Gourmet Garlic

Chet planted 8 varieties of garlic last fall as an experiment to see what would grow here in our garden.  We had a beautiful garlic bed with rows neatly marked with the names of each variety.  Then the storm came that took the roof from our barn, which tore across our garlic beds and ultimately landed in our neighbor's yard.  In the process, garlic was broken, markers disappeared and it looked like our crop was a bust. 

Never one to give up without a fight, Chet salvaged what he could and we ended up with a nice little harvest of 5 different varieties of gourmet garlic! 

Persian Star Garlic

Persian Star is a hardnecked garlic and it's really tasty.  It's a sweet garlic when you roast it.  I baked a clove to have with pasta last week and it was awesome!  This is one of the varieties that we have the most of.

I put an ad on Craig's list hoping to find some local customers that enjoy cooking with garlic, but my first reply was from someone out of state that wants bulbs to plant.  I was happy to accomodate and the order is getting ready to go out the door!

Bagged and on its way to OK!

Besides the Persian Star, we have Sonoran, German White, Chesnok Red and Metechi varieties.  If you'd like to try some, email us at fleecefurandfeathers@gmail.com or call 817 337 4690.  We're selling it either by the clove ($1) or by the pound ($7).

Moving into Winter

This fall is so different than last year, which was our first in Texas.  In 2009, it rained constantly and I wondered about the huge mistake we had apparently made moving here.  I hate rain and gray skies; Tucson was the perfect place for me.

The fall of 2010 has been delightful.  Perfect fall weather - sunny, blue skies during the day and cool temps at night.  The weather report says that we're supposed to get a hard freeze around Thanksgiving, so I went out and took photos of the tomatoes that are still growing that will, no doubt, not make it through the week.  Wonder if these are what could be used for fried green tomatoes?

Garlic gets planted in the fall and Chet put down hundreds of cloves in about 8 different varieties.  We'll be selling garlic in the spring.

Garlic as far as the eye can see

The chicks are getting bigger and I hope they have enough feathers now to keep them warm during our upcoming cold spell. 

Chet is working on an addition to the existing coop so we can keep more birds comfortably.  We're calling it the "West Wing".  It's got a big picture window to let as much daylight in as possible.  More daylight....more eggs. 

We're also at the point that we're considering culling the girls that aren't laying anymore. It's just not feasible to feed animals that don't produce. They're not pets anymore. I couldn't have said that 2 years ago!