it’s that time of the year when my garlic invades my home. and everyday it gets worse. my floors are covered with garlic to dry a little more and give me easier access to clean them.
i’ll have more varieties and garlic than ever this saturday at the festival. mention the words “pink envelope” and get one free bulb for the first six you purchase.
see you there!
red wing farmers market
i’ll be bringing about 19 different varieties down to market tomorrow, august 18, saturday to the red wing market. come on down to the levee. i’ll be there from 8-1. and it is supposed to be a nice day.
yahoo to nice days and to markets and to fresh juicy garlic and to red wing!!
YaHoo!! another great minnesota garlic festival this saturday, august 12th in hutchinson.
holy mackerel! 15 garlic vendors in one spot!! and great food to eat to boot! can’t wait.
besides fresh garlic, there will be garlic ice cream and susan’s famous garlic chip cookies.
come see us at our booth. we are right by the front door.
check out: http://www.sfa-mn.org/garlicfest/
Minnesota Annual Garlic Tour at hawk’s brain home on July 1, 2017!
join other garlic farmers to share knowledge, food and laughs on saturday, july first. we’ll start out at my garden, eat a potluck at bay point park in red wing, then head to coffman’s garlic field. come visit my garden and see how anyone can grow a number of garlics in a small space. visit the big beautiful barn in featherstone township. for more info and to let us know you are coming: http://www.sfa-mn.org/garlic-growers/
Garlic in June–scapes a’coming!!
everyone is telling me how beautiful their garlic is growing this year. always good to share stories with others. the rain in may really helped, but right now on the seventh of june, the rain could come back. too hot and dry. we are never happy, are we? the first day of the red wing farmers market was last saturday and went well. make sure you support your local farmers!!
last red wing market for 2016!
we’ll be at the red wing farmers market for the last time this season tomorrow, saturday september 17th, from 8-1 or until we run out. don’t miss out on the fresh and juicy garlics that we offer!! we are running low, so get there early!
apple garlic chutney
thanks to those of you who came to the red wing farmers market today and sampled the apple-garlic chutney. thanks to nesbitt’s orchard for the apples! the recipe came from epicurious.com with a few changes by me.
apple garlic chutney:
Ingredients
1.5 cups apple cider vinegar
1.5 cups sugar
1 1/2 pounds tart green apple (i used zestar–any apple will work) peeled, cored, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
10 large garlic cloves–i used the variety armenian
1 3-ounce piece fresh ginger, peeled, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 1/2 cups (packed) golden raisins
2 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
Preparation
Bring vinegar and sugar to boil in heavy large non aluminum saucepan, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
Toss apples and lemon juice in large bowl. Combine garlic, ginger, salt and red pepper in processor; blend until finely chopped. Add apple and garlic mixtures, raisins and mustard seeds to vinegar. Simmer until apples are tender and chutney thickens, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes. Place in bowl. Cool. Cover; chill. (Can be made 1 week ahead. Keep chilled.)
it is red wing farmers market time!!
we’ll be at the red wing farmers market on saturdays, starting with this one on august 20th.
come see us. we’ll have new varieties of garlic and it would be great to see you.
come down to the depot from 8am to 1pm. not sure where the location of our booth will be this week down by the train tracks and river , but search us out.
thanks!!
11th Annual Minnesota Garlic Festival!
this saturday, august 13, the 11th annual minnesota garlic festival will take place in hutchinson. hawk’s brain garlic will be there and will be offering over 30 varieties of garlic. come and enjoy the very festive atmosphere. eat garlic chip cookies (offered by yours truly) and garlic ice cream. you will NOT be disappointed. check out the festival’s website at http://www.sfa-mn.org/garlicfest/.
see you there!
this garlic is now cured, cleaned and awaiting you!
red wing farmers market-2016
well, it’s june now!! and garlic scapes are ready to eat. last year this fine lad helped me pick those fine edibles. this year two lovely fairies picked them for me while i was out of town. thank goodness. thousands at a pop!
