERDAY. Today was day 2 of our attempt to harvest garlic and Mother Nature just wasn't cooperating. Rain. All day. Not just mist. RAIN.

This past fall, we planted seeds for over 12,000 heads of garlic. Our very popular "Music" (a porcelain variety), "Spanish Roja" (a Rocambole), spicy "Siberian" (in the purple stripey family), a wonderful braiding variety called "Mediterranean" (softneck), "German White" (another porcelain variety), and this year we've added "Russian Red" (another flavorful Rocambole).

This particular patch -- pictured above -- we mulched with hay in an attempt to keep the weeds at bay. This particular experiment did not work as well as we had hoped. Our next attempt to mulch the field will involve a LOT more hay. Live and learn. Meanwhile: rain.

It's wet, it's muddy, but we here at Mountaindale Farms are determined to bring you delicious, earth-friendly, sustainably-grown garlic. (I mean we were out there in our raincoats and boots and silly hats trying to pull out bulbs earlier today, but that didn't work out so well.) Stay tuned for a listing of upcoming garlic festivals... where you can pick one or more of these tasty garlic varieties for your culinary delight. Or you can visit us at the farm on Saturdays and Sundays.