My eyes may have watered a tiny bit as the students began streaming in last Thursday—a staggered but consistent stream. The garlic had cured and it was well past the time to take it down, clean it up, sort it and box it. Before last week, we weren’t exactly sure how we would sell every pound of garlic we harvested last July, but God has His ways of making things happen. We had gotten rid of roughly 25% of it, but we still had a couple hundred pounds to sell. This was when Ruth Degraaff, one of our regular volunteers and CSA members, spoke with the produce manager at the local grocery store, Town and Country. When following up with her contact, they were very excited to take all the garlic we could sell them—as well as all of our bell peppers and the Anaheim peppers grown from plants started by last year’s biology class.
We were excited to have it sold, but hours of work lay ahead to get it ready for market. Also, this was right when we were madly harvesting the last of the produce before a hard frost would soon arrive. After a plea for any extra student workers available, we were excited when Mr. Stuart and one of his students unexpectedly arrived to help us complete the harvest the last day before the frost! This idea of lending us their own student workers inspired Mrs. Mathis, who not only sent all of her workers over that Thursday, but spread the word to other faculty and staff; that’s when they started streaming in. One after another. First we had two, then five and at one point I believe there were eight. Some could only stay for 30 minutes, but some for 1.5 hrs. I remember one student even stating, “this is fun!” I was not only excited and relieved at the same time, but also touched by what I felt was a rally around the farm to get the through the last long days of the garlic harvest.
But this isn’t the end of the story. The following day, many students were spending time doing various community service activities and Mr. Lawrence had arranged for us to have a few student volunteers in the afternoon. Again they were lined up on benches, quickly burning through the boxes of garlic that would have taken us days to complete on our own. By the end of Friday we had all but one large box of garlic cleaned and sorted! It gets even better: Sunday afternoon we had three students come help as they needed extra work hours. They not only finished the last box, but we were able to break up nearly half the bulbs needed to get the garlic planting done this week, before yet another snowfall arrived! I’m excited to share that we currently have half of the garlic delivered and being sold at Town and Country, with the rest scheduled to be delivered within the next week. We also completed planting the garlic while weather was still good- 1.5 times the garlic we planted last year and in half the time! What a RELIEF!
I cannot express how grateful I am to the students and staff at MEA, for their help and support during a very busy time, and responding to our request for help above and beyond my wildest expectations! Thank you for being a part of Bear Canyon Farm.