come to the market this saturday, june 25th for some scapes. along with freshly made garlic powder, shallot pepper and good old rhubarb.
see you there!!
january resolutions
it is common at the beginning of a new year to make resolutions. to test oneself and see if follow-through can actually occur. i only made one necessary one this time around: to do stretches for my tight muscles on a daily basis. so far, so good. but last week i added a new challenge to myself–to post on the hawk’s brain website on a monthly basis. wow! so here i am, on the last day of january, following through on my new challenge. and once i get my photos uploaded, i’ll add them, too. so until february, stay warm and stretch!
ren fest change of location!
for those of you journeying out to the renaissance festival looking for garlic, we are in our old spot over by the pavilion where the jousting occurs. we are not in the shepard’s green where i reported earlier.
should be a GREAT day there. come on out!
minnesota renaissance festival: saturday september 5th
hawk’s brain will be at the minnesota renaissance festival this saturday only, september 5th.
please come see us in a new location in the shepard’s green area.
look for the “garlic-garlic-garlic” banner!
The crop is GREAT this year!!
The garlic is better than ever in Minnesota this year.
With the Tenth Annual Minnesota Garlic Festival coming up this Saturday, August 15th, the 15 garlic vendors scheduled to be there will be strutting their stuff! hawk’s brain garlic included.
We will be at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival over Labor Day weekend. Susan and her garlic will specifically be there on Saturday, September 5th.
We will be at our local Red Wing Farmers’ Market most Saturdays (sans the 5th September) starting August 22.
Feel free to email through this website to confirm if and where we will be.
Yum…….I just finished baking garlic chip cookies for the Garlic Festival….yum…..
time to scape reality…
the garlic is up and looking better than it has in years. as solstice approaches, the scapes are up and doing their thing. several five gallon buckets of scapes have been picked. hawks brain will be at the red wing farmers market on saturday, june 20th, selling those wonderful green garlic curls. come on down and try some cream cheese scape spread. yummy!
hawk’s brain has been here all along. garlic is good this year in 2014!
thanks to those of you who have kept in touch with me through this forgotten web site. we are alive and well in red wing, minnesota, and happy to report that the garlic is healthy, harvested, and hanging to dry…awaiting to be eaten and enjoyed.
important dates for you to know:
** minnesota garlic festival–august 9th at mcleod county fairgrounds in hutchinson. a good time, always.
** red wing farmers’ market–august 16th and selected following saturdays.
** minnesota renaissance festival–september 6 and 7–a change from the last couple of years.
now, please hound me to keep this up to date as it is important and not so bad to do. i’ll add photos in a bit. see you this summer and/or fall!!
There’s still more garlic, winter garlic chores, phytoplasma bytoplasma ugh.
If you are checking the website, then boy do I have a deal for you. I have beautiful garlic left over from planting. Let me know if you want a few bulbs. They are nice little gifts. Email hawk’s brain on the Contact Us page…while supplies last.
Time to make garlic powder as the season changes. And the roasting of many cloves at a time. Yum in the tum.
Keep an ear out on the phytoplasma concern in the midwest garlic crops. Should be interesting….
First the Minnesota Garlic Festival, next the Minnesota Renaissance Festival
The Seventh Annual Minnesota Garlic Festival last Saturday was a BLAST! and a HIT!! We had a ball and it looked like everyone else attending did also.
If you missed us there and need that special garlic, come see us at the Renaissance Festival THIS weekend, August 18 and 19th. Our booth is in the same place–near the Pavilion. Watch the spaghetti eating contest while purchasing your fresh home-grown Minnesota garlic.
This Minnesota garlic is ready to eat!
Please join us at the events listed below. Shoot us an email on our contact us page if you’d like to pre-order any garlic. It’s fresh and juicy! We can ship anywhere.
- Sixth annual Minnesota Garlic Festival Saturday, August13 at the McLeod County Fairgrounds in Hutchinson. If you haven’t been, you should come. See link on side for more information. The chef demos look great.
- Minnesota Renaissance Festival on August 20 and 21 in Shakopee. Look for the “garlic garlic garlic” banner.
