Our Farm Safety Manager...

Final Harvest Days

Garlic Marketing Strategy

Local garlic growers and vendors in Ontario tend to undervalue their product.



The areas where there is room for improvement and which I plan to address:

• Garlic is sold by the pound, like a commodity;


• Vendors often don't know the variety of garlic they are growing;


• There is limited or no information on the characteristics of various varieties, such as taste, and the culinary dish a particular variety is best served in;


• There are other profit making areas connected to garlic, to be researched

In 2011 I'll do a limited sale of garlic, to test the market. I'll also refine the harvest and planting methods, and test using a more mechanized approach. Most of the 10,000 plants planted this year will be replanted in 2011 - approximately 5 cloves per bulb, giving me 50,000 cloves to plant in 2011. In 2012 I'll make more sales, based on what I learn in 2011. I also plan to plant thousands of garlic bulbils in 2011.

Garlic bulbils are garlic seeds produced from the garlic scape. They are disease free and produce a more robust flavour. But they take 1-3 years to produce a mature bulb.

Ninety-five Hundredth Garlic Planting

This is my own garlic crop of 9,500 cloves, separate from Whole Circle's garlic. It includes the 1,100 plants I grew at Farmstart last year, and harvested this past summer, plus, assorted varieties from other sources.

Many thanks to Paul Pospisil, the "Garlic Guru," and Editor of the Garlic Newsletter; and Bob Litke from Seeds of Diversity and Warren Ham of August Harvest for their garlic donations; Matthew Bulmer for giving me space to grow garlic; and Johann and Maggie and Abhi at Whole Circle for giving me land in the back garden; and Daniel Hoffman of Cutting Veg for advice. And Deborah for her unbending encouragement.

More later on my plans to develop a garlic marketing strategy.


























Whole Circle colleagues Heather, Andrew and Yana helped plant almost 10,000 cloves in the past week. I'll plant another 1,000 cloves at friend Matthew Bulmer's farm in Puslinch - I want to compare how they grow in his more sandy soil.

Time-motion studies in the garden

A neglected aspect of farming, in my opinion, is studying how to do repetitive tasks in the most efficient way. For example, finding how to shave a half second off a one and a half second movement that's repeated thousands of times in the course of a morning task would be helpful. Trickier still is getting people to share what they learn, and for others to adopt the improvement.

Between Whole Circle Farm and myself we've planted 20,000 garlic cloves in the last ten days (10,000 each). We clocked our rate (# of cloves per person hour), and found that it ranged from 300 cloves per hour, to 500, and as high as 1,000 cloves planted per person per hour.

In a recent garlic planting competition in the back garden Andrew aka "Pinchy"
hand-carved a wooden stake for his planting implement
(above right).

While Heather and myself threw down garlic in the assigned rows, Yana, Pinchy and Abhi braced themselves at the starting line. Pinchy started out strong, wielding his wooden stake with masterly strokes. He maintained the lead for the first 2/3rd of the 420' bed. But the effort of stabbing the soil to plant each clove tired him out, and by the end Yana pulled ahead, with her flat trowel. She finished ahead of Pinchy and Abhi with a comfortable margin, convincing the panel of judges that her planting modality is worthy of further study.










Below - Abhi and I working on another garlic bed.

Washing the Hundred Thousandth Bok Choi

Cracking Garlic (and cracking up)

Between tasks we cracked garlic bulbs, to loosen the 3 to 5 cloves inside. The cloves are the seed that gets planted in the Fall, and grows into a garlic plant, including the bulb, which we harvest next July.

Best Thanksgiving Turkey I've Ever Had

Last Day at Acton Farmers' Market

Post Dinner Moment

Not In My Parking Lot

A local resident complained in a letter to the Editor of the Independent that the Thursday afternoon Acton Farmers' market (where I manage the Whole Circle table) blocks her parking spot, and that because they sell hot dogs and popcorn it's not even a "genuine farmers market." In response, the market manager, Josey, put together a basket of products from the various vendors which she later presented to the complainer.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Independent:

Dear Editor,

Regarding Lynne Simon's "Market Blocks Access" letter to your office
this week, I invite her to stroll among the fresh food vendor tables at
the Thursday Acton Farmers' Market, where she'll discover a variety of
fresh vegetables, fruit, meat and bread. This is indeed a genuine
farmers' market, for which support and attendance from local residents
is appreciated.

Regards,

Peter McClusky
Apprentice Farmer
Whole Circle Farm
Acton