The Garlic Farmers

Today I'm talking with Christi at The Garlic Farmers.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. This morning I'm talking to Christi at The Garlic Farmers. Good morning, Christi. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm great. How are you? I'm all right. Did you guys get a little bit of rain like an hour ago? I do not think it looks like it. Like it could, but we did not.

00:29
I'm wondering if today will bring some rain. Yeah, we got a sprinkle here and I'm only about half an hour from you. So yes, I'm near New Prague and New Market. Are you by St. Peter? Yeah, we're in the store. Okay. So all right. So tell me all about what you do. Well, we live between New Prague and New Market and we live on 10 acres and we've been here for

00:54
24 years and we've always loved gardening, I guess growing up in 4-H. And my husband's from Iowa and his grandparents and parents farmed for a while. And so when we moved here, it just kind of made sense to have a garden and that was mainly to feed our family and just really enjoying things like salsa. And my husband was, for years, grew tons of tomatoes and we still do. But at

01:22
At the beginning, he would make hundreds of jars of salsa and juice for chili and just eat all year and give away and enjoy the fruits of the labor. It ends up being more work than you always think, but it always feels like an accomplishment. And so we have six kids and I always loved it in summers. And when the harvest started coming in, then I could buy less groceries, you know, if we could have our own.

01:51
cucumbers and BLTs and make chili, but take the tomatoes right out of the garden and that kind of thing. And then about three or four years ago, I think maybe four actually, kind of a funny story. I saw a bill on our dresser and it was just a handwritten receipt really. And it said, garlic, $252. And I said to him,

02:17
wait, what's happening here? What did you buy? You bought garlic? Like I thought maybe to put in his salsa or, and he had said some, you know, talked a little bit about researching growing garlic, but I was like, wow, he's serious. And if you know my husband, he does everything big. So I wasn't joking when I said a couple hundred tomato plants, a couple hundred pepper plants, 150 pepper plants, like he.

02:40
He is very diligent and hardworking, and he has a day job, of course, but at night he likes to have something to do. He never sits on the couch, maybe on Christmas, I'm trying to guess. If he ever sits on our couch, he's just very active. And it's taught our kids, they're now grown, but our youngest is 16, but taught our kids about work too. They're hard workers, and they got to spend a lot of time with us outside, which is what you do when you have 10 acres, there's always a project.

03:10
But the garlic thing started where he went to somebody's house and bought garlic from them. And then the next year we went to the garlic festival and bought some more garlic. And it really is fun to grow because it's not easy, it's work and the level we're at, it's a lot of work. But if you just have a small patch, I think people really enjoy it because you can put it in the ground and then just let it be. And then you have to deal with it starting in the.

03:37
in the summer really, you know with weeding and stuff there's a little bit but I don't even know how many bulbs and cloves he planted that year, I suppose a few hundred. And then last year we harvested 5,000 and this year we harvested about 15,000 bulbs. So it has grown quickly and turned into a little bit of a business in that now people

04:02
want our garlic and are coming back for the second year. Last year was the first year we sold, lots of repeat customers. A few said, no, your garlic grew so well, I don't need any, I'm just replanting. Because every year we replant about 20 to 25% of our crop and then you end up with really strong, I'm not sure how it's exactly explained, but like a strong lineage if you keep replanting your garlic and then we sell some, we eat some, we give a lot away.

04:31
Um, and it's, uh, also been a whole nother aspect of it. He, um, we have a freeze dryer, which we kind of bought also just to start preserving our own stuff and freeze drying very different than dehydrating. Um, I mean, dehydrating is awesome too, but freeze drying takes out even more of the moisture and technically you hear of people, you know, you can freeze dry.

04:56
mashed potatoes and gravy, lasagna. I mean, I know a gal who has a thousand meals in her basement, freeze dried, and I think she does it for fun and kind of just to have food any time, but you could take it camping into the boundary waters. But we do it so that we can make garlic, freeze dried garlic scapes and freeze dried basically garlic powder. And then my husband developed four different spices. So we are...

