The 2017 champion of the 21st annual Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards is Dorothy Oogarah of Wagar Oogarah Farm near Centreville. The reserve champion (2nd) was Catherine Cheff of Cheff Fields Garlic and Alpaca Farm near Renfrew and honourable mention (3rd) went to Ali Gangneir Ross of Swallowtail Farms near Perth.
Oogarah operates the Wagar family farm with her husband Viren and son Jeffe. The farm has been in her family (Wagar) since 1820 and although they’ve only been into garlic for about the last four years, they’ve gone into it in a rather big way.

“We had 3,600 plants this year,” she said. “For all of July, I’m busy digging.”
This was her third year entering in the awards and she said she’ll be back to defend her title.
“We’re really partial to Creole Rose de l’autrec garlic,” she said. “It’s really good and flavourful.
“Next would be Rocambole but you can’t store it for a year like Creole Rose.”

The Verona Lions do many wonderful good deeds for the community, and with 69 vendors and a pay-what-you-can entry fee, their Garlic Festival on Sept. 3 was an excellent fundraiser for the many programs they support. What an extremely well organized event; the Lions even offered free dog sitting. Many people could be found in the open pavilion where Wayne Huff played and sang his highly amusing songs. The highlight was the presentation of the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards. The Champion is Denis Craigen; Reserve Champion is Anne Janssen and Honorable Mention went to Bill Kirby. The winner of the longest garlic braid was Catherine Cheff, with at 24 foot-long braid containing 336 bulbs.

The Verona Lions Club will be welcoming 40 vendors on Saturday, Sept. 3 to an event that has grown steadily in recent years.

“People seem to come from all over to get their garlic, and see what is new. They are what I call 'foodies' who just love meeting with growers and supporting them,” said Wayne Conway of the Verona Lions, a key organizer of the event.

Over 40 vendors were registered for the garlic festival as of Tuesday, all from within 125 kilometres of Verona. Over half of them are producers of garlic and other garden produce, and the rest are craft vendors.

“That number is a bit down from the number of vendors we ended up with last year but every year there are last-minute additions, so I expect we will have as many or more this year than in previous years,” he said.

Among the vendors this year is a very local micro-producer, Bear Roots Gardens from downtown Verona. Pat and Kate Joslin work a 1/3 of an acre patch where they produce garlic, peppers, tomatoes, ground cherries and other vegetables, as well as a line of organic, locally adapted seeds. Don't miss their booth.

There are also four community groups who will have booths at the festival this year, including the Bellrock Community Hall; the Portland and District Heritage Society, who will be churning butter as part of their display; Girl Guides of Canada; and the Township of South Frontenac.

The canteen at the hall will be open and serving garlic- themed cuisine, and the Lions will have their two kids' rides as well as the mini-putt on hand to entertain the younger set.

At 1 pm, the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards, one of the unique features of the Verona festival, will be presented, and the winners of the Verona Community Association's Flower Barrel contest will be announced as well. Paul Pospisil will preside over the garlic awards and John McDougall, a Lions Club member and township councilor, will be the emcee.

Before the award presentations, the festival will take some time to honor the memory of Ron Whan, a local garlic grower who played an important role in the development of the festival. Ron displayed, sold, and donated garlic each of the first nine years of the event. Last year he had a booth at the festival and at the 150th anniversary celebration for Frontenac County, but passed away a few weeks later.

Entry to the Verona Garlic Festival is by donation, and it runs from 9am until 1pm at the grounds of the Verona Lions Hall on Verona Sand Road. Don't forget to check out the Frontenac Farmers Market as well, which is held at Prince Charles School in Verona on Road 38.

Lovers and growers of the ever popular “Stinky Rose” (a.k.a. garlic) descended on the Verona Lions grounds for their annual garlic festival on Sept. 5, which this year included 55 vendors offering up everything garlic, from seeds, single and braided bulbs to flavorful spreads, jellies, and much more. The event attracted upwards of 1500 visitors, who wasted no time in sampling and loading up on the bounty of vendors from as far afield as Manitoulin Island and London, Ontario, though local growers from Kingston, Bath, Verona, Harrowsmith, and Enterprise made up the majority of vendors.

