Tag: Montana Garlic

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Seasons ~ Summer 2020

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Summers bring heat and humidity to northern Indiana. While I enjoy warm sun on my skin, I do not like the sweat, dripping days of high humidity. I have high expectations for summer 2020 homestead goals I want to complete no matter how I try not to.

My biggest health challenge in summer involves drinking enough water, napping and resting when I need to in order to feel good enough to work hard.  Perhaps I need to define good enough. I need to be able to function with out getting light headed every time I squat down and stand up or running out of breath after only working for 30 min.

To complete a task, I must not be exhausted when I begin. If I am exhausted after, well now, I joyfully see a job complete and happily rest. I bring you my list of hopeful goals for the summer of 2020 at CG Heartbeats Farm.

Animals in Summer 2020

Chicken Goals

Work projects for the chickens involves cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Here is the list:

  • Pen cleaning
  • Deep clean incubators
  • Clean empty brooders

Continue reading to learn where I moved roosters, hens and grow outs into new pens. I have a few Swedish Flower Hen chickens who I will be moving in the coming weeks.

Hatching plans are limited to am going to setting a few Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner eggs and Silver Gray Dorking eggs through the month of August. I may make a few exceptions, but I will be cutting back on the number of chicks I hatch until September

Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiners

Sadly, I lost 2 of my 3 remaining hens leaving only one hen here with Cisco and Clinch. I added the 2 cross bred hens to their pen for at least the next couple months. The crossbred hens lay a completely different egg to make keeping the eggs separate easy. Knowing which egg a hen lays preserves the breed integrity.

Combining the pens reduces chore time. I took a planned trip the beginning of July and wanted to make chores easier for those kind people caring for the animals and gardens while I was away.

Silver Gray Dorkings

The Silver Gray Dorkings have shown little fertility this year so I switched up the rooster with the Silver Gray Dorking hens. I have not updated the web page yet, but here is the new pens info.

Silver Gray Dorking

Rooster Cogburn joined his daughter who hatched in January 2019. A younger son of his joined the SGD hens of Pen # 1.  I lost both Mr. and Mrs. McLintock earlier this year.  I am excited about testing the eggs in a few weeks.

Did you know I wait 6 weeks after switching roosters to incubate the eggs?  Unless a hen or hens did not have a rooster with them for the previous 6 weeks, in that case, I do not wait.

Swedish Flower Hens

I am excited to announce a new pen of Swedish Flower Hens here at CG Heartbeats Farm. I am currently deciding on a name for the rooster and the web page is only started. Check out the video showing the pretty flock of blue based Swedish Flower Hens making up pen # 11

Apache, the rooster of pen # 8 passed earlier in 2020, but not before I hatched a son to take his place. At the moment I am unable to offer crested Swedish Flower hens until Apache’s son grows up enough to cover the hens. I hatched and raised an additional hen from Pen # 7 to join pen # 8. She is a pretty black based hen with sno leopard highlights on her neck.

Aneta

My Great Pyrenees puppy brings joy to my life. She rarely is unhappy, wagging her tail, appearing to smile broadly in welcome.  Her puppy behavior includes chewing on anything in her reach, but she barks deeply, as if already an adult. 

Great Pyrenees

Aneta is not allowed to run unattended, but on a couple occasions her collar came loose. I walked outside to find her hanging out on the farm. I am happy to say she did not run off.  At 4 months old she is still a young pup. Behaviors may change and I continue to learn and enjoy her.

She is not especially fond of a bath. Ah, it looks like we will be training for bath time this summer. She certainly needs them after her digging exploits. The first bath removed much of the hidden dirt. A week later she appears to be in need of bath number 2.

Horses

Drifter, Bo, Cider, Rosie, and Dusty continue to enjoy life living a horse’s life out to pasture. I desire to ride again this summer, but I have not figured out how to fit horse time into my schedule.

Gardening Summer 2020

As the Black raspberries began to ripen, I have enjoyed picking and depositing directly into my mouth, thus far. When I had enough picked, I froze all I did not eat for later use.