- Red Wing Farmers’ Market in later August and September. See link on side for more information.
Working with garlic is a delight.
There are 28 varieties this year to try, each with its own flavor and delightful juiciness. And who said all garlic is the same. Ha.
For those who read the Post Bulletin continued…
May brings more growth. These photos are from the Hager garden at Windbeam Farm. Friends share their land with me in return for a year’s worth of garlic eating. Not a bad trade, huh? Paul made a window of opportunity. Check out their website on the side. Great place for weddings and gatherings.
May also brought morels and spring garlic. Both grilled to perfection by Tyler.
Spring Garlic is garlic that came up from last year…perhaps didn’t get harvested and wintered over.
It’s a nice treat this time of year.
Then comes the season of scapes—the flower shoot of the hardneck garlic. We had an abundance this year. Sold them at the Red Wing Farmer’s’ Market and gave to friends. Scapes hold us over until the real thing is ready to eat. There are many philosophies on when to break the scapes off. I tend to harvest them when I see them. If kept on, they tend to make for a smaller bulb of garlic. You want the energy of the plant to go to the bulb underground and not the flower of the scape. And make sure you eat them and not just compost them.
The scape tends to straighten itself out and the bulbil will open. All varieties are unique in the shape of their scape, their curl, and the size of their bulbil.
We have had plenty of rain in Minnesota this summer. The garlic and the weeds have grown tall and beautiful. Harvesting has been a challenge in dodging the rain. Ideally, one doesn’t want rain for the two weeks or so prior to harvest. No luck with that this summer. But the garlic is beautiful.
The Inchelium Red got up to four inches!
Garlic has got to “cure” for 2-3 weeks in order for it to dry and develop the garlic taste we have all grown to love. This is also weather dependent as the more humid it is, the longer it takes to dry. Make sure you don’t have the garlic hanging in sunshine. You want air flow and no light. That is often easier said than done. Our garage gets taken over. This is the barn on The Farm of my brother and sis-in-law. The hanging garlic is kept out of direct light yet has air flow.
Each twine is holding about a dozen garlic. Keeping track of the varieties is a task in and of itself. Each twine has a label with the name of the garlic and color coded to show whether they are for sale/give away or if they shall be replanted.
What a treat it is to grow garlic on two beautiful farms. This is my favorite place on The Farm.
I’ll sort my garlic while taking in the view and the breeze and the solitude.
For those who read the Rochester Post Bulletin article:
I shall try to update you with a season of garlic through photos. I am working on improving my blogging skills as I feel it is important to share knowledge. And who doesn’t want to learn how to grow garlic in Minnesota? Make sure you check out the Minnesota Garlic Festival coming up in a few weeks. See link on side bar. Always a good time. And we’ll have plenty of garlic along with us!
In March, it doesn’t look like there’s much going on, but, look a little closer and you’ll see a little something down under. That’s when it starts getting exciting!
And then over the next weeks what happens:
The garlic is getting so big that I can’t use my hand to show how tall it is.
In April the best thing to hit the garden happened. And what could be more beautiful than your grandbaby sitting in the garlic patch!
More coming soon…
Where has she been? What’s up this winter?
Good grief…the woman leaves us in the crunch of garlic last year. I have no excuse, other than life itself.
The serious test plot.
This plot has fifty-one test varieties of porcelain, marbled purple stripe, purple stripe, and glazed purple stripe. It is the first year that I have grown these, given to me by Cannon Falls Joel. I feel there is pressure to make sure that they all survive and are taken care of like a real scientist would. Thank goodness they all came up this spring otherwise I’d have to admit to Joel that I have failed the job already. It is a happy feeling one gets…like a mother seeing all the wee ones growing so strong, each garlic having it’s own look and characteristic.
What a couple of weeks does.
These little beauties have grown so much. They are much stronger than they were in the last posting. Walking through the garden it is easy to see how different each variety is, even at this height. I am hoping that we get some rain as this is when it’s needed. 
One of the garlic gardens on the Farm.