05:25
We were at the Prior Lake Farmers Market on Saturday, last Saturday, we'll be there the next three Saturdays hopefully, selling the spices and we have our garlic there too, but people were really intrigued with the spices and we had samples and we actually had it on popcorn and in a chicken dip and people loved it. They just loved the popcorn idea because it was so different to put garlic on popcorn. Have you ever tried that? I have.

05:53
that and parmesan cheese. Yes, or ranch seasoning. Yes, both. Yep. So, I mean, that's a little bit of the history. Our kids help us, our friends and family help us. I always say, you'll never have to buy garlic again. My sister grows onions in New Ulm and we grow garlic. And I said, I'm perfectly fine never growing another onion and I'll give you all the garlic you want and we trade. So that's kind of fun. And it's...

06:21
You know, it's been a labor of love, I guess, because it is a lot of work when you get to 15,000 bulbs. Yes. Okay, so I have I have a couple things that I need to tell you and then we can keep talking. I have talked to two people in the last three months about garlic. So I don't necessarily want to get into how you grow it because I've really talked about that a lot lately. Okay. But are you growing the hard neck or the soft neck kind? Great question. We have, I think, nine or 10 hard neck.

06:51
and only one soft neck called a Chilium, which is a very tasty one and it lasts, they say six to nine months, even a year if you store it properly. So people say the soft necks are harder to grow. Chad hasn't had any trouble really. He puts extra straw on top because we live in Minnesota just for the melting and freezing in the winter and just the extra protection for the mulching, but we put straw on top.

07:18
So nine, mainly hardneck for us, one soft neck. Okay, because I was told that hardnecks do better in Minnesota by someone who's been growing garlic forever. And we tried growing softneck and it did not go well, so we're gonna try hardnecks here. Sure. We have some coming, I think, and it's gonna be here in October. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, and we're gonna get them in and see how they do. Awesome.

07:47
So what I kind of wanted to talk about is I love garlic and not because it's great to eat and to cook with, but because it's such an elegant tuber. It's so beautiful. It is. And I'm not the only one on earth who thinks this because people have done oil paintings of garlic. I believe it. And even there's a garlic festival. Are you familiar with that?

08:15
in Hutchinson. I am. We have not been. We've been a couple times. I've heard it. I've heard about it. Yeah, it's really a fun day. I mean, just seeing all of these things people have done with garlic. But when you said how pretty it is, if this wasn't an audio, I bought a $40 braided garlic thing because I just thought it was so cool and I wanted to hang it in our shed where people come to buy garlic. And I'm not saying that it's ours. I tell them I didn't do this. I bought it.

08:40
It's so pretty. She does smaller cloves at the top and bigger cloves at the bottom and it's this beautiful braid. It really actually makes sense because you could just kind of cut one off every time you need garlic hanging in your kitchen as an ornament. So I believe it. I have not seen an oil painting of garlic, but I bet that would be really pretty. And when you crack open the cloves and some of ours are really bright red, there's a Spanish Roja and they are just beautiful. And I say that every time I look at them. I'm like those are just beautiful.

09:10
Yeah, they say that you eat with your eyes first. And I, every dish that's ever been presented to me or I've ever cooked, that's different colors or a different shape or a different texture. I'm just like, it's so beautiful. I don't even want to eat it yet. I just want to take it in with my eyes first. I agree and it makes you want to eat it. Yeah. So do you like garlic? Like do you like to eat garlic? I love garlic actually.

09:39
I mean, I think with all the years of Chad making salsa, even my kids have a very strong, would you call it a tolerance for hot stuff. And garlic, there's some mild ones also, but they always have liked a lot of garlic and probably starting with the salsa. But I put our spice and cloves of garlic chopped up in.

