Titus Farms

Each year I try to save at least 15 heads of garlic for the winter. I know that will supply us for a reasonable time before the garlic goes bad. For some reason, at the market and at CSA, we didn’t have enough of the aromatic staple to go around. At the farmers market the endless requests for garlic resonated with us, so we decided to plant more last fall.

Planting more, however, means taking the biggest and best garlic and sacrificing it to the cause. Since our need was so great, we also sacrificed some of the smaller bulbs which no one wanted. Those smaller bulbs are usually sequestered for our own use throughout the winter. I didn’t have a good count of how many bulbs I stole away, but I knew the number was far below what I was going to need. I actually ended up with a lot of what Amy and myself have deemed “runions” or “ronions?”. I don’t exactly remember the etymology, but I’m pretty sure it’s because the garlic takes on the look of a very runty onion. They basically don’t form cloves, or when they do the cloves are fused in such a way that the bulb resembles an onion.

Oh Runty Onion Garlic

So this past week I made my last pasta sauce (out of our heirloom tomatoes) loaded with the last of our runion garlic. It was delicious and sad. Now I’m searching for organic garlic- or at least local garlic.

The next month is always a dark time at the farm. We’re not quite ready to plant, we’ve almost run out of vegetables saved from the year and it’s usually cold and drab. Ah well, it makes us appreciate spring and during the height of summer when we look back at how quiet it is around here, we usually wish we could have that quiet again.