The annual event is run by the Verona Lions and has become increasingly popular over the years and as always, numerous growers competed in the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards at the festival. The judge this year was Ann Babcock of Harrowsmith, a long-time Ontario Horticultural Association qualified judge. She was assisted by Heather Lebeau of Carleton Place.

Bill Kirby of Harrowsmith, who specializes in a rarer variety of garlic called Yugoslavian Gold, won the overall champion award and was presented the $100 prize donated by the NFU's Local 316. Kirby is one of the only growers of that variety in Eastern Ontario, which he described as “a beautiful bulb that grows to a large size and tastes fabulous both raw and cooked. It has a potent flavour due to its high level of allicin, the compound in garlic directly associated with its health benefits.”

Denis Craigen of Newburg, who has been growing organic garlic for family and friends for five years, participated for the first time this year. He won the second place reserve champion trophy and its $50 prize donated by Local Family Farms in Verona. His selections included varieties of Siberian Fire, Red Russian, Artichoke, Music and two Rocambole varieties. He said his win this year will likely see him return at next year’s festival.

Local garlic guru Paul Pospisil, editor of The Garlic News, Canada's only newsletter solely devoted to everything garlic, spoke at the event on the subject of cooking and storing garlic. “I often speak on how to grow garlic and since everyone these days seems to know how to grow it, I decided to speak this year about cooking with garlic because not everyone knows how to eat garlic”.

He said that the entire garlic plant is edible including its early spring leaves, which he said, “are delicious in salads, omelets.” He mentioned of course the edible scapes and the bulbs, but also the smaller white roots of the plant, which contain lots of oil and are also very flavorful.

Asked about the challenges to growers, Pospisil said this year's growing season was one of the worst. “A late spring robbed the garlic of three weeks of growing time, which resulted overall in smaller, shorter, plants with fewer leaves and generally smaller bulbs.” Then a subsequent cold period with frost also set back the plants, as did the later heat waves in the season. Rain and heat at harvest time also posed problems and created fungal diseases that resulted in crop loss. As a result, the bounty this year was overall smaller than usual, but that did not seem to affect the crowds and sales at this year’s festival, where growers were selling their harvest hand over fist. Those wanting a taste of Bill Kirby's winning Yugoslavian Gold can visit his farm at 625 Colebrook Road near Harrowsmith.

Garlic enthusiasts will be pleased to know that a brand new book titled “Ontario Garlic: The Story from Farm to Festival”, published by The History Press in July, 2015 is now available for those interested in how attitudes towards the stinky bulb have changed.

Toronto author Peter McClusky spent a year and a half digging deep into hundreds of years of archival material to write the book, which explains how garlic arrived in Ontario, and how the attitude towards it has drastically changed over the years. He cites the changes as the result of changing immigration laws in Canada in the 1970s. “At that time people arrived in Ontario, brought their cooking with them and with that... their love of garlic. Up until then we were a mostly Anglo-population with an Anglo appreciation of garlic that was not only very conservative but actually quite negative”.

McClusky gives examples of these negative attitudes in the book. One was taken from the minutes of a teachers' meeting from a school near Sudbury in 1928 where the teachers there were considering if they should be allowed to send children home who smelled of garlic and who in the end decided to do so.

In another example he tells of a woman he interviewed who lived on a farm in small town in Ontario in the 1940s, whose parents were Ukrainian and how she loved to put on a dress and sing. Her one and only opportunity to do so was at her Sunday school but the Sunday school teacher told her she could do so only if she stopped eating garlic. “Imagine what kind of attitude that would put in this little girl's mind and the mind of her parents.”

In the book McClusky looks back further to 10,000 years ago and explains how garlic came from central Asia. He describes how it arrived here and how it was both popular and reviled at the same time. The big turnaround came, as previously mentioned, in the 1970s. “As people in Ontario became exposed to new cuisine from other parts of the world, they realized that this cuisine often included garlic as an ingredient and so their attitudes began to change”.