10:06
pretty much everything. I mean, if I make a quesadilla, I put on our Facebook page, we have a Garlic Farmers and Greenhouse Facebook page, and I made a quesadilla with our homemade pesto, which had garlic in it, but then, you know, more garlic spice on top, and then just meat and cheese and the quesadilla maker. And it just seems like it brings out the flavor, makes everything taste better. I mean, I put it on eggs. And again, I'm sometimes talking about our spice because I don't always...

10:33
open up a clover, you know, peel a clove of garlic, but you know, soup, salad, sandwiches, any kind of meat, chicken, steak, hamburger. It's really, it's just an easy way to add so much extra flavor. Yeah, I always say you have to measure garlic with your heart. Yes, true. Yep. So what I wanted to touch on is that.

11:00
People think that garlic just goes in like spaghetti sauce. And there's so many things you can do with it. You can make a garlic paste that you can have on toast with avocado, if that's how you like your toast. Or you can use it, the paste on like homemade garlic bread with butter, and that's fabulous. You can roast garlic in your oven and it caramelizes it and it brings out the natural sugars in it.

11:27
There's just so many things you can do with garlic and people like, eh, garlic. And I'm like, no, you do not understand yet. You're so right. And I always tell people, uh, they'll come to buy garlic to plant and maybe they haven't grown any before and I'm like, well, do you want some to eat? I really feel like every family, especially for the health benefits and just having your food taste amazing could go through a minimum of a bulb a week.

11:54
I mean, honestly, you can put it like you said, you can roast it, you can, I had it on sourdough bread last night. We've even figured out you can put it in the air fryer. You don't even have to turn your oven on. So if you put cloves in the air fryer and then you just squeeze them onto bread, onto a cracker. So yummy. And we need to think outside of the Italian dishes and put it on your salad.

12:17
I was just reading about one of ours, I think it was called Georgia Crystal. It's mild enough. It said just cut it up raw and put it on your salad. And my mom was just telling me she owns Barton Pumpkins. I don't know if you know my mom, Fran Barton. She's so amazing. I do not. I'll have to hit her up to be on the podcast. You'll have to. She's always into health benefits and eating from the earth.

12:43
And she was saying when you cut open a clove of garlic, and I just heard this yesterday, so I need to look it up, let it sit for like, I don't know, did she say 30 seconds or something? Let the, right away put it into your pan. Let the nutritional benefits, she knew how it all worked, but she said let it sit for a little bit, a minute or two, and let some of that release before you put it in your pan to fry it. And I was like, oh wow, now I gotta look that up.

13:12
The other thing I was going to say is the ease of it. Just have it on your counter. Just get used to using it. And not wait until it's some special, people are coming over for dinner, and I'm going to get some garlic to put in this pasta. And that is what I love about our spices, is I can just shake them right on, right there, and have them easy. But people chop it up and put it, and freeze it, and have it just accessible any time of the year.

13:39
And if you store it properly, you know, four to six months for some of them, six to nine, you can keep it in a cool, dry place in a pantry, well ventilated, not in a plastic bag or anything, a mesh bag or just so it can have some air. We also make, and I've just done it for friends and for us, honey garlic. Have you heard of fermented honey? Garlic? I have. I have not tried making it. So tell me about it.

14:09
Well, we happen to have bees too, just to help pollinate all of our apple trees and pear trees and stuff. But I would take local honey, you know, somebody who's not honey from the store really. And then you peel the cloves of garlic and put in, fill up a, I do like a smaller mason jar, you know, a pint. And you could you do even smaller, what's a half pint or whatever.

14:33
and put honey in there and maybe not quite full because it will kind of bubble over. So maybe an inch from the top and then I mean 30-40 cloves whatever fits I guess pack them in there and then every day you need to open the jar and kind of let the release the bubbles basically and that is so it doesn't overflow and roughly about 30 days this is how I do it. I guess I'm not really following a recipe. I read the recipe and then just have been doing it.

