From us at Angelica Organic Farm to all of you and your loved ones...

SEASONS' GREETINGS whatever you are celebrating at this time of year!!

Wishing you a safe and enjoyable holiday period, whether you are holidaying or mostly working and may 2012 be a wonderful, peaceful and prosperous year for you. xxx

Hello garlic lovers...GOOD NEWS...the 2011 GARLIC HARVEST is almost complete! 

We are very pleased with this year's haul, as it looks, smells and tastes fantastic :)! We can't wait to share it with you. 

The garlic we harvested last week is curing very well...a vast improvement on last year's pre-harvest and drying conditions we must say! Harvest and post-harvest time is always a little nerve wracking, especially after nursing the garlicky 'babies' for 8-9 months. 

Garlic hanging to cure.

It's also a very hectic month or so for our small team, from harvest, to curing, then feverishly cleaning it up for dispatching the first surge of online orders and for our farmers' markets.

So, the opening of the ONLINE GARLIC SHOP is just around the corner and very soon all our newsletter subscribers will received prompt notification of the online sales commencing (Quickly subscribe on the right side of this page if you still need to join the newsletter list!). 

Garlic updates will also occur on this homepage and the relevant garlic shop pages on this site, when available.

We are hoping the garlic will be well enough cured and enough of it cleaned up for sales to start prior to Christmas...hopefully in time for a garlicky Xmas, BUT please understand you 'keen beans', that we can not promise it will be ready and dispatched by that time. We will do our best, believe me, but we can't make guarantees and some of it is still up to Nature...AND we WILL let you know a.s.a.p.. Also, we won't be able to make garlic braids this season, so no garlic braids will be available, sorry.

3 typical bulb sizes: each with a sample of their respective cloves. 

As a reminder to our regular garlic customers and as new info perhaps for our more recent customers, the garlic is currently curing (drying), prior to being cleaned up and ready for sales. We maintain a good air flow around the curing bulbs and monitor their drying process closely, but depending on the weather (heat & humidity mainly) the curing process takes at least 2 weeks. Adequate curing is essential for the longevity of your garlic, as the drying prevents mould and rot setting in, the firming up of the cloves and drying of the skins protects the garlic from bruising, also preventing disease. Proper natural curing (as opposed to 'rapid drying' used in large-scale production) rather than putting it through sudden extreme change, helps maintain the garlic's integrity and curing with the 'necks' (stems) intact has also been shown to vastly reduce the occurrence of disease and therefore aid longer garlic storage. After curing and before sending the garlic out to you, it is all trimmed and cleaned of detritus and dirt by hand, bulb-by-bulb, to further help storage longevity and as part of our care and quality assurance and our commitment to providing you with a final product that is appealing and easy to handle.

Otherwise, the rest of the new produce season is burgeoning...although still up & down, weather has begun warming up here. Some early leafy greens are ready. The woody herbs are lush again. Compost is still being turned and the ready mix is spread prior to plantings. The 'bare' earth not still under green manure coverage, is alive with new vegetable crop growth. Our seedling plants are mostly in the field now and new crop seeding continues on a regular basis for months to come. A lot of weeding is going on now too (rain + warmth = even more WEEDS!) A lot of effort and planning is afoot towards an abundant imminent new growing season.

The 2011-2012 Red Rocambole garlic is looking great folks! We have started to 'string' some warm days together here and there, so the garlic has begun flowering with its scapes and plumping up or setting its bulbs/cloves.

We still can't be specific about exactly when garlic harvest will start, but if we keep getting mostly mild-warm weather (i.e. less major temp dips and sun-less days like we have still been getting too often!), it should be able to begin end of November/early December, all going well, followed by the curing and cleaning up period prior to sales commencing. 

PLEASE NOTE: We do not take pre-harvest orders (paid or unpaid for). The online shop will be opened once the 2011 garlic is ready for dispatch only.

We'll of course send out a 'garlic alert' newsletter to our subscribers (subscribe right-hand side of this page) once the online shop is about to open and post harvest and sales update info here on the website (homepage and garlic shop pages) when the time comes.