McClusky also cites changing attitudes towards garlic using a sociological and anthropological perspective and in the book explains that certain experiments show how human taste actually works. “What we think of the taste of something can often be quite different from its real taste and this occurs often from a negative association we may have or may have inherited.”

McClusky, who is from Toronto, had a booth at this year's Verona Garlic Festival and was selling and signing copies of his book. He has been growing garlic near Toronto since 2009, has interned on a farm, and also founded and runs the Toronto Garlic Festival, now in its fifth year. He said he is interested in promoting not only Ontario garlic but also other locally grown produce in the province. “People should get away from only thinking about the price of locally grown food and consider more how good it tastes and how is it is being grown by farmers right in their own back yard”.

McClusky definitely did his homework in his effort to arrive at “a deep understanding of garlic.” He interviewed 150 people for the book, including farmers, chefs, gardeners, older residents, and scientists. The book also includes maps, illustrations plus 40 recipes, many by famed Ontario chefs, with more obscure recipes that include desserts like ice cream and brownies. As well it has tips on growing garlic and information about its medicinal qualities. McClusky said he is very excited about the positive response he is getting to the book, which he said is likely due to the fact that he wanted to write a book that he himself would like to buy and read. The book is available in book stores and online at Indigo and Amazon.

The Verona Lions’ Garlic Festival, which was held on August 30, is also the home of the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards and according to Garlic Guru Paul Pospisil, it is the bragging rights that accompany the trophies and cash awards that the winners should celebrate most. While both overall champions this year seemed ever humble as the awards were handed out, the certificates and ribbons that now identify them as the best cultivators of the beloved stinky rose will no doubt bring some well-deserved extra attention to their efforts.

This year seven competitors entered the annual competition, now in its 18th year, where judges assess growers in a number of different categories including best single bulb; best display of 12 from a single cultivar; best collection of five different cultivars; and best braid.

This year’s reserve champion, whose displays took home the second highest points overall, was Ali Ross of Swallowtail Farm near Perth, who won the same award last year. The award was tinged with sadness since Ali's husband Glenn Gangnier passed away this past June. Ali was thrilled to receive the award again this year and said she will continue farming and growing garlic.

The first place overall champion award was given to Bill Kirby, whose garlic last year won in the best bulb category. Kirby said that last year’s win encouraged him this year to expand the number of varieties he produces and enter all four categories. Kirby grows primarily Yugoslavian gold, a type of porcelain garlic but this year he also grew silver skin, artichoke, rocambole and glazed purple. Kirby said the win came as a total surprise for him. “The first time you do something like this you really don't expect to win.” He said that the win will encourage him not only to continue growing more varieties but also to enter the competition again next year.

The cash awards, $100 for champion and $50 for reserve champion were provided by the National Farmers’ Union Local 316 and Local Family Farms in Verona and NFU president Dianne Dowling was on hand to give out the prize money. Dowling said that the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards go “a long way in acknowledging and rewarding local growers who are working hard to produce garlic in our own area.” South Frontenac Councilor John McDougall was also present at the event and he and Dowling congratulated the growers and the winners, and also thanked the public for supporting local food and local farmers in the area.

Close to 40 vendors were on hand for the festivities selling their garlic, garlic-based comestibles and other garlic-related products. Those wanting a taste of the best of the best, can purchase Bill Kirby's award-winning bulbs at the Kirby farm located at 625 Colebrook Road near Harrowsmith.

Paul Pospisil always has good things to say about locally grown garlic and I will give him the last word here. “This year was a great year for garlic and there is just no comparison between locally grown garlic and the sub-standard imported garlic that unfortunately fills our grocery stores.” Pospisil said he wears an apron at home that says, “When in doubt, use more garlic.”

Unfortunately David Hahn of Forest Farm, whose garlic won the first place champion award consecutively for the last four years, was unable to compete this year due to illness.