Making Great Garlic Powder

Those of you who have read this blog for long know that I grow garlic and I process it into garlic powder, which I sell to garlic lovin folks all over the country. Ive been doing this for several years and its a nice little home business. You can make garlic powder on a small scale for yourself, as gifts for friends and family, or as a small home business like I do. In this blog essay Im going to tell and show you how I convert my homegrown garlic bulbs into flavorful garlic powder. Before I begin to tell and show you the process of making great garlic powder, I want to make sure you know about the other garlic-related internet photo-essays Ive written: How I Plant My Garlic Making Pickled Garlic Scapes Harvesting Garlic 2007 Curing Garlic Bulbs Selling My Garlic Powder At The Farm Market Okay then... LET'S MAKE SOME GARLIC POWDER: We begin (picture below) with garlic bulbs. These bulbs are the same ones I planted and harvested in the photo essays above.

The bulbs have been cured and I have stored them in net bags. Before I can proceed, I need to clean the bulbs. Washing is not practical. What I do is simply remove the dirty bulb wrappers. I say simply but sometimes it is not easily done. The toothbrush you see in the picture helps. The next thing I do is cut the bottom and top of each bulb off (photo below). I do this with a sharp knife on a cutting board. Then I arrange the bulbs on my dehydrator trays. The idea here is that the bulbs go into the dehydrator for a few hours in order to loosen the skin around each clove.

I have two electric food dehydrators. One is an older Equi-Flow unit and the other is a newer Excalibur. This next picture shows the Equi-Flow full of bulbs. I had to remove every other tray in order to get enough headroom for the bulbs.

After a few hours in the dehydrator, I take the trays out and separate the cloves from the wrappers. This is easily done but it is, nevertheless, time consuming work. The picture below was taken by me at 2:00 in the morning. My family was all sound asleep and I was working away while watching a documentary movie calledBroken Limbs on my laptop computer. The guy on the screen isGrant Gibbs, an organic, sustainable farmer out in Washington State. The movie wasnt about Grant Gibbs but he was clearly the star. I wish there was a movie about this man. We who are interested in small-scale sustainable agriculture could learn a lot from him. I actually e-mailed the director of the movie to ask if he had plans to do a movie about Grant. He agreed it would make a great movie but there was no plan to do a movie about him. I wish the guy would write a book or something.

Anyway, as I am taking the wrappers off the garlic cloves, I am inspecting each one for any kind of blemish. If I find a bad clove, I throw it away. If there is just a small bad spot on a clove, I cut it out. Do you think the big factories where they make garlic powder for the grocery stores of the world scrutinize every single clove for perfection?

By the way, not visible in the above picture is a large cardboard box under the table. Every so often, I sweep the bulb wrappers into the box. The clean cloves go into the colander. When all the cloves have been undressed it is time to slice them. This next picture shows an inexpensive food processor in the background, bowls of cloves, and a stack of drying trays.

The food processor with a slicing blade makes short work of slicing. The slices are then layered thickly onto the dehydrator trays (picture below).

The trays are placed into the dehydrators. This next shot shows two dehydrators full. Once again, I have removed every other tray to provide headroom for the thick layers of garlic.

Because the slices are layered so thick on the trays, I need to remove them (after maybe 12 to 16 hours of drying) and reposition them on the trays. This exposes new surface areas and speeds up the drying time. As the next picture shows, I dump the partially-dried garlic slices into a stainless steel tray. The Excalibur dehydrator has a removable mesh sheet that the garlic doesnt stick to. A very nice feature.

After a couple days of drying, the slices are dry enough to break when you bend them. They then go from the trays directly into gallon-size glass jars and the lids are screwed down tight.

