Harvesting a Year’s Worth of Garlic + How We Grew It (easy)

Local farm apples. Have all this you want, buddy. The applesauce did. Yes, there is a ladder in the middle of our house. Yes, an alarm went off at 11 o'clock. This is when we got to go to bed by 9. Loving it. Going to sleep. Sleeping good. Couldn't they program these to go off between like 7 and 10? But after I pulled the battery out and started getting snug and sleepy again, the beeping went off. The carbon monoxide monitor was unplugged and killed the battery.

It wasn't that vocal.

No. And I went through all the trouble to get the ladder and everything. How'd you get over at the cabin? I've removed it from over here at the kitty table. And how about I put it over there, Henry? You can still reach it, yes, but It's not a high-traffic area for you. You want to go on the ergo? No? All right. Well, let's go.

Good morning. I am— it's 7 o'clock. Up earlier. Not really, not really earlier. Up early. I am going to be taking care of some household stuff. As everybody knows, that is what becomes difficult. Becomes difficult in the garden season to actually, uh, hold on one second. Let me say this. This is the hard part, is taking care of the inside of your house, because all we want to do is be outside. And then yesterday Justin and I went on that date, so then I didn't, I didn't have time inside like I normally would, so It's really hot right now, so I'm gonna get out there and get everything done that I need to get done, and then, and then I'll have time to come in here and do my inside stuff because outside's just miserable. Nobody wants to be out there today. Today's the hot, hot day, um, where it's like 94 in is like the temp, and then the feels like is like 97, which is crazy for us. We don't get that high ever. Why are these not drying? What is going on? Is the dryer not working? Well, and then this happens, and the dryer isn't dry. The towels are like almost dry, and I don't have a line. If I had a line, I would just go set them up out there, but we don't have a line set up yet. It is on the to-do list. As a lot of other things are also on my to-do list. Okay, so I will— I've set that on like a smaller timer to dry, and now I'm gonna go outside. Oh, we should have had zucchini last night.

We're definitely having that today for lunch.

I like this. Ooh, I wonder if I could do a zucchini casserole. I think I have everything for a zucchini casserole. We have cheese, so yeah, I have everything for zucchini casserole. It's best to look— be outside. I mean, not on your phone, but I need to look up this information. But it's best to be outside to get the correct sunlight in your eyes. I am a weirdo and I actually like it getting dark at like 8 o'clock. I know a lot of people are like, oh, that's blasphemy, but I don't like this like really long day stuff. I mean, it's fine. It's because it's what, um, is happening in nature, but I'm glad that the majority of our, of our year has darkness at a normal time. Um, maybe I just need to get blackout curtains. In my bedroom, but I haven't found ones that I like yet, so. Hi, Winnie! Hi, girl! You know, I didn't see you yesterday, and I've learned. Pats await us. Are you guys hungry?

Oh.

There is a dead snake, a dead baby snake on our porch. That's gross. All right, guys. All right, what's the matter? You're starving, huh? You're— your food is downstairs outside the garden kitchen. I bet Papa's put food in there for you. She's looking like, well, why didn't you feed me? We can't keep her food up here cuz it was just not working out. Hey, I watched a very informative, um, video on how to not only pick but preserve, which they use the freeze dryer as well. Um, and so I am going to, um, do my garlic first then because They were like, you should process it right away. So I'm like, okay, I'm on my to-do list today is to pick garlic. Not pick it, but harvest the garlic and get it drying, and then, um, and then do that. And I also need to check my cabbages, and I think that's everything that I need to do. I might water the garden. But I can do that when it gets a little, like, as it gets warmer type thing. Um, okay, I'm just thinking through everything.

Mom, you see what present they leave here on the table?

I know, I saw that. What is that?

That's a ring snake. It's a ring snake. I don't even like touching it. Dead.

Oh my God, why gagging?

