Winter 2021

Warm Winter Greetings and Hopeful wishes for the coming year! Pictured above is the sunrise on our first snowfall of the season (Nov 3, 2021). Here is what our garlic  looked like on that day:

As we move into the longer days of winter, we can celebrate that we just passed the 21st day of the 12th month of the year 2021, in the 21st century! I am sure that has a deep numerical meaning! Solstice is a time to be introspective, find rest, and re-fuel the internal flame so that you are ready to bring the light back into your world. I like to think that the garlic is doing the same.

The two types of energy, Cationic and Anionic, balance throughout the year on a kind of pendulum: the flowering Cationic energy swings into full bloom at the summer solstice, leading most daylight sensitive plants to initiate or express their prolific flowering capacity, such as when garlic puts forth its garlic scapes, with flowers and bulbils.

 The other side of the year, on winter solstice, is the highest expression of Anionic growth energy. We may think this is a little odd, because everything appears to be dormant, or harvested and is done with growing. True enough for most annuals except garlic. But garlic of course is busy growing roots, even at subzero temperatures. The root growth does slow down in the midst of winter, which is why I like to plant early enough to take advantage of fall root growth. But for most plants we only notice the growth energy surge at each end of the growing season. It is strongly felt in the spring, when the lettuce and leafy greens flourish; then the leafy plants become harder to grow as the Anionic energy dissipates with rising temperatures. High Summer is the time for flowers! Growth energy returns in the fall, measured by increased hay crop yields and more frequent lawn cuttings, as the wet and cool environment brings it back. 

I like to think that we all grow a little bit in the winter, and like the tight growth ring of a northern tree, that slow going in the depths of the cold, is the hard wood that sustains us through the trying and difficult times of our lives.  

I also like to eat lots of garlic at this time of year! It is a powerful antioxidant, as anyone knows if they've taken it raw on an empty stomach! (Not advised.) Even Selenium supplementation should be taken on a full stomach in case it upsets the gut. 

 Selenomethionine and Selenocystine are the two amino acids that are safe sources of Selenium, and to the extent that selenium can be found in the soil; garlic, onions and some grains, are able to gather and concentrate these great antioxidant substances. This year they may be especially important, particularity for men, who have a higher need of selenium. 200 micro grams (mcg) of selenomethionine per day, is generally recommended for healthy adults. The element itself is an essential component of glutathione peridoxase, an enzyme that cleans up oxidative substances that can be damaging to our tissues when we are exposed to the chemicals of our environment, especially at a time when those beautiful green leaves we have grown accustomed to seeing are no longer around to help us filter the air we breathe.

A great feeling of curiosity comes over me when I contemplate the coming spring...I try to keep this feeling optimistic. I think that as long as there is life there is hope, and that the natural world expresses this best, because it does so without hubris, or even expectations. The garlic that I planted on Sept 20, has been partially flooded twice in the fall, I'm the one who is worried about it, lol...but it looks good - all up out of the ground at nearly 100 percent! So I have my fingers crossed for a good spring. Ordering the garden seeds for our vegetables and flowers, always seems to heighten that expectation, as we dream about what is possible for the coming season.

 I am currently storing a good selection of garlic bulbils, so I can relax knowing that there is at least a back up plan, to preserve the diversity of my crop, if needed.

 I am planning to offer spring shipping on what garlic bulbils remain, and will send out a list of what's available in February or early March.

I hope that everyone has a lovely Solstice, Christmas, and New Year. 

Julie Fleischauer

Thank you for a good Garlic Season

 Hi, Just wanted to let everyone know that other than bulbils, many garlic strains have been sold out, and saleable seed stock of what is remaining is quite limited.

If you have preordered, you can still pick up your garlic, just let us know when you are coming. 

Thanks, Julie

Garlic 2021

 We are still taking garlic orders for 2021. Stock is fairly limited at this point, so it is a good idea to have substitutions in mind. Your can check out the 2021 Garlic Catalogue page for more details.

 We are open 9 am - 6 pm Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week. Tuesday we are closed. You can make an appointment to come at any other time during the fall season. We also run a small vegetable market Nov - March, that is likewise by appointment.

