At ZOE, we really like garlic.  Seriously.  We love the stuff!  Returning from a recent shopping excursion, our staff unloaded 1,500 kilos of the pungent bulbs.  (That’s 3,300 pounds or 1.65 tons!)  Either they ran into one heck of a garlic salesman or our staff has big plans for garlic!

One of our goals at ZOE Children’s Homes is to become as self-sufficient as possible, especially in the areas of food and water.  We are well along with our work to provide a secure and stable source of clean, fresh water for our needs, and we are now also embarking on growing our own food.

Our big garlic buy will serve to move us a step closer toward food self-sufficiency.  At the same time, it will save us lots of money!

The recent purchase included 1,000 kilos of white garlic and 500 kilos of red.  We took 20% of the fresh bulbs and planted them.

In the meantime, the remaining 80% of the garlic was hung up to dry where it will lose half its weight in the process.  Bought fresh from harvest, a kilo of white goes for 20 Thai baht (฿) while the red sells for ฿15, making our total purchase price ฿27,500 (US$915).

In a few months, when garlic is out of season and dried garlic starts to get scarce, the price of white garlic will reach ฿135 per kilo and red will fetch about ฿100.  If we were to buy 500 kilos of dry white and 250 kilos of dry red garlic we would pay ฿92,500 (US$3,080).

Taking into consideration the 20% we planted, our total savings on garlic for eating is ฿52,000 ($1,730).

Not only did we save money, but this may well be the last time we have to buy garlic.