CA: In hard economic times, farmers turn to garlic
"Once the canneries closed down, there wasn't a market for it. What's the point in growing all this fruit and protecting the tender fruit lands, if you have no place to sell it?" Werner said. "Ok, you can go to a farmer's market, but they are everywhere and everyone is there. Your competition is all in the same place. So you'd come back home with half a truck full." And were it not for an odd crop growing on the fringes of the farm, Werner said she doesn't know if the family farm would survive. But the garlic that was growing wild on the farm has sold so well, next month all the fruit will be ripped up and replaced with it.
"You have to adapt and change with the times," Werner said Saturday afternoon while selling her "candy garlic" at the second Niagara Garlic Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Originally a fringe product from the farm, the candy garlic — which got its name because it caramelizes well, not because it tastes like sweets — is now Werner's primary product. Her farm has even been renamed Niagara Garlic Glen.
"We even have neighbours who are ripping out their fruit trees and planting our garlic," she said. "In October, we'll have 50 acres." Though not often regarded as a big money maker, garlic can be a cash crop, said Norwood, Ontario farmer Ken Best, who was selling several varieties of garlic at the festival. "It's hardy, it doesn't perish and it's always popular," said Best, owner of Best Berry Farm, where he grows garlic after his fruit crops have been harvested.
Garlic farmers travel around southern Ontario to several garlic festivals to sell their produce, and customers are picky. "If you were to put out a garlic and claim it is from Hungary and it's not, people can just look at just tell you it's not," said Berry. "People are serious about their garlic."
Source: thoroldedition.ca
