This week, Chad and I received a gift from ourselves from the past – almost 20 lbs of carrots!
We had a large carrot crop last summer and decided to keep many of them in the ground for winter – a way to take advantage of the outdoors as an additional source of refrigeration.
I wrote about this technique for Gardener’s Path – and if you’d like to learn more about it, have a look at it there.
We buried our carrot crop under a mulch of thick soil in late fall – tucking it into bed for the winter.
Since in the last week or so some early warm days have been gracing us with their presence, it was time to start digging the carrots up – before the warm weather encouraged them to start growing greens again.
Happily, most of our carrot crop survived the -13°F lows we experienced over the winter, with only a small amount of loss to freezing – mostly just a small bit of some of the tops.
While Chad sifted through last year’s carrot beds and I snapped a few photos, the donkeys looked on, hoping for some treats.
They weren’t disappointed. I handed out some of the freeze-damaged carrot bits to them, which they heartily enjoyed.
As for me, I’m looking forward to some simple, sauteed carrots made with our harvest!
