The temperature hovers around freezing the whole of the morning. My boss pushed back our start time to nine, and I’m grateful as I return to the line of wheelbarrows just outside the field where eleven and a half beds of garlic have been waiting since last month to be snuggled under layers of finished compost for their wintering. Some of the planted cloves have poked out of the soil from the cycles of ground freezing and thawing. They’ll need covered to be more comfortable for their winter work.
‘I reckon we’ll be able to finish today,’ Gabe says when he comes with the first tractor-load to fill the wheelbarrows. I’m a bit skeptical—it took us the whole day yesterday to do the first four. But he’s pumped up the tire of the blue wheelbarrow that was nearly flat yesterday, and I breathe a bit easier as I approach the line of filled barrows.
I have to ease in, sore from yesterday. I plant my feet firmly before testing the weight of each wheelbarrow, conscious of the bumps and divots in the ground. Flex your hands, inhale. Exhale, lift with your legs. The compost is rounded well over the top of the wheelbarrow, and I’m wary of the weight. But the fully inflated wheel keeps me from having to push my sore arms and shoulders beyond what they can handle.
It’s snowing lightly, and my breath fogs out in front of me. The field is surrounded by trees, and the garlic is the only thing currently planted—alongside some leftover beets and turnips from the late brassica planting. The quiet is calming, and the puffs of warmer air I’m breathing out help me to feel like autumn truly is turning towards winter.
Since they did that horrible thing with the clocks, I find myself drawn more and more inward, towards the quiet. Snuggled on my couch, I’ll drink tea and take naps and go to bed earlier and earlier. No matter how many lights I put on in my apartment, or how closely the fancy new lightbulbs my partner installed approximate daylight, it’s not the same. In the season of slowing down and feeling the effects of my energy and movement in other seasons, I have been trying to mold my rhythms to those of the sun and the more-than-human creatures in my life. The evening begins so early, and the dark feels inviting.
It was still hot back when I harvested the last of the sauce tomatoes in this field where the garlic now sleeps. I helped pull the toasted plants, along with a hundred or so green t-posts decked with zig-zagging lines of tomato twine. I helped plant this garlic, scraping my hands into the earth and trying to ignore the burn of the cold soil against my fingers as I tried to give them sufficient space beneath its surface.
And now, swaddled against the cold in base layers, trousers, rain pants, sweater, two coats, hat, and gloves, I can already feel myself sweating as I did that first day in this field, towards the end of tomato season.
It feels like a gift on days like today to have scheduled time outside when I’m properly attired. My love for snow goes largely unrequited here in New Jersey, and it’s only on quiet mornings like this one, that I am enveloped by the magic of a soft flurry. I try to move with a measured pace, stepping slowly and carefully down the incline and into the perimeter walkway, to preserve my energy and the stillness of the morning. Each time a wheelbarrow gets stuck in a divot or on one of the irrigation lines, I hip-check it back into movement, pressing firmly into yesterday’s bruises.
In June, these plants will put up their curlicue scapes. I’m hoping to take home some of the scape harvest to supplement my own garden’s pesto-making. The garlic bulbs will be ready to harvest sometime in July, hundreds of them. They’ll cure and hang in mesh bags for airflow, and some will be planted as seed cloves next season. For the next turn of the seasons, this season’s batch of planted cloves will put down roots and sleep.
Garlic is a forgiving crop. You can plant it in the fall after finishing your garden cleanup, cover it with compost or straw, and leave it to tend to its own business until the times come to harvest scapes and bulbs. It can feel odd to plant something so long in advance, perhaps like a waste of space when so many other crops can be transplanted in shorter cycles and harvested sooner. But there’s something hopeful about preparing soil in October and November for late-fall planting, measuring the spacing, carving divots, and pushing the individual cloves a few inches under the soil, and waiting. It feels like a deep exhale into biting cold air.
We’ve three beds remaining to blanket with compost by the time I have to leave for the day, but we’ve made good time. I strip off my damp gloves and hat as I start my drive home. We’ll finish the task another day. While I’m sporting noodly arms and bruises on my legs, I’ve gotten away with my joints and back uninjured. My measured consistency has paid off. It feels like success, albeit a quiet one.
Jack Kamps (’16) has been paid to do many things, such as teach preschoolers, pastor youths, schlep things in warehouses, bake pastries, design curriculum, serve coffee, maintain gardens, and fix computers. Jack is currently a student at Princeton Theological Seminary—though they tend to spend more time working at a few local farms, plotting a future cheesecake business with their spouse, and listening to/talking about the latest Material Girls episode than doing their homework.