Yeah, here you go. You guys eat snake? Oh man, the rooster's gonna down that snake. Goose, why aren't you letting him eat that snake? Funny, he stirs up food for y'all and y'all are going to take that from him.

That fat—

yeah, who is that?

That's Flossie.

That's Aunt Flossie, the cow, of course, not the human aunt. See that bullet hole in their head?

Nailed her.

Our main job this morning, Henry, make sure everybody has water. Record heat today. Okay, I want to tell you guys something. What you see is what you get on this show. What I mean by what you see is what you get is someone once said, you're like a reality TV show. And I thought, well, thank you. I think they were being ugly, and I think they were talking about, uh, planned or produced drama. Well, that's not us, but the, the, the true meaning of reality and putting that together as a TV show.

I want to put it in.

Well, that is us. This is reality. Sometimes it's dramatic. Sometimes it's dramatic. And in my heart, I hope— I wished it wouldn't be because that means something's going wrong. These chickens drank through this in one day. They need to move out, but we didn't time it right. We were supposed to time it where the big sea monsters get harvested And then it's time to put out the little chicks. But the big sea monsters don't go for another week and a day. These guys need to get out, so we're gonna have two, uh, field systems for the meat chickens for a week. You think they were thirsty? Let me get their feed too. They were pretty low on it. Okay, we need to get these guys out of here today, the latest tomorrow. I'd say they're a little hungry, but thirsty they were not. 3 waterers. I've never had to do 3 waterers, and they were all empty yesterday evening. I filled them up and it got them through. Were they empty or almost empty? But I think we've nailed it. 3 waterers twice a day, that's how hot it is. Not an example of how to rig up a net, but It'll do it. Putting in a plastic tub is smart, keeps it from grounding out. The long school wire into a, a coated, uh, electric wire all the way to the source. We're running out of line tomorrow, so we're gonna have to do something a little more proper. I'm excited about this because this is our last of hurricane sediment piles. They're going where the pigs were. They're going to help smooth it up. After the pigs to reestablish pasture. And we're at the end. I mean, we, we kept our topsoil there. The hurricane didn't wash this away. It washed from here all the way back basically to the house. We put every animal on this farm. After the sea monsters, no more animals. We're letting the COVID crops grow up. Across the creek they're going. But before then, we already got the pigs over there. Before then Let's move these guys and get them on their last spot. Let's get this cleared out and the boys can start hauling this, filling in the pole barn.

Okay, I ended up eating breakfast real quick. I'm trying to do this eat breakfast within 1 hour of waking. It's hard to like, it's hard, it's hard to to do it, but I feel like it's worth it because it's normal to want to eat breakfast. It's not normal to not be hungry when you wake up. So anyways, I am hungry when I wake up. I have never been hungry in my entire life when I wake up to eat, and like, since I've been doing this, since— I'm trying to think of when I started doing this. It's been 3 months maybe. I've been starting to eat breakfast, high protein breakfast. I've always eaten protein, but then when you like start realizing how much protein you're actually eating— anyways, I am eating more protein than I have, and I'm feeling better, and I am losing weight. So I'm gonna water the garden today because it's so hot. I know I keep going on and on about this heat, but it's a lot for us. We're not used to this. Um, this is one reason why we call this place home, because we don't want to be used to that. Okay, I will quit my whining on how hot it is. I like summer.

I do.