Julie's cell: 519-588-5290, email goldenacresfarm@hotmail.com

Garlic orders are around the back of the barn. (The picture above shows the side of the barn and the white roller door, where the other vegetables are- squash, onions, beets, potatoes, etc. And the picture below shows the side and back of the barn.)

Around the back of the barn, and inside the large sliding doors is our renovated Granary, where the garlic is cured, cleaned, and sold.

2021 Garlic Season

We still have some Silver Skin garlic to harvest, but thanks to our family team effort, almost all of it is in the barn drying, some is trimmed, and the bulbs look pretty nice! There is more purple colouring on some of the Porcelains than is usual, though I have seen it before...maybe the dry heat of spring brought it on.

 If you want to be added to our mailing list, please send an email to goldenacresfarm@hotmail.com. 

Orders can be picked up at the farm, as usual. (2579 Line 47, RR1 Gads Hill, Ontario.) First two weeks of September or by appointment.  We can accommodate contactless pick up, if you request it. 

You will be able to call or text your order to 519-588-5290 (Julie's Cell) or email to goldenacresfarm@hotmail.com. On or after August 20th, please. I usually release the Catalogue on August 15th, but as that lands on a Sunday, I've decided to give myself a bit more time to get inventory prepared and garlic trimmed. Because we cure the garlic the old way, leaving the stalks on, it takes longer for it to dry.

Remember, we do not process credit cards. Email transfer is set up for automatic deposit this year, when you send it to julie.goldenacres@gmail.com. Also, cheques, money orders or cash are good methods of payment. 

I want to take a moment to be grateful for all the wonderful people that I have met over the years through doing garlic. The Stratford Garlic Festival was a great place to meet every year, and I'll always be thankful of the friendly Kiwanis volunteers who made our twelve years there not only possible, they also just had your back, come rain, storm or technical failure. Those years were special!

  

My sister Rachel, with our friend Dennis, who makes beautiful wooden boxes to raise awareness of the Stratford Perth County Community Foundation, a charitable foundation that provides support for our local community. 

Thanks Dennis, those boxes are a good way to showcase our onions! (Also in the picture is the Dakota Black Popcorn I grow, and our butternut squash, of course.)

 

Brix testing of Garlic Scapes

 Most of the time, when people talk Brix in Garlic, they mean the clove juice, and a good rating is about 40, and the higher the better. The refractometer I have to use doesn't go that high, however, (I tried it by squishing the juice out of a rocambole clove once, and the line went all the way to the top, maxing it out). I looked for a way to get around that problem, and still use a field crop refractometer, so that I could still get in on the action with all my different varieties and strains of garlic. (A good refractometer costs $200, so far as I'm aware.)

If you've ever scaped a large plot of garlic, you'll know about that sap that drips like crazy out of the cut ends of a scape, and dries white and slightly crusty/itchy. It ruins running shoes and if you don't wash your scaping clothes right away, the smell can linger for weeks. Normally when you use a refractometer for field crops, you have to squish the leaves of soybeans and clover really hard to eek out a drop or two of juice so that you can test it. This scape juice pouring out just seems too easy, and you have to cut them off anyway! But why not, lets test the scape juice. I've done so for four years, on many different varieties to try and establish a baseline, or at least a range of what might be typical for garlic scape juice, and here are my results: Garlic Scape Brix testing at Golden Acres Farm 

For the Love of Earth

 Hello there friends and philosophers,

I have been struggling to figure out what to post, as information seems to be coming at us so fast these days, and everyone has a different opinion about what they hear. I have a lot of different opinions about what I hear too, and finally, it occured to me that by not sharing, I'm effectively censoring myself.  Besides, opinions are meant to be simply a waymarker on the path we are taking, just like footprints, so I'll take step here, and you can decide if you like the boots I'm wearing, or the earth upon which I trod.