15:03
And then over time, the garlic, after like 30 days, you don't need to burp the jar anymore. We call it burping the jar. Yeah. And the garlic will start to taste like candy. And even my family was like, no, it won't mom. I'm like, no, actually it really turns to like, not very garlicky, more sweet. And you're getting the benefits of garlic and honey. So you can drizzle that honey over your salad or a pear and a cracker and a piece of cheese, you know, a little appetizer as for the health benefits, but also.

15:32
Some people say, well, take the piece of garlic when you feel sick. I say every day, even if the cloves are cut in half, take a little piece of the garlic clove and eat it every day, just chew on it. If that's not you and you don't like it, then put it in something, hide it somewhere, I guess, and just to stay well. And I almost think it'd be hard to get sick over the winter if you ate a clove of garlic a day. I mean, I can't make that claim, but I think it would be an awesome experiment, you know, take...

16:00
30 people and say I'll commit to this and see if anybody gets sick because the health benefits are so, the vitamin C and vitamin B all giving you immune boost and just feeling better hopefully. Yeah. Does garlic have antioxidant properties? So it does. Antioxidant and antimicrobial, which is, you know, double whammy.

16:27
I was even reading that it can be good for allergies. Some people take garlic pills, but I would think eating garlic should help too. I mean, you can't get much stronger than eating a clove of garlic. So it really acts like a supplement. And it also said manganese and selenium, which all are good for immune boost, plus vitamin C and vitamin B. And we always hear about vitamin C for health. So...

16:55
It's kind of a hidden secret. And after reading about this, I decided we need a whole page on our, we just did our website. It's very new, theg But we need, I told my husband this morning, we need a whole page on the health benefits. Because, you know, they, I mean, they can't make claims, but they say healthy heart, lower blood pressure, immune support, AIDS and digestion. I mean, the list is like, it's like it's magic stuff. Yeah.

17:22
I think it is. And again, that's why we measure garlic with our heart and not with a recipe. I swear the reason I have not been sick in over four years is because number one, I don't really hang out with very many people, so I'm not exposed to a lot. But we eat tomatoes, some form of tomato at least three times a week. And we eat garlic in everything. Well, great. So I think it's so awesome. What a testimony.

17:52
That's fabulous. And so people who don't garden, who don't ever plan to plant garlic, you know, really should plan to eat it and get it incorporated into more of their meals. And I was had a real eye opener. Have you watched the movie Rotten on Netflix? Not yet, but it's on the list. Yes, it's very eye opening. And they say and I am not exactly sure, but I think it was 70 to 80% of the garlic that we eat here from the store is from from China.

18:22
And I mean, garlic originated a lot of it in China and Russia and different places, Germany. But they show in the movie, they actually show it where prisoners are peeling the garlic and they're forced to peel it like, I can't remember if it was 12 or 14 hours a day. They have a quota they have to fill. Their hands are like just raw and like their fingers are just ruined. And then they put it, their teeth are too because they...

18:52
They bite the corner of the clove to get it to peel, so they have to peel fast, so they can peel faster. This is all in the movie. I mean, I'm not making any of this up, but if that's not a testimony to find a local farmer and buy some garlic and not take your chances on having any of that in your house. Yes, anything you can get local from people you know and trust is a great thing. And that actually leads me to my next comment about all of this.

19:20
How freaking lucky are we to live in this area, this 50-mile circle of Newpreg and Jordan, Prior Lake and Lesor and St. Peter and this whole little, I don't know, it's not a corner, but it's a segment of Minnesota where we can get pretty much anything from a local grower. I agree. We are so blessed. I mean, you don't have to go far to find grass-fed beef and eggs and...

19:49
I mean, even I can drive somewhere three miles and I, as long as I have change in my, we used to have chickens, but as long as I have change in my car, I can find, I like supporting whatever egg stand I see by the road, you know, and many, many different produce stands and we are very lucky. Honey, everybody knows someone who sells honey. And we take it for granted because you'll see people post on Facebook, I live in Minneapolis, like how far I'm gonna have to go for raw milk or how far I can't find.