I do like summer. Um, I don't like 90, 90, above 90. I felt like I got scarred when Lily was— when I was pregnant with Lily, um, she— the year I was pregnant with her, which was 2011, it was so hot. It was like, it was, it was like 95 every day. It was so hot. I did not gain weight I hate that pregnancy. My midwife was nervous. Um, I gained a total of 21 pounds that pregnancy. I literally was sweating in the air conditioning, like it was just so hot. And she was 9— oh, she was over 9 pounds when she was born. So my midwife had me eating like avocado, like all these high-fat things. Just to try to support me. I'm sure I was taking supplements, stuff like that. But anyways, that's my only pregnancy like that. All my other pregnancies, I, I gained the weight. So anyways, just a little fun fact there for you, fun story. All right, we are harvesting this garlic. Gideon just asked, what are we doing? So what I plan on doing is I will um, potato fork, and then you can— we'll pull and put into this. Pull, pull them, but— oh, he's getting serious, folks, taking the boots off. That's what I like to see. Go in like that, kind of loosen the dirt. See that one I did? How beautiful these are. They're gorgeous. We have done well. So this has previously— this row or rows has previously been a potato patch. And here we have— there, I think there's some down there too. But here we have a potato. I'm going to dig it up because when we're done getting all of the garlic out of here, we will be, um, covering this. So these potatoes aren't going to make it anyways. So we'll see what we got. Let's see. I went in a direct different area. Nope, there's nothing there.

Gideon's coming, got me. Mom needs me. Gideon, you got to move the Energizer over. You got to get the eggs, clean out the nest box, and feed them. Okay, we still got a little bit of shade over here. The Sea Monster— the chickens have already gotten the sun. Look at this score. Okay, so we're gonna need— I want to explain how we planted this. The beautiful one's already got up a bunch of onions, a bunch of garlics. I want to show you guys how we planted this. You'll see how we harvested it. Rebecca, would you agree this is one of the most easiest, perhaps underrated crops there is.

100%. We planted this, what, like October, November? Probably November.

Yeah, it's cool.

It's probably November because of the hurricane.

There's no weeds at that time.

It takes a very short time. Yeah, like you'd have to prep the bed, which it should be prepped because you've been gardening all summer, and you prep the bed and then—

which they'll see in a second—

we like dibbled. You've got to break up the garlic heads, put one in, and then hay it, and then you walk away.

We'll show them in a minute.

Now, I mean, obviously this is not ideal, like all these weeds is terrible.

Well, no, this is— yeah, and this— but, but you know, this is towards the end and it didn't really affect it.

No, it didn't.

So, you know, that's one of the things you— what do we weed this once? Maybe. Let's show them because we're gonna— after we get done, we're gonna prep these beds and cover them.

Yes.

So we'll, we'll show you what it's like to prep a bed. She's getting a gigantic potato fork and you're digging straight down in there. That is a huge grass, a huge piece.

The goose will love it.

So this is the harvesting. I didn't get the garlic up though.

I'll get it.

Okay, we're gonna pile this up. How many are there right there?

There's 3. This is what happens when kids plant with you, but that's all right. It turned out it still worked.

Where do you get your garlic seeds?

It's been so long since I bought garlic.

Oh, you just reuse these?

We're using our own. Okay, but I'm pretty sure I bought it from Keene Garlic, K-E-E-N-E.

Okay, online. Keene Garlic, or just reuse what you're not going to use all these because look, here's what happens.

My goose—

that, that's what you do. And you plant this down, what, 4 inches, 5, 6 inches? This pointy side up, pointy side up. That's even got its roots, some roots on it.

And, uh, look at these beautiful roots though. One garlic clove grew this.

So one little garlic clove grew how many? 20?

Yeah. And I will say this, So we planted in November, and then we ate— we were still eating on the garlic that we had from last year. And then, so what I would say is, to get started to use your own seed would be to make, make a big order initially, and then, and then you'll always have garlic seed. Always.

Garlic is a vegetable I like, or is it an herb?

It's, uh, I could have it It is an herb. It's not a vegetable.

We should have it more often.

Well, it's hard.

I want to—

I want to do some different things with it. One, I want to freeze dry garlic to have our own garlic powder. I don't want to buy garlic powder anymore. I don't know how that garlic's grown. Second, I want to make garlic honey. You take the cloves and you just put honey on top of it, and then when you're sick, you just take a scoop of the honey and the garlic clove, and you eat it and it ferments.

Wow.

