Chicken Herder

I didn’t do a lot of cost research this time, but my guess is that it is about the same as onion in the store ($2-3).  I bought my garlic from Trader Joes in what were labled 3 ounce bags of organic garlic.  I bought four packs (at $1.8 each) and it turned out that they were actually 4 ounces , so I began with one pound of garlic.  After processing and drying I was left with 5.5 ounces.  This means that garlic is about 66% water, and that, in this case, I paid $1.3 per ounce for my final product.  This is higher than I had guessed, but not bad.  Again, I’m sure one can find less expensive organic garlic along the way.  In fact, last fall I took 16 square feet of my herb garden and commited it to garlic.  So right now I have 25 cloves of garlic just waiting for spring to usher them above ground.  If they all make it, that’s almost 140 ounces of garlic powder!

Farmers Note: This took way longer than the onions.  I thought I’d knock out the 8 heads in 10 or 15 minutes by myself, but after one, I begged the Farmer’s Wife to help.  Even with both of us working I think it took the better part of an hour to get them peeled, crushed and spread out in the dehydrator.  On the flip side, that gave us an hour to talk about our garden this summer.  Time well spent.