Our garlic has been curing in our big pole barn for the past two weeks.  Hanging garlic is much heavier than we imagined - luckily the walls didn't fall down.

Despite it being a surprisingly wet summer, we are lucky that the East Kootenay climate here is very dry.  Garlic can be susceptible to molds if the soil & curing conditions are too damp.  

We have just started harvesting our heritage garlic! Spicy and good storing ''Leningrad" was first off the mark, followed closely by Puslinch and German Red.  The harvest of Susan Delafield, Spanish Roja, Persian Star, Yugoslavian Porcelain and Georgian Fire should occur in the next few days!  It was fairly easy to pull up the garlic by hand, though for a few very large mature bulbs we needed to use a pitch fork or shovel.   After filling our pick up truck with garlic, keeping it well shaded, we transported it to the pole barn and hung them on wire lines along the width of the building.  This provides excellent ventilation, shade and rain protection.   Our hands smell like garlic! Yum!!

Garlic Scape RECIPES

-Many different & delicious ways to cook Scapes:

Grill, roast, broil or saute them in olive oil or butter, as you would asparagus. Use them in omelets, stir fries, and even chopped fine in mashed potatoes, pasta, salads or bread dough.  In the photo above, at Clear Sky's retreat kitchen, we're serving them up grilled, with some olive oil, salt and pepper, along with roasted yams.

- Scape PESTO recipe:

Chop 1 pound of garlic scapes into 3 inch lengths then process in food processor until pureed. Add 1 cup parmesan & 1 cup pine nuts and process until smooth. Slowly add ½ to 1 cup olive oil as the food processor runs and continue until all the oil is combined into the garlic. Add salt to taste. Store in an air-tight jar in the refrigerator & Enjoy!

-Garlic scape PICKLES recipe:

Clear Sky Farm is offering jars of mindfully made pickled garlic scapes for sale from this season's scapes.  Or, you can make your own, using fresh garlic scapes available from us or at most local farmers markets.

Combine 2 litres water with 2 litres natural vinegar.  Add 8 tablespoons of pickling salt, and bring to the boil.  Meanwhile, cut the scapes into whatever size you'd like, (not minced though) and fill clean jars with the garlic scapes.  Once the vinegar, water & salt has come to the boil, fill the scape jars with this liquid.  Add some pickling spices like pepper, dill seed, cayenne if you like.  Finally cover the jars with canning lids and bring them boil , completely covered for 10 minutes.  They'll keep a really long time that way.

Pickling has been used for centuries to preserve food. The above scape pickle recipe is the 'fast' pickling method. There are other lacto-fermented scape pickling recipes that are even healthier and nutritious - fermented full of healthy microbes and more.   I'll post some of those recipes later when I get a chance.

ENJOY!

 Heres a short video I made of the Native Grasslands Restoration/Reclamation Course we hosted in June 2010:  I loved it! 

The next grasslands course is scheduled for September 11&12th.  See Eco-Courses schedule for details.

At this June's meditation retreat, we have been lucky enough to savour something very new for dinner - weeds. No, not just our pesky monkey minds, but well, lambsquarters. Charles our fabulous retreat chef cooked them up after our gardening karma yogini Penny harvested them from our (chemical free) field.

Our chef told me that he dunked them in boiling water for one minute, drained them, then added a dash of safflower oil, salt and pepper.  They were dark green & delicious!  Our farm's crop of heritage garlic is still about a month away from harvest but lambsquarters would go great with garlic & a bit of butter too. 

The high nutrition in the lambsquarters was evident on sight and taste - Heres what wikipedia says about lambsquarters:  Lamb's quarters is a close cousin to spinach, but far, far more nutritious. It ranks right up there with Dandelion, Watercress and Nettles as one of nature’s nutritional powerhouses.

I like this reminder about questioning what we consider good and bad: (Re: lambsquarters on this website:) Now considered an invasive weed in many parts...How low it has fallen from its once honoured position as a cultivar of the Old World, where it enjoyed some considerable esteem for its nutritional properties and mild flavour.

So, don't toss the lambsquarters! Eat em! Enjoy!

Swales were once a miraculous mystery to me.
I first heard about these 'on-contour' passive irrigation 'trenches' from Jo Pearsall and Bryan Innes on their 2009 permaculture design course in Rotorua, New Zealand. I was awed by the idea that digging some ditches could 'slow down' water and give it a chance to soak into the soil. They showed videos of Australian heavy machinery building massive swales, or talked about doing it by hand. It all seemed confusing and a huge undertaking - either machine or labour wise. In my consciousness at least, swales barely registered as 'doable' on a practical scale.

However, they ARE doable! While at another permaculture course in Minnessotta, USA with Mark Shepard last October, we actually dug a swale.  I realised they are hand friendly, and also easy to dig with a single or double bottom plow. I got back from Minessota that October biting at the bit ! We got out and dug one 350 foot swale by HAND, just before freeze up!!! ( It took maybe 5 full days of labour for one person).

Come winter, with snow, melt & freeze conditions, we soon discovered our swale wasn't level. I"m not sure why - perhaps the A Frame I made wasn't up to scratch. So, come spring, we have leveled it out by hand (using the eye). 

With not enough time to dig all the swales necessary for our Food Forest Project,  we used our neighbour's single bottom plow.  We dug another 7 swales, 30 feet apart.

Its hard to tell for sure whether the swales are making a difference yet- however the grass where they are located is EXTREMELY lush, and we haven't had the same water flooding problems down slope from the swaled area - so far so good! 

Do you have any experience with Swales? We'd love to hear about it in the comment section below!  I've also included an excellent youtube video below about how swales work, by Australia's Geoff Lawton.

I was blown away by the weekend workshop on 'native grassland reclamation/restoration' at Clear Sky. I couldn't help but think of Buddhism's Four Noble Efforts and how it applies very much to land stewardship as well....

See the wholesome for the wholesome, and make efforts to encourage it.  See the unwholesome for the unwholesome and make efforts to drop it. 

The same goes with our property, which has been badly degraded by overgrazing and forest ingrowth from fire suppression since the 1930s.  I'm so excited to see the native plants we seeded this weekend flourish, and look forward to developing a master plan for our property's ecological health.

Heres to awareness, and encouraging the wholesome - in action, right under our feet.  The second grasslands course is on September 11 & 12 2010 at Clear Sky Center.