I fired up the skid steer and grabbed a bucket of inch and a half crushed stone from the working pile deposited in my yard some months ago by the 10-ton Grasso truck and headed out the lane where I spread the stone in a low area near the farmstand. Few people want to step out of their Teslas into a mud puddle. I back dressed it and headed up the hill.

With the atmosphere full of rivers, streams of water, rain, I wasn’t too concerned about harvesting the garlic a week early. The level of unpredictability dictates the urgency of the action. Let’s get’er done. I had two good men going through the field of garlic, pulling the garlic (or, digging it, if too hard in the ground) and taking up the mulch fabric. They had a nice pile ready for me when I got there, cutting across the hayfield to the vegetable acre, and we quickly loaded the garlic into the bucket of the skid. They continued working the field while I headed back to the home base.

I was trying something new this harvest. With the rains, the soil around the garlic bulbs can be heavy and in some fields full of clay, so my idea is to wash the garlic with a hose as I take it off the skid bucket and get it cleaned and stripped of its dead, wet leaves, mud and dirt. Well, Ok, but boy it takes time. The benefit is that the time I spend now cleaning means the garlic will be easier to process later in the game. Time now for time then.

Part of the urgency of the harvest is to get the garlic out of the weather. Unlike onions which can stand direct sunlight while it cures, even while stacked in the field, garlic does not tolerate direct sunlight very well and can get small, “cooked” spots when exposed green to direct sunlight for too long. They cannot be banged, or they will bruise like a peach. The garlic is green when it comes from the ground and needs a couple weeks’ curing before it is hardened up and ready for storage. That doesn’t mean green garlic isn’t delicious in its own right and I like it right from the field and throw a whole head, not a clove, a whole head into the cast iron skillet with whatever else I am cooking. Leave the skins on! They peel right off when cooked. And fresh green garlic is preferred for making kimchi. A spoonful of our honey in the morning, with a clove of our green garlic floating in the honey, you might just live to be 100. (OK, now you’re going to take away my imaginary medical degree.)

I am in the stage of the process where it is imperative to get the garlic sorted by size and hung out of the rain and in an area where there is a little breeze, or where I can get a fan on them to prevent molding on the stems and bulbs. By sorting, I mean we take out the largest and best-looking heads to set aside as seed garlic to be planted in October/November for next year’s crop. It is advisable to think ahead, or you will have nothing. The seed garlic is tied in bundles of eight to ten heads and hung in separate rows within the shed and labeled as “seed” with the variety also noted.

My friends are surprised by the number of garlic varieties. This year the Music garlic, a Canadian devised porcelain garlic of large cloves and mid-range heat, did very well. While the Ukrainian red had some problems with pathogens in the soil, the German red, a rocambole, did very well and that will be our main seller on the roadstand.

The garlic festivals are coming up and I have to be ready with nice, cured garlic in one-pound bags, or sewn into my special garlic braids. I will be selling at the old Saugerties’ Garlic Festival, now known as the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, September 30, October 1. And then at the Connecticut Garlic Festival in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Google them! We should be able to finish everything up tomorrow if no atmospheric streams interrupt.