And it's like a— it's a— it's a medicinal.

When are you gonna make the garlic powder? Um, well, you gotta let these—

well, we're gonna let them dry.

Okay.

And then, um, I'll braid and I'll see what I have. So if I have like a bunch— so we've broken a bunch of stems and we have some that are just free.

Yeah, these kinds we eat.

So we'll— we'll bring those up to the kitchen to start eating. Depending on how many I have, I may start freeze drying them.

They preserve like this almost a year, don't they? 6 months?

Oh, 100%. No, I still have some in my, in my pantry going. Oh yeah, you do, from, uh, last June. All right, so they will start to sprout. Before they start to sprout is when I would like to garlic powder them, and then we can just use that garlic powder. Because like, okay, when you buy garlic powder at the grocery store or Azure or wherever, I don't know, I don't know how long it's been there. I don't know how long it won't take much of this garlic to make—

no, a year's worth of garlic.

I know, that's what I'm saying.

You need a lot of paint.

Oh, a quart. Okay, but yeah, it will not take much. It's not hard. I also want to do that with our onions. Would that be before our onions start going bad? Yeah, I want to chop them up, freeze dry them, and then I'll just powder them, and then we'll have our own onion powder too.

We're looking forward to that journey.

I am.

So then you cover it with a mulch. Organic straw would be best, doesn't have seed in it, but you got to get organic or else it's going to have lots of herbicides in it, pesticides. Um, we just used our non-spray hay because that's what we had. It seems to work, right? The non-spray hay. I mean, maybe that's where some of these beets are coming from, but I'm not sure. We are in a cold temperate rainforest, so it doesn't take long for a jungle to develop. Although this is it. Rebecca said we haven't weeded this, and she's the fact-checker, and this is all that's come of it. We really only got oppressive weeds this last month or so. What was your spacing on this? Looks like it's every foot and 4 in a bed.

We have 4 across, 6 inches this way, there's 6 inches that way.

Okay, this one— oh, okay, I'll show them that.

Uh, Jonah made us a, like, a dimpler. Yeah, and just go and then drop it in. I mean, it literally takes 30, 30 minutes.

Let me show you guys the gritter. Maybe what you call it, the dippler. This gritter is nice because you just roll this on your bed We use a 30-inch wide market garden size bed, and it marks your— it makes a grid, hence why it's called the Gritter. And then you know right where to plant without having to measure or mark. Gonna go ahead and with the fork, Jonah's pulling the garlic up. Gideon's picking up the weeds. Gideon, this is looking good, keep going. You got to get all these weeds. See this? You got to get that up. Since we have to pull the weeds anyway, I'm going to get ahead of Mom over here and start pulling weeds.

It's a beautiful one.

It's huge.

Look at that hair too.

Think these onions are cured?

This depresses me because this is failed potential. This is failed potential. They should be much bigger.

Doubt in this produce rack, wouldn't you say, Beck? It all started with two screen doors. That would work as a produce rack. And then we're like, it works so well, let's make it legit, let's make plans. And now you can build this yourself in Homestead Builds. That needs it. Also needs lots of water. This looks good, Beck.

Thanks.

You're gonna be able to get it all on there?

I think so.

How long does it cure like this?

I don't know, until it's dry.

Right now it's kind of soft.

It kind of just dries. I don't know how else to say it. Like, these get dried and papery. The paper gets papery.

