WESTMINSTER WEST — Howard Prussack leads the way from the bright morning into the office of High Meadows Farm located in the barn. Arranged in a basket is a small mound of garlic bulbs that are charcoal and burnt umber in color. They could be mistaken for spring flower bulbs pulled right from the ground.
This is High Meadows' black garlic.
Prussack, who owns the farm with his wife, Lisa, breaks open a bulb. He eases a jelly-like clove from the garlic bulb. After 288 hours in a special appliance called a black garlic fermenter, the clove looks more like a warm dark chocolate truffle than garlic.
According to Prussack, the fermented delicacy has three times the antioxidants than the garlic straight from the field. It's good for digestion, appetite, and blood pressure regulation, he adds.
“It's really like nothing else,” he said.
It also needs to be tasted to be believed.
Before explaining any more about the garlic, Prussack spreads a little on a piece of cheddar on a cracker.
“I tell people right up front that it doesn't taste like garlic,” he said. “The best way to describe it is sort of a molasses-y, truffle-y, smoky flavor.”
Richard “Richie” Fairchild, who works with Prussack and is in charge of making the black garlic, chimes in, saying that a lot of people describe the flavor as similar to dark chocolate.
Prussack disagrees. He thinks it definitely has more of a smoky flavor.
“There are a lot of different types of dark chocolate,” Fairchild says, teasingly.
“Don't complicate my life,” Prussack says with a smile.
A slow process
It takes 288 hours to produce black garlic.
During the fermenting process, the garlic's skin turns shades of deep brown and charcoal. Browning of the garlic is attributed to the Maillard reaction, the chemical reaction that happens between sugars and amino acids at higher temperatures.
The process - reaction differs from caramelization, a reaction involving heat and sugars - adds color and boosts flavor.
According to several websites devoted to black garlic, the fermenting process causes the amino acids and sugars to produce melanoidins, brown compounds that give the black garlic its distinct color.
Prussack estimates the farm has produced 2,000 to 3,000 bulbs of the value-added delicacy since September 2016.
He said when he first heard of the fermented garlic, he thought it was simply a different variety. “I want some of that,” he recalls saying to himself.
He asked other farmers in some online forums,“Where do you get that black-garlic seed?”
He was told he had to make it.
To do so, he needed the fermenter, a cross between a rice cooker and pressure cooker. The appliance, or pot, is programmed to fluctuate between hot and cool. The continuous cycle of changing temperatures converts the starches, sugars, and amino acids.
“He brought the pot home and needed someone to do it,” Fairchild says with a grin.
By popular demand
High Meadows is the largest garlic grower in the county, growing approximately 30,000 garlic bulbs a season.
A quarter of the crop is held out so it can be replanted. “It's kind of a dumb crop,” Prussack jokes. No other crop requires taking 25 percent off the top, he said.
In addition to retail sales, High Meadows has also sold seed garlic to other growers for approximately 10 years, a big part of the business.
“But because of the growth of the black garlic, we're really cutting back on the seed garlic sales,” he said. “Because that's really the size we want for the black garlic.”
High Meadows started with one black garlic “can.” Now 12 line the metal shelves next to the farm's office. Each setup can hold 25 bulbs.
Prussack explains that the cooking process mimics how black garlic was made in Korea by burying garlic packed in manure.
Manure is “the original slow cooker,” he says, laughing.
The garlic's exact origins are unknown, but the food has a long history in Korea, Japan, and Thailand.
Fairchild prepares the garlic by cutting off the fresh garlic stalks and grading the bulbs by size. He then drops the garlic bulbs onto a metal tiered insert that holds the bulbs inside the garlic cooker.
Prussack said the farm always has the cans operating to keep up with demand, which has grown to the point that he anticipates offering black garlic through the whole year rather than seasonally.
'The sky's the limit'
Black garlic, with a shelf life of six months, keeps well, says Prussack, who prefers not to refrigerate it. He wraps it in a paper bag or plastic so it doesn't dry out.
But even if that does happen, the cloves will take on the consistency of raisins, and people can chew them like licorice.
Prussack lists the foods he likes to add black garlic to: scrambled eggs, omelettes, cheeses, baguettes with brie, steak, appetizers, sauces, or mixed into ground hamburger. It's good in tomato sauce and as a pizza topping, he adds.
“It goes great with proteins,” he said.
He might experiment with infusing into cooking oils, like olive oil. Or a maple-black garlic glaze.
The garlic is also gaining traction as a distinctive ingredient in the products of other local food producers.
Just last week, in conjunction with the Southern Vermont Garlic Fest 2019 in Bennington, Saxtons Distillery in Brattleboro pitched a limited edition black garlic and rosemary syrup as a mixer for its locally produced Snowdrop Gin.
Tavernier Chocolates of Brattleboro has been using the garlic in its chocolates, including in its Total Eclipse Bonbons. In June, the small chocolatier tested its Soppressata Picante di Cioccolata, a dark chocolate ganache blended with the black garlic as well as red pepper flakes and sliced almonds, at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market.
Dosa Kitchen, which features South Indian street food from a food truck at the Retreat Farm in Brattleboro, has used it in a black garlic ricotta and provolone dosa pancake.
“The sky's the limit,” Prussack says.
Fairchild likes to spread it on steak fresh from the grill.
“It melts like butter,” he said.
