From that First Crop of Garlic, Pleasant Lake Farm Grew

By Diana Kuan

Globe Correspondent

Karen Lee had suffered through enough early morning commutes from Cape Cod to Reading to realize she couldn’t spend the rest of her life in the corporate world. During one of her 100-mile drives, she caught a story on NPR about niche farming. She was instantly hooked. Karen figured all she needed was arable land, which she already had, and a little perseverance.

“I told my husband I was going to quit my job and become a farmer,” she said, looking at her rows of garlic plants. “Here I am, four years later.”

Karen and her husband Robinson, then working as a tugboat captain in Boston, owned 12 acres of open land carved out of a forested area of Harwich. A winding quarter-mile dirt path separates the farm from a neighborhood of mostly vacation homes. The Lees’ barn-like house took up so little room that they had plenty of space for crops.  

Being a fan of garlic, she discovered it was hard to find it locally grown. It was also November, the ideal time for planting garlic, but not much else. She planted 35 pounds with organic fertilizer and hoped for the best. In the spring, she was surprised and excited to have a larger crop that expected. She rented a stand at the Orleans Farmers Market and quickly sold out her first harvest.  

The next year, Karen stepped up her planting to meet high demands. She planted 200 pounds of five varieties, and sold out within three weeks at farmers markets in Wellfleet and Orleans. She also sold directly to restaurants around the Cape, including Chester, 902 Main, and L’Alouette. Her garlic scapes, the curly offshoots of pre-flowering plants, became popular with chefs who wanted to add a mild garlic flavor to their concoctions. The high-end market also came calling when she started to grow nasturtium flowers, which are edible and have a slight peppery flavor.  

“The chefs love the flowers for garnish,” she said. “I also made salad bouquets with different green and red lettuces and put the nasturtium flowers on top. The bouquets were huge sellers at the market because everyone wanted them for hostess gifts.”  

The last growth season yielded the most varieties of garlic, 22 in total. Experimenting to see what kinds would thrive in Cape Cod soil, she planted varieties that included Russian Red, Georgian Fire, Siberian, and elephant garlic, not an actual garlic but a member of the leek family. She also began to make hot sauces, mustards, and relishes with her garlic and the small number of hot peppers she was planting.  Once the garlic was harvested and sold, however, she realized that she had no produce to offer her customers.

“It wasn’t fulfilling anymore to specialize in a single crop,” she said.  “There are very few farms around here, and the demand for fresh produce is so high.”

For the current season, Karen cut her garlic crop by half, keeping the popular types like Russian Red and elephant garlic.  She used the extra land for lettuce, peas, beets, asparagus, strawberries, and blueberries.  The unusually wet weather in June and early July caused her garlic crop to be belayed two weeks, but after the garlic was harvested she started on eggplants and kale.  

The farm, which recently received its organic certification, goes beyond the idea of organic to being fully self-sustainable. When the couple first bought the property in 1998, Robinson installed solar panels and a propane stove and fridge. This year, Pleasant Lake received a large grant from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources to upgrade their solar panels, and another grant to improve their irrigation system. The ten solar panels, along with a 1000-watt wind turbine, produce enough energy to power the entire farm. The Lees are also in the midst of building a large root cellar for refrigeration, and enough space to house two wells that will go with the new irrigation. Two eight-month-old Scottish Highland cows provide all the fertilizer and compost needed for the crops.  

This June’s harvest of peas and rhubarb brought local families to the farm on weekends to buy produce from the new farm stand Robinson built.  And to picnic. “Cape Cod is all pavement,” Karen said. “People love coming down here to the woods.”  With lunch in hand, customers inevitably become curious about growing their own food and alternative energy.  

Because of her role as one of the few farmers on Cape Cod, Karen Lee also finds that half her job is being an educator. Along with Tim Friary from Cape Cod Organics, she has spoken on WQRC in Hyannis and WOMR in Provincetown about organic farming.  Much of the on-air time is devoted to encouraging independent farming. According to her, the demand for fresh produce on Cape Cod is especially high in the summer, and “there still isn’t enough available.”  She leads school groups on tours around her farm, hoping the kids’ enthusiasm would rub off on their parents.  She is also adding bunking accommodations in the root cellar so that college students in agriculture, who have e-mailed asking to intern, would have a place to stay.  

The other half of her time is still, of course, devoted to farming. To have more time on the farm and selling produce at her farm stand, she has cut back on farmers markets for the year. She has also applied for another grant to build a green house, to grow more types of produce and have a longer growing season.  

“Garlic is great,” she said, “But having crops available after garlic is even better.”  

Info:

Pleasant Lake Farm is located at 2 Birch Drive in Harwich.  Follow the dirt path about a quarter mile to the farm. Farm stand hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.  For more information, contact 508-432-3557, or visit pleasantlakefarm.com.