BOOK REVIEW — Stanley Crawford's The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires

Cover of The Garlic Papers

Stanley Crawford’s The Garlic Papers
A Book Review by HSFF’s Executive Director Pete Warzel.

“After planting and harvesting crops for over forty years, you would think a being might finally comprehend the ephemeral nature of all things. Not, alas, this one.” — Stanley Crawford, The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires

The classic A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm was first published in 1998 and has been in print ever since. It is an elegant and eloquent rumination on life through the annual cycle of a small farm in Northern New Mexico. It is a quiet testament.

2019 brings a continuation, not quite a sequel – The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires. If Stan had ever previously intended to write a follow-up on his classic, he most likely would not have predicted the chain of events that are delineated in this one.

Circumstances distill to this: In 2014 Ted Hume, an international trade attorney, asked Stan and Rosemary Crawford to act as an affected party, a garlic grower, to request a review of Harmoni International Spice regarding their import/pricing policies. Harmoni is a major importer of garlic in the U.S. and is owned by the Chinese company, Zhengzhou Harmoni Spice. The “dumping” in the anti-dumping laws is the import of foreign goods, in this case garlic, at a price that undercuts American growers (dumps on the market). The review by the U.S. Department of Commerce went smoothly until Harmoni decided that millions of potential fines would enfeeble their position in gaming the trade system in the U.S. market, and decided to play hardball. Some seven legal jurisdictions, four sets of attorneys (plus Chinese law firms) opposing, seven legal firms (representing Stan and associates), plus advising firms, are all locked into the mess. Ted Hume and Stan are not budging in what has become a real time David and Goliath story, and a look at best, into the inefficient, incompetent bureaucracy of U.S. governed international trade, at worst, the corrupt nature of the system.

The beautifully clear, Crawford writing style re-emerges in this work, as does a very lucid reporting of circumstances around the Harmoni-Spice international intrigue and legal imbroglio. Stan has multiple lives – farmer, novelist, writer of clear and beautiful non-fiction, man who cares deeply about the world. This book is truly a hybrid, and well done. He tells the economic/political story, yet combines it with elegant ruminations on the work of farming, and then, as in the chapter “Apocalypse Shortly”, let’s rip with a hilarious recap of a dinner among fellow Dixonistas, “…discussing our favorite topic, the End of the World.”

Was all, is all, this worth it? And by all I mean not simply the complex legal harassment of a small, Northern New Mexico owner/farmer by a powerhouse of an international exporter of garlic, but his hard, forty years of farming also. To the farming question: “Above all, it is quiet on the farm. I take the quiet for granted. After a day in the city, I crave the quiet.” And, to the legal trade question: ‘I have been asked a number of times whether I regret becoming involved in this labyrinth. No, because it has been a fascinating peephole into how the world works….”

Stan gave a reading and book signing at the Historic Santa Fe Foundation several weeks ago, and his demeanor is calming, his patience in responding to the facts of the Harmoni-Spice scrum inspiring. He looks the same, at 82 years of age, as in the photographs of him when A Garlic Testament was published almost 22 years ago. He is fit, wiry, intellectually curious, and still a fine, fine writer. In an interview from 2008 with PowellsBooks.Blog, the iconic bookstore in Portland, Oregon, Stan said, “Writing is what I do to make sense of life.”

I will tell you a story from many years ago when I called Stan for advice from my Denver home. A late spring snowstorm had split an apple tree in my courtyard and somehow over the next months I saved the good half. However, a year later the good, living half, was leaning into the house. What to do? I asked the guy who would know. On the phone he said, “Well, do you want the Santa Fe answer or the real one?” I bit. Ok, give me the Santa Fe answer. He paused, and said, “Move the house.” I took the real answer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
STANLEY CRAWFORD is co-owner with his wife, RoseMary Crawford, of El Bosque Garlic Farm in Dixon, New Mexico, where they have lived since 1969. Crawford was born in 1937 and was educated at the University of Chicago and at the Sorbonne. He is the author of nine novels, including Village, Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine, Travel Notes, GASCOYNE, and Some Instructions, a classic satire on all the sanctimonious marriage manuals ever produced. He is also the author of two memoirs: A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small Farm in New Mexico, and Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico. He has written numerous articles in various publications such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Double Take, and Country Living. For more information, please visit stanleycrawford.net.

The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires
Stanley Crawford
Leaf Storm Press
$16.95, Paperback
186 Pages