About hawk’s brain garlic
We grow garlic in and around Red Wing, Minnesota, down in the southeast corner. We are lucky to garden where we do… it’s down right beautiful. And our friends and family support us by sharing their land and barns with us.
Even though the name is fairly new, we have been growing garlic for ourselves and friends for over 25 years. We’ve grown to the point that we are selling our garlic at the local Red Wing Farmers’ Market, the Minnesota Garlic Festival, and one weekend in September at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival called “The Italian” weekend.
hawk’s brain is slowly adding on varieties…now growing 25 for sale. We also have inherited a test plot from Joel Girardin of Cannon Falls of Purple Stripe, Glazed Purple Stripe, Marbled Purple Stripe, and Porcelain. Thank you, Joel!
What’s in a name?
I had someone ask me about the variety of garlic that I have “….eagle something?” I knew that she was referring to the name I’ve given my garlic “enterprise.”
Years ago I was listening to a program on the radio about the hawk migration in Duluth. The way I heard it was that the hawk’s brain is kind of translucent–that it can sense the change in the daylight hours and knows when it is time to migrate south. I thought to myself…wow..it’s just like my garlic! Garlic senses the shortening of daylight hours around summer solstice. It then stops putting it’s energy into the tall greens and puts it into the growing of the bulb underground. Now how cool is that? Hawk’s brain garlic.