I store the jars of dried garlic slices in my cool pantry until I am ready to grind them into powder. I use a Vita-Mix 4000 blender to do the grinding (visible in the next picture). I bought the blender used on Ebay. What a machine! Ive been told you can feed a 2x4 board down into it and it will grind it to powder. I believe it. When I first started making garlic powder, I used a regular kitchen blender. Such appliances will do the job. But they do not do it as fast and as easily as a Vita-Mix. Some stainless steel bowls are needed too. In the one bowl you can see a rabbit-ear kitchen strainer. That particular strainer is an older model that I use only for making garlic powder. I have used newer strainers but dont like the size of granules they sift. The older strainer allows a mixture of powder and fine granules through. I like the mix of tiny granules with the powder, and my customers have told me they like that too.

The next picture shows a top-down view into the Vita-Mix. You can see that the dried slices have been thoroughly powderized.

Then I sift the contents of the blender through the strainer.

The powder sifts through very quickly and there will always be a few larger granules that dont make it through (as you can see in the next picture). I just put those back in the blender with the next load of chips. The Vita-Mx will easily grind of a gallon of chips at a time.

One gallon of dried garlic slices will grind down to about a half a gallon of powder, as this next picture shows. As soon as the powder is ground and sifted, it goes into the jar and the lid is tightened down. The chips and powder are not left exposed to the air for any length of time.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this essay, I have a garlic powder business. I sell the powder in jars and bags. Jars are more expensive than bags but they look a lot nicer. I call them gift jars. I have a nice label on the front and another label with my address and such goes on the back. By the way, I could put the powder in plastic jars and save money. But plastic says Cheap and that isnt the kind of message I want to convey. I worked hard to get this powder from bulb to powder. It is a top-quality product. I put it in a quality container. And the jars have a shaker lid under the green cap. Heres a picture of the jars and labels.

One option I offer is a gift box for the jars of powder. The jar is wrapped in bubble wrap and tucked into the box. I also include an information sheet telling all about my garlic powder and what makes it so special. The information sheet goes out with all jars of powder I sell (even if they arent boxed). Heres a picture (below)showing the gift box and info sheet. You may notice that the one jar has a shrink-wrap collar around the top. I put the collar on and use a heat gun to shrink it tight. I think people feel better about a jar of powder with a seal on it.

For value-minded customers, who have their own spice jars, I also offer my garlic powder in bags. I weigh three ounces of the powder into food-grade ziplock bags, as shown below.

Since little baggies of garlic powder dont look very attractive, I put them in a plain tin-tie bag with a simple (but nice) label on the outside. And I tuck an info sheet in every bag. I sell these tin-tie bags in 3-ounce and 6-ounce size (see photo below).

So there you have it. Bulbs to powder to package. Heres a glamour shot of the garlic powder as I sell it:

=============== For more specific details about making great garlic powder, I recommend, The Complete Guide To Making Great Garlic Powder: Homegrown and Homemade Secrets From a Garlic Powder Guru. The book is small but chock full of useful and inspiring information on the subject of not only making garlic powder, but growing great garlic. It is also available fromCumberland Books. ================

If you think you might like to grow garlic and make your own garlic powder as a small business, I invite you to read my essay titled:Home Based Agrarian Enterprises & Garlic Powder Profits You might also like:

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2007/11/making-great-garlic-powder.html

