Winter is Coming, so West Maple Farm is Preparing for Spring

by M.C. Millman

This week was garlic planting week at West Maple Farm in Monsey, where an entire field of garlic cloves was planted with tender loving care. 

"If you don't plant them in the right direction," says Akiva, the manager of West Maple Farm, "it won't grow right. We'll have to go back over the field we planted this week as the hard rain washed some of the bulbs up after planting, and we'll put them back in the right way."

After planting 4,000 bulbs, it seems quite a task, but Akiva feels up to it. 

"One of the really nice things about growing garlic," says Akiva, "is seeing the field when it turns green first thing in the spring before anything else we have planted starts to grow." 

This is the farm's second year of planting garlic. This year, the planting was done with a tractor with a special attachment that allowed two people to drop the cloves of garlic into the duo row of holes saturated with water made as the tractor rolled slowly down the field. 

Rockland residents don't have to wait for the garlic to be harvested to begin to enjoy the bounty. The garlic also sprouts a unique bean-like part called a scape. This delicacy can be eaten in various ways. Akiva has promoted the vegetable to several restaurants and farm customers who were thrilled with the flavor in salads, grilled and added to burgers, and many other ways.

"You can only eat the scapes until the garlic flowers," Akiva tells Rockland Daily. "After that, the scapes turn hard like a stick."

As for the garlic itself, Akiva is equally enthusiastic.

"Now that I've tasted the garlic we grow here on the farm," says Akiva about the German Red and German White garlic West Maple Farm grows exclusively, "I can't go back to the regular kinds they sell in the local stores."

The farm is also preparing for next year by composting. 

"Landscapers drop off their woodchips, and we use that for composting," Akiva explains. "There can't be too much pine in the woodchips, or it's bad for the soil, but overall, the composted dirt adds nutrients to the soil."

Composting can take nearly a year to turn into dirt, but when that happens, the farm will be ready to spread it on the many fields growing countless vegetables that Rocklanders have come to appreciate in many ways.