Garlic Scapes

Raising food in summertime requires watering, weed pulling, and monitoring plants as the grow and produce. Harvest and food preservation happen during summer months too.  I almost daily inspect the gardens for plant development, and of course pull weeds. I do not seem to ever pull all the weeds, but I celebrate those I do.

Garlic

For the first time you may order garlic online to be shipped in September. Click on a variety of your choice to begin the process.

Spanish Rojo Garlic
Spanish Rojo Garlic

Spanish Rojo Garlic smaller in size has an earthy flavor.

Montana Garlic

Montana Garlic has a mild flavor and 6 cloves per bulb.

Click on the garlic of your choice to pre-order your selection.

Music Garlic

Music Garlic is mild similar to Montana in flavor.

German Garlic

German Garlic provides a strong flavor for stews and other cooking projects.

Limited availibility of all varieties.

Grapes

I watched tiny grapes appear and disappear on the grape plants this past spring. Something removed them. An insect? What ever the culprit, I only have 3 grapes ripening on the largest of the grape plants. I am disappointed as I crave those delicious Concord Grapes. You can bet I am going to savor the 3 I hopefully eat. 

I know I want to make the task of setting up a trellis a high priority this fall. The grape seedlings I planted are currently leafless. I hope the roots are growing and will survive. I plan to continue working with the grapes for a future harvest. In the mean time I will also eat the wild grapes growing around the farm.

General Farm Work and Area Clean Up

There are always areas around the farm that need to be cleaned up. The heat of summer does not lend to daylong outside work for me. While I desire to tackle these projects, truthfully, they may get put on the backburner for the pressing jobs like weeding, watering, harvesting and preserving.  Fence building and pasture maintenance fall into this time slot as well.

Transplanting Trees

I had a few crab apple trees pop up around the current tree. I want to transplant a couple one to the center of the circle portion of our driveway.

Online

Because a part of my homesteading journey includes sharing my journey homesteading with a chonic illness, I want to tell you about my website summer 2020 homestead goals.

Chick Hatching Practices

In the coming 2 months I plan to complete the finishing touches on the digital course Chick Hatching Practices teaching folks new to hatching chickens how simple and easy the process can be.

Updating to breed and pen page info

Changes to the different pens of Swedish Flower Hens, Silver Gray Dorkings, and Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiner create a needed update to the differnet website pages.

You Tube videos

I want to continue adding a weekly video to the CG Heartbeats Farm You Tube Channel. Use the link below to subscribe so you do not miss a video. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6vCR-u2f0ucynCHJWylqVw

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Garlic ~ Year 4

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This fall marks the 4th year I have planted garlic. I love thinking back to the first year. I planted about 6 cloves each of 3 varieties: Music, Montana, and German. I recall my Dad helped me prep the ground in a flower bed I was not using for anything.

Really, it was one of the easier spots to dig here on the farm. Despite my attempts of keeping the weeds out, the grass roots (unwanted growth = weeds) were well established. At one time a flower bed, I had in previous seasons dug up the grasses. The ground was rarely walked on and was soft here. 

The size of the first garlic garden

We dug with shovels and sifted through the soil to remove roots. The small amount of space we needed might have been 2 ½ ‘ x 2 ‘. 

Each year since I have saved back a portion of the garlic I grew and used it to plant more the next year, growing in numbers. I will skip ahead here in the story to say this past week I planted around 350 cloves of 5 varieties. 

I posted the last 2 years sharing the experience of planting garlic.

Garlic  and Garlic Year 3

Spanish Rojo

I added a new variety last year, Spanish Rojo (or Spanish Red). This variety came up a few weeks later or even a month then the Music, Montana and German. Also it produced smaller greens from the beginning. No surprise really the bulbs were about half the size (or even smaller) compared to the other varieties. 

Spanish Rojo garlic

Benefits of a smaller size: On several occasions I popped a clove in my mouth and ate it. These are the perfect size for that. Yes I had to pucker my face, but I knew my health would benefit. I found folks that might only be cooking for one or two people wanted to purchase a smaller bulb. Again the Spanish Rojo was a perfect fit.

New Ground

Garlic has done well here at CG Heartbeats Farm producing large cloves over all. Last year I out grew the flower bed. Rather, I had found a new way to remove sod. I share about that in Chickens on the Homestead.  Briefly, I allowed the chickens to kill off sod and used that space for gardens. I did still turn over the soil and look for roots to remove. 