Home-Based Agrarian Enterprises & Garlic Powder Profits

This blog is about Faith, Family, and Livin The Good Life, which is another way of saying the blog is about Christian agrarianism. Part of the Christian agrarian vision is to strengthen families by re-establishing the family economy. In fact, reestablishing the family economy is a necessary fundamental to restoring Christian agrarian culture. I have a chapter explaining what the family economy is and how important it is in my book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian. I hope that if you have not read the book, you will one day soon. In short, the family economy is when the entire family works together to provide for its own needs. The ideal family economy involves a family working together to provide not only for the food, shelter, heating, etc., needs of the family, but the financial needs too. Total self sufficiency without a cash income was once possible in this nation (it was, actually, in many sections, the norm) but those days are history. Nowadays, we need a cash flow, and that means home-centered business enterprises. The whole idea is to reconnect the entire family by bringing fathers and mothers home where they belong. Farming, the tried and truest form of agrarianism, has always provided an excellent opportunity for exercising the ideals of a family economy. But few of us who did not grow up in the farming paradigm, have the financial resources or the experience to become farmers, at least in the commonly understood big sense of the word. And, for that matter, most of us dont even have the finances and know-how to be farmers in the small sense of the word. That leaves those of us who grasp the wisdom of living the agrarian life facing an enormous conundrum... How do we get from here to there? How do we break free from the industrial-world jobs that provide us with the cash flow our families need to survive? How do we come home and establish family businesses and/or farms, small or large? The answer to that question will vary from family to family. I have been struggling with this conundrum in my own life for the past few years and I still struggle with it. But I do have some answers. First, I believe that the Lord has given me this vision and He will provide as He sees fit. Nevertheless I may, like Moses, see the promised land but never enter. Ive come to terms with the fact that, even if I do enter, it will probably not be anytime soon. Nevertheless, I will deliberately work towards that end by doing what I can, where I am, with what I have. And I will take it a step at a time, or as Marco Lanzoni, the old Italian farmer I once knew used to say, Little by slow. More importantly, I will endeavor to teach my children how important it is for them to have an entrepreneurial mindset and to consider home-centered businesses for themselves, not only now but in the future when they are leading and providing for their own families. Furthermore, as I can, I feel strongly that I should do what I can to help them establish such businesses. This whole Christian agrarian vision is, after all, multigenerational. Its far bigger than little ol me and little ol you in the here and now. If youve read this blog for long, you know my family has numerous home-centered enterprises. Marlene has been involved in the farmers market for several years. She has established a nice little homemade bread business and each of our boys has played a part in that. I have told you about Marlenes homemade soaps business too. And you are probably aware that I have written and self-published several books. I also have a small home industry making and selling parts for the Whizbang Chicken Plucker. More books, and plans and such will, Lord willing, continue to be produced in the years ahead. I have so many ideas that it is amazing. The money I make from these entrepreneurial activities is not needed to provide for my family because I have a full-time job that does that. The money I make from my part time business is either reinvested in the business or saved so that, one day, we can afford to purchase more land-more than the 1.5 acres we now own. The acquisition of more land is central to my multigenerational agrarian vision. I have told you these things to give you an idea of where and how the Lord is leading me. He leads each of us and our families differently but there may be similarities in our stories and our dreams, and perhaps my example will provide you with some insights or inspiration that may prove helpful to you. With that in mind, Id like to tell you about another of my part-time, home-centered, agrarian enterprises. Specifically, I

