Nelson County Rocks

After having become accustomed to home-grown garlic from last year’s harvest, it was traumatic to run out around March and have to resort to the anemic stuff in the supermarkets.  So this year I planted more cloves and more varieties, and this past week harvested and began the curing process for 120 bulbs, including some of the largest I’ve ever seen.  This year’s varieties include four from last year (Music, Brown Tempest, Inchellium Red, S&H Silverstein) and two new ones I picked up at the Montecello Harvest Festival last fall: Appalachian Red and Romanian Red.  It also proved to be the time to start harvesting onions and to complete harvesting the spring turnip and kohlrabi crop.

As the picture above shows, even a larger-than-usual storebought garlic doesn’t come close in size to most of our homegrown ones–and the taste difference is even greater!

some more pictures here

I hiked the next 10.7 mile section of the Appalachian Trail in Nelson County as a day hike on June 14th.  Starting from the trailhead on Route 56 by the suspension bridge over the Tye River (where Nic, Cally and Felix went swimming at the end of the first hike), I began the 3000 foot ascent of Three Ridges Mountain, which dominates this section of the AT.  The trail is graded nicely, and at the higher elevations, mountain laurel and rhododendron were still fully in bloom, along with numerous wildflowers.  While the  three summits of Three Ridges and  Bee Mountain are wooded, there are a series of fine rocky outlooks along the way.  Part of the Three Ridges Wilderness Area, this is a lovely and wild part of the AT.  This section ends at Reid’s Gap, where the AT intersects the Blue Ridge Parkway, where Monika had helped me leave a car early in the morning.

click here for more pictures