20:17
This or that, they really rely on the farmer's market where people come in from the suburbs and the outer to bring them vegetables and fresh things. We can support, I love supporting local. I mean, that's again, why I bought the braid of garlic for $40 at the garlic festival, even though we have thousands of bulbs of garlic, but I'm like, I want to support this gal who worked this hard.

20:45
on braiding this and I can only imagine the work and it's nothing I can ever do so I'm buying it. For sure. We had friends over this weekend and they have goats and they usually have goat milk and she was going to bring me some and she was like I'm so sorry but it didn't work out that we actually got a lot of milk from the goats this year but I was going to bring you some and I was like darn it because I've had the goats milk from their goats and it's fabulous. So next spring I'm going to make sure that I

21:15
cut a deal with her and be like, if I put money on this ahead of time, can I reserve goat milk every couple of weeks? Right. That's a great idea. Yeah. So it's just, I don't think about it very often because I'm so used to being able to find people to buy raw milk from or goat's milk from or produce or beef or pork or chicken. I don't think about it every day.

21:41
But then I get talking with people like you and I'm like, how freaking blessed are we that we live in an area where we can do this and it's not a hassle to find it. Exactly, and it makes you just feel better. I mean, not only health-wise, but just mentally that you were able to either support someone or help support yourself or feed your family. I guess I realize that sometimes when a friend will come over and help us.

22:06
peel garlic because even once you pick the garlic, you have to dry it and cut off the stems and peel it and all of that. And a friend came over and helped just peel off one layer of the skin just to make it not so dirty and to get the dirt off the end basically. Anyway, and so when she left, I gave her honey and garlic of course, and we have apples and we have pears and we make apple cider. And if somebody's not used to that, it's like.

22:33
They felt like they went to the grocery store, but when they leave, you're just able to give them things that you grew, and this year, tomatoes aren't doing that great, or I would have loaded her up with tomatoes, but it's just kind of fun to be able to give a neighbor a gift or a friend of really just stuff you grew that you don't think of, and some of it, the apples just grow themselves, so you can kind of share the wealth and enjoy your harvest with other people.

23:03
We did not have good luck with our garden this year. I don't want to talk about it. I know. Terrible. I've talked so much about it on the podcast this summer. I feel like I'm just bitching at this point about how bad it was. Point being, last summer was the first summer we really had our farm stand on our property open all summer long. It made me feel so good when people would pull in the driveway and they'd see the little open sign and they would open the door and go in.

23:29
look at what we had and I'd watch out the window and they would go out like two bags of stuff that they bought that we grew. That's so fabulous. And like, I don't know, I was always like kind of teary about it. I was like, this is so great. I love this. You made their day and then you were able to benefit from it a little bit too. So it's all, it's all great. Yeah. And the funny thing is it wasn't about the money that was being left in the container in the farm stand. That made me teary.

23:59
It was the fact that we grew this stuff and people like it enough to want to buy it. Exactly. It's like, it's a sense of accomplishment. Yeah. It was just wonderful. And we haven't even had the farm stand open this summer as we've had nothing to put in it. I agree. Our 16 year old has special needs and he is such a great helper and he loves to help. And what you just said reminded me of the little bit of a greenhouse that we do have in the spring. And he.

24:29
filled so many pots and we'd stand and talk at the wagon full of dirt filling pots. And he'd help my husband or I plant and water and it was just such an accomplishment. Same thing when people would, mom, someone's here buying plants. He just loved it when they would come and he'd see them walk to their car, he'd help them. And our other kids help too, but he's here more than everybody else. They have jobs and things going on. So it's been, I see what you mean because we can.