While I planted Montana, German and the new Spanish Rojo garlic in the flower bed by the house. I moved a 5’ by 5’ chicken pen and planted around 34 cloves of Music garlic in that area

That ground produced the some of the largest bulbs harvested in 2019. I decided that this year the Spanish Rojo will be going in ground where a chicken pen had been. I want to see if the bulbs will grow bigger there.  Not that it is all bad to offer a smaller size bulb. There did seem to be a demand for it.

Harvesting in 2019

We had an incredible wet spring in 2019. The grass and every thing grew like crazy.  A rule of thumb I go by is to wait until the bottom 4 leaves have died off to harvest the bulbs. I guess I miss counted or the bottom leave left no trace of its existence?  Anyway, some of the bulbs seemed like they should have been harvested earlier. No loss for me, they will still be good for planting and that is what I did with those bulbs.

Garlic and Farmer’s Markets

I felt happy to bring 4 healthy varieties of garlic to the 2 local markets I attended last summer. I enjoyed the conversations on the topic of garlic. I liked hearing others also grew garlic.

Next year I plant to offer an online buying options and you might find CG Heartbeats Farm garlic in a local store.

A new Variety

I choose Elephant as the new variety to plant this year, bringing the total varieties of garlic here at CG Heartbeats Farm to 5.  I read they had a lighter sweeter taste and grow as large as softballs.  Wow! Now the bulb I purchased ($10.95 + shipping) was not much larger than some of the music bulb I grew this year.  A couple of the elephant cloves were definitely larger. I made sure to plant them in the new garden ground that had been a chicken pen.

Humm wonder how big they will get. I read that the tops grow 5 to 7 feet tall.  In hindsight I needed to plant them on the north end of the garden not the south end.  They may cast a shadow on the shorter garlic varieties. I am leaving room to improve it seems.

2020 Garlic Crop

Planting garlic this fall happened in shifts as it seems to each year.  Every year I seem to fight the feeling as good as I want to when I go about this activity. And yet each year I am getting more planted. This gives me a satisfied feeling.

I did prep the ground and plant all the 340 + cloves with in one week.  I will add this is all happening by hand, in its entirety. I started on a Tuesday removing the corn stalks and some bean plants. The next day I made it outside around dusk and worked by a flashlight for around 3 hours. I had removed all plants, worked the soil only to remove unwanted rooted green plants (mostly grass), and planted 97 cloves of German Garlic.

On Thursday I planted Spanish Rojo and Elephant in the rest of the garden I had cleared on Wednesday night.

On Friday my friend Beth came over to help me. We prepped ground and planted 77 cloves of Music garlic in the garden bed up by the house. 

We spent a bit of time turning over the dirt where I had previously moved a chicken pen.

We have been trading work days or afternoons usually. It has been an encouragement to me and I always enjoy helping her. Not only did we get work done, we hung out, had lunch together, and chatted.

Beth and I harvested candy onions and a bit of mind. We even found a clove or two of garlic that i had missed earlier this year. I had planted the candy onions in between the rows of garlic last spring. When I harvested the garlic I gathered in the ones I could find. They never got real big so I will not do that next year.

I knew I had to get the Montana garlic and Egyptian walking onions in on Saturday. We were forecasted to have temps down around 6 degrees in the coming week.  In hind sight, that week has passed and the ground has not frozen yet.  No matter, I am trilled to have the garlic in. 

That Saturday, I moved the last chicken pen, finished working the soil (slightly) in a 5’ by 10’ that had chickens on it since May, and planted around 80 Montana garlic varieties.  I did get the Egyptian Walking onions planted, too.  I will save that for a post next year.

  • Montana Garlic planted in this garden

The garlic is in for this fall. I will be adding hay chaff first and then wood chips as the become available this winter. The hay chaff comes from the barn and the wood chips from chopping wood here at CG Heartbeats Farm.

New in 2020

In 2020 there will be an online purchasing option on this website. A limited amount of garlic will be availbale to purchase online. That means even if you are not local to our area, you will be able to order our garlic and garlic scapes.

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