want to tell you about garlic powder.... I started growing garlic in my garden back in 1998. I tried growing several varieties. Some grew very poorly and some grew very nicely. The ones that grew well, grew very well. The upstate N.Y. climate and my sandy, well-drained soil, fertilized with ample amounts of well-aged compost, was ideal for growing stiffneck varieties of garlic. The stiffnecks are often referred to as gourmet garlic, because they have a more hearty, robust flavor than to the common softnecks that youll find in most grocery stores. One thing led to another and I tried peeling, slicing, and drying some of my stiffneck garlic. The resulting chips were good in Marlenes winter soups and stews. Then one day I dumped some dried chips in a blender and ground them to powder. My homemade garlic powder was incredibly good. So good, in fact, that I bottled some of it up and gave it to friends and family as gifts. They liked it so much that they said they would buy it from me. That was the beginning of what has become a nice little agrarian home business for me. I have been growing garlic, processing it into powder, and selling it for the past five years. When I realized how uniquely delectable homemade stiffneck garlic powder was, I decided to write a book on the subject. Thats what I do when something interests me and I want to share it with othersI write a book. The Complete Guide To Making Great Garlic Powder was published in 2003. The book tells how I grow garlic, dry it, and process it into powder. At that same time I also wrote a Garlic Powder Profits Report. The report explained how I marketed, priced, and packaged my garlic powder. It provided samples of actual labels, and a list of suppliers for different products. I also included an essay about the 10 Keys to Success for Building a Sustainable Garlic Powder Business. The report was not marketed very well but it still generated a lot of interest and the copies I printed sold out in about a year. The report has been out of print now for almost two years. I didn't want to reprint it until I revised and updated it. Finally, this last week, Ive gotten around to doing that and the new edition of A Garlic Powder Profits Report: The Herrick's Homegrown Story is now in print. Im telling you about this new resource here because the products I offer are an integral part of the family life that I write about on my blog. And Im telling you about the new, revised Garlic Powder Profits Report because, if you have any interest in this subject, Id like to sell you a copy. At 27 pages, my Garlic Powder Profits Report is not a long read, but it is crammed with nuts-and-bolts information about a very viable value-added home business that you can start without a lot of investment. Selling your own homemade garlic powder, made from your own homegrown garlic, is a lot of work. And it will not make you rich. And it is not a business that you're likely to support a whole family on. But, if you like to garden, this is a nice little business that can provide a decent return for the effort you put into it. How much can you make? Well I discuss that in detail in the book, but I'll tell you that I "buy" the garlic bulbs I grow from myself for $5 a pound. Then I pay myself $20 an hour to process and package and market the product. And the final price of the powder even includes a small amount of profit over and above my actual costs of creating it. I currently grow around 1,200 bulbs a year and, after expenses, clear a couple thousand dollars from that. Sometimes I clear more. That's a couple thousand dollars net from a relatively small patch of land. Oh, and I sell every grain of garlic powder I can make. Selling the product has been far easier than making it. What I've just told you has been my experience and it is, of course, no guarantee that your experience will be the same. Some people have made their own garlic powder and tried to sell it and they were disappointed that it did not sell better. Others have followed my example and have been very pleased with the results. The "secret" to this business is to start small, look at it as a long-term sustainable project, and build your market. Instant success is probably not going to happen. The point is, this little business can work and it does work and I'd like it to work for you the way it has worked for me. That's why I wrote the Garlic Powder Profits Report. I could grow more garlic. Fact is, I have grown more. But, for now, I've found that as a part time business 1,200 bulbs is just right for me to handle. The really neat thing about growing garlic is that part of my harvested crop becomes seed to plant the next year's crop. In other words, there is no need to purchase seed every year and that saves a lot of money. It is also part of the definition of "sustainable." I intend to grow garlic and make Herrick's homegrown powder for the rest of my working days (and I hope my working

days in the soil continue until I'm a wrinkled old geezer!). If things work out that I can break from the industrial factory job, I will expand my garlic crop and the garlic powder. But this enterprise will always be one agrarian enterprise among many. I'm convinced that diversity is absolutely necessary with these agrar-preneurial enterprises! Or, to paraphrase the old agrarian saying, "Don't put all your entrepeneurial eggs in one basket." Another great thing about garlic powder is that it can be the foundation of different custom herbal mixes that you can make and sell. Herbal dip mixes, herbal salad dressing mixes, barbecue seasoning mixes, and so forth. These are niche market opportunities that I haven't even touched, but others who make their own garlic powder have. Personally, one of the things Im looking to do is grow and harvest dried beans and develop packaged bean soup mixes that contain my garlic powder and other spices that I raise and dry. This year I am growing 5 kinds of dry beans for seed to grow even more next year. Anyway, if youd like to purchase a copy of my Garlic Powder Profits Report Id like to send one your way. The cost is $16.95. That price includes postage. If you dont already own a copy of my book, Making Great Garlic Powder, you should have it too. The price is $6.95. Full details about these resources can be found at The Whizbang Books Online Catalog. ========== P.S. Here is a photo of the report...

========== I invite you to read my other garlic-related blog essays:

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/08/home-based-agrarian-enterprises-garlic.html