24:57
we can relate to having people stop in. And then you get to talk to them, that's the best part. I mean, the people who've come even in the last two weeks to buy garlic, I'll just say to my husband, oh my gosh, this guy and his wife live on 41 acres in Webster and they do this and this and they have maple syrup. And like, you just learn so much about people. Just from a short conversation, and especially if they're buying to grow, they usually have chickens or some other thing going on at their place. So it's really fascinating to learn from.

25:27
from people and I would never meet them if they weren't stopping over to get garlic. Yeah, that's why I love the podcast because I get to talk to people all over the world about what they're doing. It's so much fun. Awesome. Yeah, I want to listen to more of your episodes. I'm excited. Well there's over 150, so it may take you all to get through them. And my mom would be a good one. Barton Pumpkins, she would be a great one.

25:53
I will look her up and message her and be like, hi, your daughter, Christy said I should talk to you. Definitely. And she's between us. She's by Union Hills. So she's here too. She's in this area. Okay, cool. Yeah, I feel like I'm either talking to people in this 30 or 40 mile radius from Losor or I'm talking to people in Virginia and the Carolinas. That seems to be the places I'm talking to people from most. And that's totally fine with me. I like a lot of people. But you are right there. There are many, many people, right?

26:22
right by us. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. It's almost frightening how many people are doing these kind of things in this little bubble. And I don't... Frightening might be the wrong word. What do we know in our little bubble that other people don't know, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing right now. We're just smart. That's all there is to it.

26:50
Well, I think we're a good distance from the cities. People do have maybe 10 acres or five or a little more room to grow, you know, a couple acres and more, some, you know, big farmers too. Mm hmm. And people just make it work. I mean, it's a very hardworking community. You know, my dad worked a full-time job and had 140 acres he farmed, which was small compared to some of the big farmers by us, but he didn't have the big equipment. He, he made do with the, you know, old planters and then.

27:17
old falling apart combine, but he did it. I mean, it was important and he farmed with what he had. You know, a big farmer could afford a bigger combine and all the fancy stuff. And he made it work, but it was something he wanted to do, work the land plus work a job.

27:36
Yeah, what did he grow? He had, well, we had pigs and corn. We had some green giant property for our people. Our green giant grew on some of our land. I think it was mainly corn, soybeans, soybeans and corn over by Union Hill. Yep. We are surrounded by a cornfield right now. And it's looking perfect. They're letting it stand and dry.

28:03
I assume they're using it for, I don't know how it works. Is it, if they let it stand, it's silage or is that something else? I think maybe or else is it just everything's going late this year with, I don't know the way the weather has been. You know, July wasn't very hot. So we're kind of, everybody's waiting on tomatoes and it seemed like the corn has, I haven't seen, I don't know if I've seen anybody harvesting corn yet. Yeah. My husband saw soybeans being harvested.

28:32
outside of St. Peter yesterday. So sure, they probably start with soybeans. But the ears of corn on these plants. Are you familiar with girl escapes? Is anybody on your... pardon? I was going to say the ears of corn on the corn in the field around us, they are humongous. They're gigantic. Oh good, because I've seen some fields that didn't look good at all. Yeah. I can't believe how great it did this year with the spring that we had and then the July that we had. So I don't know. Crazy.

29:02
Well, that's great. And anything low, you know, was so, so wet for a while. So I really worried for farmers, but they're used to it. They take the good with the bad. That's how farmers are. That's how it works. Yeah. So you said garlic scapes. What about garlic scapes? Oh, I just didn't know if any of your other people talked about scapes. I mean, we love garlic scapes. You probably do too. You know, the kind of the flower. I have, I have talked with them a little bit about them. And I've never actually eaten a garlic scape that I know of because I haven't had access. I haven't been anywhere where I could get them.

29:33
Sure, so when you plant your own garlic that you're waiting for in about mid-June or so, when the stock of the garlic, think of the scape as maybe like a green onion. And you'll see in the middle, there'll be one shoot that then curls. And when that curls, you can pick it and you snap it off pretty low to the ground. I can't remember if it's a few inches. And then you...

