Pungent flavor, spicy heat

 

Laura Ramos and Adam Fronhofer and their son Tiago, 2, hold jars of the garlic powders they produce from organic garlic grown at their Quill Hill Farm in Poultney, Vt. Joan K. Lentini photo

 

By STACEY MORRIS
Contributing writer

POULTNEY, Vt.

At the peak of the growing season, Quill Hill Farm’s fields will be filled with elegant rows of emerald green, accented by a sheltering bed of golden mulch.

Garlic is the main crop at the five-acre certified organic farm owned by Laura Ramos and Adam Fronhofer, and the verdant landscape complements the farm’s flavorful mission.

Ramos and Fronhofer also grow a variety of red, yellow and orange chili peppers, as well as herbs that become ingredients for the small-batch condiments they make at harvest time.
The couple started Quill Hill in 2014 as a mixed vegetable farm, tilling a half-acre of soil for produce they intended to sell at area farmers markets. But later that year, a monster hailstorm decimated all of their crops, effectively sending them back to square one.

“It was a crash course in being a Vermont farmer,” Fronhofer recalled. “But the community was great in helping us out.”

Neighboring farmers donated seedlings, and farmers market customers stopped by with meals. One neighbor even gave them a pig.

As Ramos and Fronhofer look back on that challenging episode 11 years later, it seems the forced agricultural reboot may have served a higher purpose. The disruption ultimately led them to narrow the scope of what they would grow. They focused first on heirloom garlic.

“That first year, the garlic we grew resulted in smaller-than-average heads because of the hail,” Fronhofer recalled. “We didn’t know what to do with it, so we turned it into powder, and everyone loved it.”

Ramos remembers being pleasantly surprised at how much she liked the taste of small-batch garlic powder.

“Powders I’ve tried in the past didn’t taste fresh, but when you process it naturally, ours really tastes like fresh garlic,” Ramos said. “Customers tell us that all the time.”

 

Preserving the flavor
The positive reception inspired the couple to expand their flavor profiles of powdered garlic to include varieties ranging from rosemary, chipotle, and sriracha to smoked garlic chili and maple garlic sugar.

As for the fresh taste of their powders, Fronhofer said it’s the result of a painstakingly detailed field-to-jar process that includes hand-harvesting the garlic, followed by a methodical cutting of its sturdy stalks and placing it on trays in the farm’s “curing barn,” where the garlic dries naturally at room temperature, allowing the skins to dry out but not the garlic itself.

“Then the garlic is skinned using a machine that combines water and friction,” he explained. “After that, we break the garlic down by hand and open the cloves.”

Then the cloves are run through a food processor that slices them into thin chips, after which they’re dehydrated. The chips are placed in airtight buckets and used when needed for fresh batches of garlic powder.

“Storing it in cold temperatures in sealed buckets preserves the freshness,” Ramos said. “So does making small batches of powder vs. making it all at once and storing the powder.”
Processing the garlic for storage happens in an intense two-week window beginning in late October, she said.

“When we sell for seed, the garlic has to look perfect, which isn’t always the case,” Ramos said. “The wonky-looking ones, or heads that are too large or small, are perfect for processing into powder.”

Even the garlic scapes are put to good use by pickling them with fresh dill and spices. The farm sells jars of garlic scapes on its website along with jars of garlic cloves pickled in sweet herbs.

 

Peppers for hot sauce
As they expanded and perfected their garlic production and processing, Fronhofer and Ramos decided to expand their crops to include a dozen varieties of spicy chili peppers. Fronhofer, a pepper aficionado, sensed a burgeoning market, and readily took on the challenge of growing peppers in a colder climate.

“There are a lot of misconceptions because peppers are a subtropical plant, but the breeding of them has come a long way,” he said.

They now grow varieties that range from the super-spicy Carolina Reaper to cayenne, habanero, Fresno and ghost peppers as well as the milder poblanos, bells, jalapenos and Anaheims.
Quill Hill sells its peppers mainly to regional hot-sauce makers, including the Vermont-based companies Butterfly Bakery in Barre, Sugar Bob’s of Chester, Benito’s Hot Sauce of Morrisville, 802 Heat of Ludlow, and Salsa Sisters of Brattleboro. Dried versions of the peppers are available on the farm’s website.

Quill Hill starts its peppers in mid-March in a heated greenhouse, where they stay until they’re ready to put into the ground at the end of May.

“We do an acre-plus of peppers now,” Fronhofer said.
The couple’s future plans include construction of an on-site commercial kitchen that would allow Quill Hill Farm to start offering its own line of pepper sauces.

They recently bought 25 acres of extra growing space at a nearby farm, and last year, their garlic production topped 6,000 pounds.

“Garlic is something that’s pretty much universally loved, and not just for the flavor,” Fronhofer said. “As far back as the beginning of written language, garlic was used for medicinal purposes.”
The hard-neck garlic grown at Quill Hill Farm has a higher allicin content than the soft-neck variety found in most supermarkets, Fronhofer explained, “and the allicin is garlic’s medicinal quality.”

 

Rhythm of a farm
With growing season now upon them, Ramos and Fronhofer were gearing up in March after an all-too-brief winter break.

“Garlic starts coming out in July, and by November, we’re sold out,” Ramos said. “We harvest peppers at the end of August through the frost. It all happens really quickly.”

A harvest celebration ritual that’s become a yearly tradition involves the couple preparing a pepper- and garlic-centric harvest dinner for neighbors and friends.

“The amount of garlic we consume is amazing,” Ramos said with a laugh. “Garlic is very simple to enjoy. One of our favorite ways is roasting whole heads with olive oil and smearing it on good bread. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

Soon afterward, the frozen ground signals the online stampede of shoppers for gift-giving season and the selling of holiday gift boxes, spice sets and colorful bags of peppers. The brief lull from January through mid-March allows the couple more time with their three sons and a bit of a slower pace before the spring planting of the bulbs.

Now, they can marvel that it all began with a fateful hailstorm.
“We went with the adage, ‘grow what you love,’” Fronhofer said. “Not only do Laura and I love food, we love making it flavorful. Without trying to, we’ve turned into a flavor farm.”

 

Quill Hill Farm’s garlic, spices, pickles and pepper products can be found on its website and at regional garlic festivals, including the annual Garlic Town USA event in downtown Bennington, this year scheduled for Saturday, Aug 30. Visit www.quillhillfarm.com for more information about Quill Hill Farm and its products.