How it works
Half a square metre of growing space
No ordinary garlic
How it works - for 2025 season shares
The idea is pretty simple - you buy shares in our yearly harvest via a subscription that rolls around every 12 months. You can buy as many shares as you like, depending on your needs, and we appeal to the home cook, through to the professional chef. The minimum order is one share, and this effectively secures you half a square metre of growing space on our small farm. This area will yield approximately 18 medium to large garlic bulbs over the course of the season, that we send to you in a single delivery, in around late July/early Aug. This enables us to harvest the crop in June, and then dry and cure the bulbs in our drying shed, with the help of the Welsh breeze. The varieties we grow are chosen for their taste and storage qualities, and we grow both hard neck and soft neck varieties, The main varieties we grow are:
-
Rose Wight - Originally cultivated in Northern Spain, this Hardneck variety has attractive rose pink streaks on its outer skin, and has a strong flavour.
-
Mersley Wight - Originating from the Auvergne region of central France, this softneck variety stores well (around 10 months) and has good sized bulbs.
-
Rhapsody - This very large softneck is one of the first garlic to mature. Its large bulbs burst out the ground in May/June and age with a deep purple colouration.
The varieties we grow generally have a storage life of around 9 months in optimum conditions (see storage below), although will last around 3-6 months just sitting in a bowl on your worktop - but treated perfectly, you could have a supply of garlic for most of the year.
Cancelling your subscription
To cancel your subscription, all you need to do is send us an email, including your full name and address, informing us that you wish to cancel.
We will then cancel your subscription within 24 hours. Any subscription payments already paid cannot be refunded, but you will always receive your garlic for any payment received. We would always appreciate some brief feedback for your reason for cancelling, as we want to ensure we are doing things well, and providing a good product and a personal service.
Postage
We post your garlic in a card box using either Royal Mail, or Evri. This will not be recorded, or require a signature, but can be tracked.
Storage
The bulbs arrive in a card box, and can be stored here with the lid open, in a cool dark place. A pantry is perfect, or a cool, airy cupboard. It's generally not advisable to store in a fridge, unless you are using them within a short timescale. You could just put your bulbs in a bowl or basket on your kitchen worktop, and they will likely be usable for several months. Garlic may turn green with age, but it is still usable and safe. Eventually garlic will sprout green shoots, and this is part of its natural cycle. These shoots can be bitter, and are best removed. Our garlic bulb varieties are known to store generally well, and can last in top condition for around 6 - 9 months under absolute optimum storage conditions.
A word about the price
We aim to sell each of our garlic bulbs for £1. This may seem a little expensive, compared to supermarket counterparts, however, this is no ordinary garlic.
Our garlic is generally larger, sometimes over twice the size of imports. Our garlic is grown without the use of harmful chemical pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers, and is instead, grown using regenerative, low impact principles. Our garlic is not grown as part of an intensive mono-culture system, it's grown by hand in a small area of Welsh hillside on a family run market garden. Moreover, we strongly believe (as do many of our customers), that our garlic tastes better, has more complex flavours, and lasts longer.
So, to put it in a bit more context, for less than the price of a Mars Bar, one bulb of our amazing British grown garlic, can spice up your meals for weeks.
Any questions
Pili-Pala Farm
Cwm Nant Y Meichiaid
Llanfyllin
SY22 5NA
E-Mail: contactsmithyfarm@gmail.com
Tel: 07986562560