Big Stone Garlic

Family Farmed Garlic

Garlic News

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.

We are Partnering in an Exciting Project with the U of MN

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

Big Stone Garlic is excited to be part of a Backhauling pilot project with the University of Minnesota Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems group.  The projecy leverages our existing network of rural grocery stores and wholesale suppliers to back-haul locally grown produce on emptied wholesale trucks for redistribution through wholesale markets.

This project gives Big Stone Garilc greater access to wholesale markets throughout the region. Wholesale suppliers in turn get access to product from many small and medium sized farms that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

Our garlic is the very first product in this pilot project.  If successsful, this U of M project has the potential to be replicated across the country.   It is super exiting to work alongside the U of M and other folks on the food supply chain on the state and even federal level.

Bottom line is that Big Stone Garlic has better access to a larger market.

Welcome to Big Stone Garlic’s 2017 Season!

Welcome to Big Stone Garlic’s 2017 Season! Thank you to all of you who stopped in to see us at the 2017 MN Garlic Festival. It was great to see so many familiar faces and make new acquaintances. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Minnesota’s Garlic Festival, it is a festival created by the Central Minnesota Sustainable Farming Association. It is held the second weekend in August, and celebrates everything garlic as well as supporting a healthy environment and sustainable farms.
Next year, the 13th annual festival will be August 11th, 2018. I hope to see you there.

The 2016 Harvest is Complete and the Store is Open!

This season we are proud to offer two more varieties-Belarus and Inchelium. Belarus is a Purple Stripe hardneck, and Inchelium is our first foray into the world of softneck garlic. After experimenting with the new varieties, we found that both the Belarus and the Inchelium are delicious when used fresh-sliced on toast, grated on a salad, in salsa, salad dressing or bruschetta.
Thank you to all who came out to visit us at the MN Garlic Festival. This was our second year at the festival, and we had a great time talking with so many garlic enthusiasts. We were positioned between the garlic ice cream booth and a farm selling parmesan scape flatbread-yum! Looking forward to the Festival again next year.