A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm

Anyone who enjoys whole foods cookery, herbal healing, and organic gardening will appreciate Crawford's observations. Those with a philosophical bent will appreciate them even more. His reflections on a life lived close to nature are a bit like those of Thoreau or Jefferson, but Crawford appears to also be very much the guy who brings fresh produce to your local farmer's market. Few of us have probably given much thought to the growing of garlic bulbs, which really consist of "cloves" that can be divided and planted or used to season everything from marinara sauce to stir fries. You might have noticed the green sprouts that begin to emerge from cloves of garlic kept too long in your refrigerator, but Crawford suggests garlic plants are difficult to grow because their life course is different from that of many other plants. Garlics have adapted to life in stressful places where rainfall is not always forthcoming but when they need moisture, they need moisture. To avoid death, the bulbs spend a good part of the year "resting" or dormant. In a chapter called "Waiting" Crawford says that's exactly what the garlic farmer does. Much of the year, garlic like other bulbed plants are in hiding, and the farmer must be patient and wait until they are ready for the harvest.But Crawford's interaction with plants isn't only about garlic. He relates how he "tasted the landscape" as a child in his native California-peeling and chewing the white pulp of anise growing by the side of the road in winter; sucked the syrup of nasturtiums, smelled the pepper tree berries, and searched the orchids for loquats, limes, and mandarin oranges. Today, children are not so fortunate. Pollution, chemicals, other noxious matter have made much of the landscape dangerous. Crawford toyed with both conventional and organic farming. He says he wishes to ask those who enquire whether his products for sell at the weekly market are "organic" if they lead organic lives. Do they earn their money in organic ways. He says, "Perhaps in the poisonous desert of the city there is little else you can do besides seek out what you hope is "pure" food. In addition to being informative and philosophical, Crawford's book is provocative.

This is one of the best-written books that I have ever read. Each word is well-chosen, effective, and yet easy to read. At one point in the book, he alludes that he has written poetry previously. Each of the 39 chapters is a few pages long, presenting a brief essay on something related to garlic farming in New Mexico. There's an obvious love and care that he gives to his work (both garlic farming and writing), and he's able to show respect for others who have not chosen this path. The book also presents some information about how garlic is grown, but it's by no means a gardening book. It's a descriptive story of the cycles of the growing season. Like in his other excellent book, Mayordomo, the author also shares his community with us - talking about how farming, farmers markets, irrigation, and such intertwine a community, even one that contains members who originally went there to "get away from it all."

When Henry David Thoreau left the comforts of civilization to build his own house with his own hands and deliberately live close to nature, his experience at Walden Pond became a classic in American literature. Even today, many of us trapped in the mundane horrors of urban life long to escape, as he did, to a small plot of land somewhere outside the realms of commerce, overcommercialization, and petty-minded consumerism. Novelist Stanley Crawford had the courage to do more than dream about it. He left California for the rigorous, simple life of a New Mexico garlic farmer and, like Thoreau, has written a wise and thought-provoking book about his experiences. His account spans a year in the life of garlic, tying topics as diverse as the nuclear bomb and the challenge of maintaining community to the rhythms of building one's own house from adobe and learning to plant and harvest responsibly. After closing the cover of this book, I was ready to drive to New Mexico and seek out Crawford in the Farmer's Market, to buy my own bulbs of top-setting garlic and somehow bring some of the beauty of his life into my own. I may never stand in Santa Fe behind his pickup, buying a woven garland of organic garlic to hang in my kitchen, or perhaps I will travel there and stammer some foolish words about his writing as I hand him a handful of crumbled dollar bills. In some sense, the physical journey has become irrelevant: Crawford's New Mexico has already illumined my heart and wakened me to the rhythms of my own life. I don't have the strength or the patience to tend a field or a garden, manufacture adobe or create a home, brick by brick. But I, too, have a place in the world, and eyes to see--A Garlic Testament is one of those books that wakes us from habitual slumber and reminds us, as Thoreau so aptly put it, to advance confidently in the directions of our dreams, and to put the foundations under our castles in the air.

I've enjoyed this book for several years and often suggest it to people wanting to grow garlic or sell at farmers' markets. It is an excellent resource, providing a first-hand experience in both garlic, small-scale farming, and direct marketing in an easy-to-read format. For people who enjoy plants, this book reads like a novel as we follow the author and his thoughts through the season. I find it quite representative of life on a small farm, with interesting philosophical perspectives on life, family values, farming, and relationship between the farm and the community. It is easy to identify with the grower and I eagerly looked forward to the next chapter. Each chapter captures the picture and thoughts of a particular time, yet the growth of the crop and its place in the larger picture provides continuity between chapters. Highly recommended and enjoyable. Technically accurate regarding garlic cultivation. Good insight into small-scale farming in New Mexico.

Reading this book is like visiting the village of Dixon, NM, which has been Stan Crawford's home for many years. At first it doesn't look as if there's much of anything there: clusters of old adobe houses, small farms, a combination grocery/gas station, a few lowriders cruising the main drag, big old cottonwoods, willow thickets along the river, and fences festooned with Old Man's Beard. But if you stay a while and explore, you'll discover fascinating people, an amazing array of small businesses (from herbalists and food producers to weavers and fine jewelers), and a community lifestyle that hasn't entirely lost its connection with the rhythms of the seasons. Crawford is not only a dedicated farmer (and a pillar of the Santa Fe Farmer's Market), but a fine writer and a clear-eyed observer; the various chapters of the book present a vividly described, thoughtful picture of his life and his surroundings. I found the chapter on Los Alamos rather weak (it's just the usual "ain't bombs awful" arm-waving), but the rest of the book is an unmitigated pleasure. Forget the Hollywood version of New Mexico; this is the real thing.