They accomplished a lot. Okay, Jonah has to go to his lesson. You're not to drive that. Get off. Okay, rake through and rake up all the, the loose grass. Don't mess up the beds. Okay, just wake up the greens. You've seen us harvest this. Now it's best to do this right away. Flip the bed right away. Your future self will thank you. We've gotten all the weeds out. We hoed the weeds, pulled them up by hand, we raked them out with a bow rake, then we went one more time and got what we missed and then raked them out. So bow rake's a hard rake, but what's this? We call it a soft rake, but I bet you it has a real name. What's this? Comments. Now we're going to put some compost down on these beds. Now we're building back beds. You know what, when you're harvesting garlic, usually June or July— July for us now because we started in November instead of October— you, you're getting to the, you're getting to the hump. And we just passed the summer solstice. You're really getting to the hump. I mean, we have 2 batches of Cornish Cross And once we get rid of them, we are on the descent. For now, we're working in the heat because there's so much to do and there's no other option but to gird up our loins and do it. Fill up the tarp. Come on, you could have been doing that while you were waiting on me. Come on now, come on, come on. Good thing about a wheelbarrow is you can go in this path, not have to ride on the Bad. Then you can take that wheelbarrow. It's about the only job the wheelbarrow is better than the Gorilla Cart at. You can just kind of tilt some out. Oh, I'm gonna do— I'm about to do a feed arrive just in time dance. I'm about to wait to do the feed dance. Let this guy get out of here. I don't want anybody to see it. Thank you, Jonah. Where'd Lily go? No idea. Okay, we had to stop because of the feed. Doesn't matter if it's quitting time. We got to keep going. We got to finish this project, get it covered. Now that's a beautiful sight. Quick, cover it before the jungle begins again. Fantastic job. It's actually filling it in.

Yeah, when do you want to lay the concrete?

Not now.

I am saving, uh, herbs.

Look at all these herbs. You're gonna freeze dry them? Yes. Okay, what herbs?

So hold on one second, let me clean this out.

Let me guess them.

Yeah.

Rosemary?

Nope.

Basil?

Yep.

Thyme?

Nope.

Uh, lamb's quarter?

Nope. Thyme. This is thyme.

Thyme.

Basil. You were right.

Basil.

Dill.

Dill. Oregano.

Oregano.

Sage.

Sage. And I didn't do parsley, I forgot to get it, so I'm gonna see how much I have left.

You'll have to forgive me for not knowing my toxic plants.

Oh, stop it.

Well, the acorn squash didn't get got by mice.

Well, that's not acorn squash because I haven't been to the grocery store yet.

You gotta get some acorn squash seeds.

Yeah, I think I might, I might go to Asheville.

All right, a mouse was getting into our big seeds like that, the acorn squash, pumpkins, those kinds of things. You done with that?

Yeah.

Thank you, buddy, for bringing that back. Nice stuffed animal, buddy. We're about to cook some chicken from the land. Beautiful one said let's cook with as many fresh spices as we can, so I asked Brock for a recipe. We need rosemary, thyme, sage, parsley, garlic. Uh, how appropriate, garlic, onion. We can do all this from garden, dude. Can you come identify these toxins? You know the greens are trying to kill us, right? Come to the garden kitchen with us. We are cooking chicken and we're getting as many garlic, uh, garden spices as we can. I need 2 tablespoons of fresh. Yeah.

How much thyme?

2 tablespoons.

Sage?

1 tablespoon parsley. That's it. I'm gonna start saving these, so we're gonna have our own spices. Look at this, there's been an explosion. This is nice. This is garlic, onions, fresh herbs from the garden, olive oil. Uh, it's calling for some lemon juice. How does that look? Okay, we got our oven on 375, the new 350. Hey, this turned out nice, I think.

I know, it smells so good. Oh good, it smells like those sweet potatoes we have with the spices.

All right, good, it's all from the land. And a zucchini casserole coming right up. I think that might be done. I would say it's done, Rebecca. It's like at 190. Lily's went back for seconds. Yeah, Henry's crushing it. All right, let's see herb blast chicken from our farm. Zucchini casserole from the farm. Living off the land, y'all. I got those chicken carcasses in the Instant Pot for once. 2 hours, we'll have broth. I'll call it right there. Zucchini casserole was off the hook.

It was so good.

And we got broth coming down the line. And it's miserable. That's what we're calling it. Happy day. We're gonna enjoy this air conditioning.