Yesterday was the Bell let's talk mental health day, and some of the things I was listening to reminded me that the surest way to support your mental health is to have meaningful work.  I take issue with anyone who arbitrarily divides certain classes of work into essential, and non-essential - what is essential for the body is not the whole of what is essential for the mind or spirit, and denying the importance of some kinds of work is just another way of negating someones life experience, which can have disastrous consequences.  It is important for everyone to decide for themselves what "essential" means to them.

My mother's maternal family grew and marketed vegetables in southern Pennsylvania. I guess you could say they were one of the "lucky" families that made it through the depression with food on the table and a secure place to live, because of their rather default lifestyle. When my grandmother married, and moved to Ontario, she continued to grow a large household garden - not because she was afraid of food shortages - but because it was the only rational way to do it, if you wanted to can and freeze enough to feed your family through the winter. She was ever so relieved when Green Giant figured out how to mechanically process frozen peas that didnt taste like starchy cow fodder. Though they were never as good as garden peas, hand shelled and picked at peak sweetness and tenderness, frozen peas from the grocery store were a reasonable compromise that liberated a lot of time and effort. For reasons of her own, my mother went back to that tradition of shelling and freezing garden peas...its not logical or even "essential" perhaps - modern canning factories can do it more efficiently - but it feeds a part of her soul, and,  in having taught it to her daughters, she keeps a kind of experiential knowledge alive, that has value to us as a family.

Coming into this financial catastrophe that, despite popular belief, is not sitting on our doorstep - it's been an unacknowledged house guest for years - I find that I am taking for granted the enormous wealth creation that has been in my hands, all these years, simply by growing my own food. I'm glad for opportunity to finally understand the value of what I have.

Every time an item is sold, and transferred from maker, to marketer to retailer, to consumer, not only does the government usually take a cut (sales tax) but the initial price that the maker receives becomes a smaller portion of the final cost of the goods. It's almost like inflation, but in real time, on real goods. Each middleman performs a service that is essential to the process of getting that product to the buyer, including advertisers...but what if you didnt have to get it to the buyer? What if some things you could make for yourself?

This is the flip side of consumer economics - saver economics. It hasn't been popular in part because of interest rates being so low for the past two decades. When my parents were first married, it was possible to live off of the interest your savings made for you. Taking out a loan was serious business, and you paid dearly for the time it took for you to pay the money back, and become self sufficient again. Money and time are linked by interest rates. Ironically, at a time when minimum wage is the highest it's ever been, the value of our time, as defined by interest rates, is at its lowest. When your debt doesn't grow, but your pay check does, it sort of looks like a good time to take out a loan; a blank cheque on life, as it were, no matter how artificial the circumstances.

I would not be surprised if the Bank of Canada is now getting close to implementing negative interest rates, as the European central banks have been doing since 2016. Negative interest rates take ownership and savings and make them out to be a liability. Add inflation and you dont need highway robbery to bankrupt people.  

Our essential tools need to be justice, not welfare. Justice slices away untruths and inequalities that otherwise make it impossible to protect an individual's right to properties, or to work for their own benefit. Welfare is a moral sanction that justifies our  tolerance for inequality. 

 It is unethical to take more than you have to give - moreover, it is unsustainable to life on earth - yet that is the financial leadership of first world countries, who would have you believe that deficit is the inevitable truth of humanity's productivity. Think about it: if you agree that the debt our country is carrying is a natural consequence of the most evolved economic system we could possibly facilitate, it means that human beings are parasites, incapable of supplying to their own needs. 

This is grossly untrue. 

I know this from experience because I know what productivity looks like before it becomes drained by the system. I grow my own food. I trade for some things, and I support small business, which is the ethical form of capitalism, and the backbone of democracy. 

  The future will never look exactly like the past, yet the past holds a mirror to our future that defines how far we have come, and in what direction.  

So where are we going, and what will life on earth look like in the future? Well, it's up to all of us to ask this question: Do you smell life in back door deals behind corporate counters, or in back yard gardens, under rotting leaf mulch?  Can you feel it growing abundantly in nurtured soils, or in dirivitive market shares? Can you taste it in nutritious, homegrown vegetables, or in lysol cans? Where do you see life?  

Julie Fleischauer