It’s hard to tell, but they are there…just small enough to not show in this photo. Nancy, my sister-in-law, has worked very hard saving her old barn on their farm. It’s a gem. I feel very fortunate to garden here.
Check it out—It’s up!
A trip out to the Farm on April 9th made me very happy. The little beauties were up through the straw and looking for sun! Randy and I had to rake some of the straw off of it as it was matted down and wet and some of the finer varities had trouble poking up through it. Taking the straw off is always a gamble as there still could be a frost that could injure it. 
Garlic Powder for Sale
The Go-Girls in Red Wing had a fundraiser on March 7, 2009. I brought in garlic powder to sell…mostly to see how it would go over and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. 
Grandfather of Minnesota Garlic
Joel Girardin and his wife Colleen met me at Norton’s Restaurant in Red Wing early March to celebrate his birthday. Joel is known at the “Grandfather of Minnesota Garlic.” He has been growing garlic for around 15 years and at one time grew close to 200 varieties. How he kept track of all of them is beyond me. He is an adviser to Seed Saver Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, and has received their Oak Medallion award. He and Colleen live right here in Goodhue County outside of Cannon Falls. They are two of the most giving people I know.
There’s nothing like talking garlic, eating good food and laughing hard. This is what you do off-season as a garlic grower.
Sustainable Agriculture Conference-February 21, 2009
For eighteen years the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota has been holding conferences. On a nice Saturday in February, 450 people came to St. Olaf to listen to speakers, share ideas, and eat good food. Joel Salatin (from the famed Omnivore’s Dilemma) was the keynote speaker. Jerry Ford from the Crow Wing River Chapter was a major worker-bee of the conference. He is the stinky creator of our wonderful Minnesota Garlic Festival. Next year’s sustainable ag conference is scheduled for February 20, 2010–place to be determined. Mark your calendars and don’t miss out on great conversation and thoughts for a healthier world.
Jerry Ford, garlic festival organizer extraordinaire, and Susan (me) at the 18th Annual Sustainable Ag Conference in Northfield, MN.
Garlic tasting party-what else is there to do on Valentine’s Day?
On Valentine’s Day we hosted a garlic tasting party. It really wasn’t because it was Valentine’s Day, more that it was the only Saturday available to have one. Eleven of us tasted four varieties: Northern White, Creole Red, Ajo Rojo, and Silver White. We started out with hummus, moved onto great home canned tomato sauce with pasta, delicious salad with dressing, alla tamen fillet of cod roll-ups, and topped it off with chocolate tofu pudding with garlic flavored whipped cream (yah..you got it…garlic flavored whipped cream. To be honest, I was the only one who really liked it). Each food item was eaten four times with a variety represented in each food item.
We had adjectives describing the garlics’ tastes such as bitter, strong, tangy, zingy, mellow, zowie, raw and intense, piquant, good and warm, zip up of heat, most unique, mild, bland. Quite the crew for getting into the descriptions, huh? No one knew the varieties until after we were done eating.
The winner?? Drum roll please…..Ajo Rojo! It was a great evening of eating and laughing. My Valentine Randy’s and my favorite was Creole Red. We’ll do it again next year as we’ll have new varieties to taste. We really don’t need reasons to gather and eat garlic, do we?
Did I take food photos of the garlic food itself? No..forgot..food too good.
Mark your calendars…
NEW LOCATION! The Fourth Annual Minnesota Garlic Festival will be on August 15, 2009, at the McLeod County Fair Grounds in Hutchinson from 10am-7pm. Check out the Festival’s website at http://www.sfa-mn.org/garlicfest/index.html
Hawk’s brain garlic will be there. Make sure you look for us.
Sweet Willa at the 2008 Garlic Festival
Cold in January
As I look at the rest of my garlic that is of unknown variety, I realize it is time to finish it up and make it into garlic powder. But maybe I’ll wait until the temperature on the front porch is above zero degrees. I’ve learned from Cannon Falls Joel that you can’t make powder in the house–gets a little too fragrant.
The making of garlic powder