Turkey vegetable soup with roasted garlic

Thanksgiving turkey's gone, but we still had some rich stock made from the bones languishing in the fridge. So we made a quick, flavorful soup for the last bit.

All it took was eight thumb-sized cloves of roasted garlic, some frozen peas, fresh carrots, spices, turkey stock and voila--a healthy, hearty soup.

Ready in less than 30 minutes, too. Make your own version and see what you can do with leftovers from the holidays!

First view of the new crop

Just took this picture of the new garlic crop for 2013. It's already sending up leaves, and the varieties planted several weeks ago are about three inches high. Not bad for a late start!

The Best Laid Plans of Garlic Farmers

The original 2013 garlic crop plan, with all its charts and spreadsheets, had us planting in October and finishing a few weeks before Thanksgiving. It was a good plan.

But that's not how it turned out. Life, health, weather and day jobs threw us a few curves. We started planting almost a month later than anticipated. As a result, we're still planting garlic. In December.

Peeling and preparing big cloves of Music garlic for planting. 

That definitely was not the plan.

If there's one thing farming teaches, it's that things don't always go according to plan.  Weather patterns change; suddenly the forecast turns from sunny to a week-long deluge. Unexpected pests or crop diseases decimate what had otherwise should have been a banner year. Ask some of the Midwestern garlic growers who got hit in 2012 with aster yellows disease.  They'll tell you: There's always something unexpected.