Rethinking packaging, and hemp
High Meadows sells its black garlic at the Putney, Brattleboro, Monadnock, and River Valley co-ops in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, respectively. Samples are available at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market.
Recently, Prussack started reevaluating the product's packaging, seeking to move away from the plastic containers he was using. He considered compostable packaging, but none of the composting companies in the area can process it.
Many of the co-ops sell the garlic loose, displayed in baskets. The latest packaging under consideration is a small bag with a die-cut window so shoppers can see the garlic.
The 65-acre farm sells produce directly to local co-ops. Its potted herbs are sold throughout New England. High Meadows excels at growing the allium family: garlic, onions, leeks. The farm also grows squash, tomatoes, and raspberries, and many other crops.
One of those other crops is hemp, which, unlike its botanical relative cannabis, is used to extract cannabidiol (CBD), a federally legal and non-psychoactive compound used in a burgeoning number of products for seizures, chronic pain, inflammation, and other medical conditions.
Prussack is proud that two years in, High Meadows is one of the more experienced growers in the area.
“It's fabulous stuff,” he said.
The farm sells the hemp at the Brattleboro Farmers' Market. The flowers are dried, trimmed, and sold by weight.
“Produce is always healthy, but after selling butternut squash for 45 years, I've never had anyone tell me it changed their life,” he said. “Selling CBD hemp, I've had people tell me 'It changed my life,' and that's pretty empowering.”
The farm also found a market in providing plants for growers across Vermont in accessible quantities. For High Meadows, the cost was $1 a seed, and you have to buy 5,000 seeds at a time, Prussack says - prices that are tough for new growers, he added.
“We've done a crazy amount of business,” he said.
A few local farms have also contracted High Meadows for field-planting CBD hemp. He likes to mentor the new growers, too.
“Everyone who listened to me is doing great,” he laughs, offering a new motto: “For your safety and your success, listen to Howard.”
Pure optimism
How did Prussack get into farming?
“It offered freedom,” Prussack says. “It's a beautiful thing to pull a carrot from the ground and say, 'I grew this.'”
Prussack moved to town from Brooklyn in 1971. He bought High Meadows Farm in 1979 after working on several neighboring farms.
The farm was once part of the Ranney family farm, which, up until approximately six years ago, was the oldest continuously owned family farm in Vermont, he says.
On this bright late summer day a few clouds resembling fluffy sheep drift across the blue sky. High Meadows' onion and garlic harvests are in and drying in the 200-year-old barn and nearby greenhouses.
High Meadows, explains Prussack, is one of the oldest certified organic farms in Vermont.
“[Farming is] pure optimism,” he said. “Every year you pretty much start from scratch and it's all up to forces that aren't really under my control.”
A unique farm in a unique place
Prussack talks about some of the work that has happened over the years to keep the farm, its barn, and outbuildings shipshape.
“We just think that a healthy farm should be pleasing to the eye as much as the stomach,” he said.
The farm house is from the 1800s - with possibly a few areas dating to the 1700s - and the barn is approximately 200 years old, he said.
“History and the old stuff is about all we have,” he joked. “These things don't take care of themselves.”
Prussack said one whole side of the barn needed to be rebuilt because the “dry well” - basically a nonexistent septic tank - backed up.
When he bought the farm in the 1970s, Prussack said no one asked about septic tanks. In High Meadows' case, the septic consisted of a pipe that ran along the side of the barn and into the field. One day, a contractor working in the area with a bulldozer cracked the old pipe.
For years, he marveled at how well crops grew on that side of the barn, he says with a laugh.
Prussack has also replaced a bunch of beams that previous owners had removed from the barn.
“The barn is probably stronger now than since the day it was built, so it will be here a long time,” he says.
“I think it's part of civic responsibility,” Prussack says of beautifying and maintaining the farm. “We get a tax break on our farm for current use, so we try to make the farm look nice.”
The real flavor of Westminster West
“There are so many unique and incredible foods grown in this county,” Prussack says. “I could walk to two award-winning cheese producers from here.”
He isn't kidding about walking distance. Recently, sheep from a neighboring cheese maker slipped out of their field. Prussack woke that morning to find the herd wandering through his yard.
In his opinion, Westminster West has great farm land because it's at 900 feet in elevation and the glacial soil “is very mineralized” compared to the sandy river soil of the Connecticut River Valley.
“It's a real terroir,” he says. “It's a real flavor of Westminster West.”
He estimates that the temperatures at High Meadows also average 8 degrees cooler than in Brattleboro, so his growing season is a little shorter than the river valley farms'.
“We have this unique soil,” he said. “Against all odds, I've held on here because we're not a huge farm - we're a small family farm - and I always felt if we can't make it, then no one can make it as a small family farm. And that's been theguiding principal that keeps me going.”
Staff member Vanessa Peknic stops by the farm office to eat lunch and grab a piece of pie. Her hands are green from the plants she has spent the morning working with.
Peknic, a farm veteran for more than a decade, jokes that if anyone outside of High Meadows wants to talk to her, Prussack must first bribe her with pie.
Prussack says that during the busy growing season he takes on more help. This time of year, however, only the core staff remain.
“People want to support local farms, and that's all really nice,” he says. “The way to support local farms and make sure that local farms are part of the fabric of the community and Vermont is to buy what farms produce.”
“Sustainability is how farms stay in business,” Prussack says. “That's sustainability, and the way to do it is to support them economically.”
“Good wishes don't pay our bills,” he says.