30:00
can saute it like you would in a stir fry or with eggs, salad, soup. I mean, it's just kind of like a green onion and they're so, so tasty. One gal came last year and picked up garlic and she sells 400 pounds of scapes to a local meat markets or at a local meat market. I think she takes orders and they distribute it for her. And we had somebody call us and offer to buy all of our scapes. And we said, no, thanks. But we, the higher we freeze dry them and put them in our spices.

30:29
But, um, you know, it's very tasty. So watch for your scapes. Now a soft neck will not produce a scape, but all the hard necks will. And when it curls, it's important to get, take, take it off so that the bulb can finish growing. If you don't take it off, you'll have smaller bulbs because then all of the energy will go into the scape, kind of the flower, and there's a bulb at the top of that too, and it's called a bulbill.

30:54
And that would have maybe 50, 100, I guess I don't know, teeny little seeds in it. So we do leave some of ours because my husband wants to keep some of our bulbils, replant those, or plant those teeny little seeds that are like fourth of the size of your nail, not even fingernail, half a size or eighth of your fingernail. You plant those in the ground. The next year you get a ball and you plant that and the next year you should get a clove.

31:23
So anyway, pick your scapes and then in June, three weeks later is when you can harvest your garlic, usually three, four weeks later, you can harvest the actual garlic. And then if you don't take off that scape, you will have a smaller bulb of garlic. So you wanna take it off and enjoy it. Okay, so I have one more question and I'm gonna cut you loose because I try to keep these to half an hour. If you leave the garlic,

31:52
bulb in the ground for more than one season. Does it just keep growing and get bigger or does what happens to it? I have seen people post that online and it seems like it maybe starts to look a little misshapen like it might grow another another second bulb or I don't think it would grow like just the hugest bulb ever because maybe everybody would do that to have really big garlic or something.

32:17
Um, that is a good question. I know, um, even this year, I think my husband pulled some. Yeah, they just kind of got left accidentally. And I think they were just maybe they added a leather little couple of cloves started growing, or they just look a little odd. I mean, I don't think it would hurt anything. Um, in fact, he harvested a whole handful of garlic that just, as we were harvesting, we dropped cloves and dropped bulbs.

32:42
And we never, ever, ever mix up our kinds or anything. And so they just grew by our greenhouse. And then we just ate them or put them in the powder. If we don't know, we put them in our spice. We don't know what kind they are. But to answer your question as a great question, I think they would not just get bigger and be perfect. They would start to just look maybe a little ugly, for lack of a better word, just a little weird, but they would probably, they'd be fine to eat. Okay, the reason I asked is because I feel like onions and garlic are sort of like the lily family. Right.

33:11
They're not, they're alliums, but same idea of how they grow. And we have lilies and they just spread. They just keep growing and they spread out. So I didn't know if garlic would spread or if it just stays one bulb. That's a great question because I wonder if the bulb bill at the top with the 50 or 100 little teeny, if those eventually would drop, if that's just the way nature intended that it would just kind of start to spread on its own.

33:39
you know, because, you know, of course we take them off and we, we, um, you know, get involved, but if we didn't, I wonder if it would just kind of keep going like that. That's a, that'd be an interesting experiment. Yeah. I'm always curious about how nature does it, because if nature can do it better than I can, and it makes it easier for us, I'm going to let nature do what nature does. Cause I don't want to get in the middle of it if I don't have to, because nature always has a plan.

34:08
I know and it's so fascinating how it even works. I mean, how does one clove turn into a bulb? I mean, how does, you know, bee pollinate? I mean, it's just all so, so fascinating. Yep, it's fun and it never stops. Like you could study until you were 200 years old if you lived that long and you still wouldn't know it all. So it's really neat. Awesome. All right, Kristy, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. I appreciate you calling and.

34:37
having us on. And I will definitely message your mom about her pumpkin place. She'll love that. She'll be great. All right. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Thank you, Mary. Have a super day. You too. Bye.