Big Stone Garlic

Family Farmed Garlic

Garlic News

2021 garlic orders are heading out!

You know it’s August when you can start ordering garlic! Big Stone Garlic is ready to fill orders for Chesnok Red, German Red, Inchelium, Belarus, and Variety Packs. In fact, we sent our first orders out last week. Visit our store for more details.

Please note: Because of the extremely hot and dry growing season here in western Minnesota, some varieties will be smaller than normal this year, particularly our Belarus variety. Also, due to the dry weather, the garlic bulbs haven’t produced as many layers of protective skin as usual. In order to preserve the garlic for you to enjoy, we’ve left as many skins on as possible, so you may notice some residual soil on your order.

A Crash Course on Scapes

picking scapes

All over the garlic fields, curly, corkscrewing stalks are popping up on our plants. Some grow in arcs, others in double loops, and when they’re snapped, you can smell them from the end of the row. But what exactly are they? Good question! These stalks are called “scapes”, and they’re a part of garlic that most people have never heard of.
Scapes are the stems of the garlic flower, and if left unpicked, they’ll form delicate purple flowers around harvest time. Unfortunately for the grower, producing this flower takes up most of the garlic plant’s energy, so the garlic bulbs stay smaller and less developed. Small garlic? Who wants that? Not us, so we head out to our fields a few times a week to harvest the scapes.

Snapping off the scape reverts the plant’s energy back to the bulb, and we end up with some tasty treats in the process. Scapes are edible, with a strong garlic flavor that works nicely in anything from pesto to omelettes to pickles!
Try some of our favorite recipes here:

Garlic Scape Pesto

Marinated Garlic Scapes and Asparagus

Roasted Garlic Scapes and Asparagus

Sadly, we haven’t been able to find a viable method of shipping to keep scapes fresh during transit, so we will not be offering them for sale this year.

Week One of the Backhaul Project

Last week we shipped more garlic as part of UofM Extension’s Backhaul Project than we thought we’d ever see leave our farm at one time. Here is an update one week later.

Local garlic from Big Stone Garlic traveled from the farm in Correll, MN to Bonnie’s Hometown Grocery in Clinton, MN (yellow)- where it was loaded on a truck and backhauled to Mason Brothers Grocery Wholesale, and transferred to Russ Davis Produce Wholesale (orange). Grocery stores around the region ordered the garlic – here are the shelves where it can be  found after week one!

We expect the store locations to multiply, and we are pleased with the initial response – the model worked and got the local garlic out to the stores through backhauling. – Ren Olive, Program Associate, Sustainable Development Partnerships | U of Minnesota Extension

Downloadable List of Retail Stores Selling BSG – Week One (pdf)map showing grocery stores that carry BSG garlic

4,840 Bulbs of Garlic Are on the Truck Heading Back to the Wholesaler

It’s a big week for Big Stone Garlic! After over a year of planning and preparing the first delivery for the Backhaul Project went out from Bonnie’s Hometown Grocery on 9/4!!

loading huge garlic shipment

 

The Backhaul Project is a collaborative effort with the University of Minnesota Extension Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships(RSDP). The pivot point of this project is a grant titled “Connecting Small and Medium-Sized Farms to Existing Wholesale Markets through Backhauling from Rural Grocery Stores”.

Here is how the project works: Bonnie’s Hometown Market in Clinton, MN gets a delivery from her wholesaler. After the delivery is complete at Bonnie’s there is open space on the delivery truck. Big Stone Garlic drops off garlic prepared for sale to Bonnie’s at the time of her wholesale delivery to get the garlic on the delivery truck back to the warehouse and then distributed to groceries in the area. Big Stone Garlic will be available this week in many grocery stores in the 5 State Area!!!

Uofm Backhaul Project Map
Map of Big Stone Garlic (in green) solid black line is the current distribution route, potential markets shown in purple.