Garlic Reflections: Summer CSA ’16 ” Week #19

Zea & the Crew Breaking Garlic back in 2010

Garlic planting always has a special significance for our family.

Breaking garlic bulbs into the cloves (which are the seeds for the next year’s plants) was what Mike and I did on our first date. When we married a couple of years later, it was garlic bulbs we used as the seat assignments and party favors at our reception. My mother painstakingly tied little tags with names and a table number on each bulb. Fast-forward a few years, and the very first thing Zea and I ever did together at the farm was plant garlic. She was just two weeks old. For her first few birthday parties, adults sat together and broke garlic bulbs into seed as the kids played.

Zea is now 7. Her birthday parties no longer involve breaking garlic. (This year she requested a makeover birthday party, you know, cause her farmer mother knows so much about that!) But breaking garlic, her birthday, and the end of the summer CSA season still, and will always, fall together in time.  It’s a natural time for relfection –  on the passage of time, the growth of a child, and another year where we’ve been lucky enough to pay our bills by doing what we love to do – farming.

Yesterday we began breaking garlic seed and planting with our crew.  Breaking garlic bulbs into seed gives the hands and thumbs a workout, but it’s pretty easy on the rest of the body and can be quite enjoyable.  It tends to draw everyone together around a crate and allows a wonderful space for conversation to flow.  It’s one of the only field jobs we do where we get to sit down. With busy hands, sitting around and talking together gains a sense of purpose and togetherness.

While breaking garlic brings me to a place of reflection and looking back, it simultaneously flings me forward toward the future.  Planting a seed is always an expression of hope and faith in the future.  Garlic truly is such beautiful poetry in our farming world – plus it makes everything taste so good.

It’s hard to believe, but the EO Group A members are all done until next season! We thank all of the everyother Group A members for your support this season. In the most direct way possible, you enable our family to make a living growing healthy, local, organic produce. We are so very thankful to you.

We hope you enjoy this last box as much as you did the others.  We wish you a safe, peaceful winter and hope to feed you again next year.

Take care & enjoy your veggies!  Sincerely, Mike, Cassie, Zea, Edie, & Juna Noltnerwyss