This year, I planted two 4x8 beds each of garlic and shallots, hoping to get a really good crop after last year’s failure. It was a successful growing year; we have scads of Spanish Roja garlic, German Red garlic, and Red Shallots. We have two Shaker peg rails to hang cured alliums, but I knew that would not be enough this year. So I crossed my fingers and asked Dad to make me a couple ‘pot rack’ thingys for this purpose. At first he just couldn’t figure out a way to make them that would provide him a new learning experience. As Tom says, my dad is such a brilliant and accomplished woodworker that he is now in the Evel Knievel phase of it all, making things purely to prove he can (a dresser without any right angles? check. Veneer, banding, and inlay? check). Unless I can come up with an idea that presents a challenge, Dad won’t take it on. No boring furniture for this daredevil!
Dad spent some time mulling it over, and then one day while weeding his back hill, he got a brilliant idea. Why not take the wood from the French Broom that he was removing from the hillside? French Broom is a highly invasive woody plant here in the Bay Area. Beautiful, but a nightmare to get rid of, and it crowds out all the natives.
Turns out, it’s beautiful wood - extremely strong and perfect for this purpose. How handy that Dad had just built himself a new shaving horse; two garlic hanging racks were in my possession post-haste.
Good thing, because the shallots had finished curing on top of the chicken coop, and the second bed of garlic was ready to harvest and put up there to cure (and melon seeds to plant in the vacated bed). So we did the big switcheroo and then Tom put up our new hanging racks.
They join the Spanish Roja Garlic that I already hung on the peg rail there. The German garlic will go over on the canning shelf peg rail, which at the moment is holding the last of the dried hot peppers from last summer. These racks can also hold bunches of drying herbs, too. They are multi-purpose!
Adam watched Tom tie up the shallots and said, “I love how we decorate our house with food.” We won’t be featured in Architectural Digest any time soon, but we don’t mind. Our dinners will be delicious.