Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the garlic planting is delightful? - Or not...

"Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good." - Alice May Brock

Some of you may have noticed the rather large amount of snow Mother Nature decided to drop on us last week.  Well, it just so happens that our order of heirloom garlic arrived the day before this storm and for some reason, I actually thought it was a good idea to get out there and pound it into the semi-frozen ground before it got too bad.  The garlic comes in big blue mesh bags and is fully bulbed, it took me almost 3 hours to break apart the 200 bulbs into their cloves (6-10 cloves/bulb) and I then headed out the door. It was Tuesday and I thought I would be able to plant all 1500 cloves into the ground in a single afternoon - I was wrong. This is mid-November and the sun, with all of it's brightness and warmth, is long gone by 5PM. Also, the top of the soil is now frozen which means each hole needs to be pounded in using one of those super heavy metal poles that is pointed at one end (used for fencing?) and then closed with a hammer. By 4:00 I had 700 cloves in and just enough time to grab some milk and veg for the pigs before I lost my light for the day. I wasn't worried though, because the snow wasn't supposed to start until after lunch the next day - plenty of time right?!

Sooooooo it was already snowing I woke up Tuesday morning. Like, so hard. The sun was up by 7:30, I fed as fast as possible and was in the field- planting bags on, hammer and long metal bar in hand by 8:30 and went to work.  It was cold. People always say that it warms up when it's snowing, but these people have obviously never planted garlic in a snow storm. Snowy River Farm is located on top of a hill so it was cold AND windy - and everyone who is anyone knows how much I despise the wind (it's always pushing me around, what's up with that?). I turned up the volume on my little green Ipod shuffle put my head down, and let Adele, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, and Robbie Sinclair and the Beggars Laughing take me to a nicer place.  It felt like I had been out there for hours, I could no longer feel my fingers and the bags never seemed to look any more empty than when I had started when Rob took pity on me. Or maybe he didn't want people driving by to see me in his fields planting in a snow storm and think that he had any association with me, so he sent David out to help! We were done, frozen, and tired by lunch (when the snow was SUPPOSED to start) and walked back to the house in 6'' of snow. 

Part of me thinks "Wow, I'm a planting warrior. Check me out. Planting in a snow storm - Heck yeah!" but then I look outside one week later, at my muddy front lawn. Naked of snow. Birds chirping. Etnie frolicking sans her winter coat. I now think "You idiot".

Next year the garlic will be our own, no ordering and waiting for shipments. And it will see its winter bed in October.