A Year's Worth of Carrots

After planting three rows of carrots in mid-April, I didn't have the heart to thin them. Kind of silly, I realize, but it feels like picking who lives and who dies. As a result, I ended up with some pretty strange looking mutant carrots, they still taste good, but growing twisted around each other gives them an alien vegetable appearance. I've since planted another row of carrots and took the time to space those seeds so that thinning shouldn't be necessary. All in all, we pulled out about 12 pounds of usable/edible carrots - based on the price per pound of carrots at the farmers market or at Trader Joe's right now, that's a little more than $30 worth of carrots.

The planting and growing parts were pretty easy, most of the work was watering and weeding. The real work started when we took the carrots out of the dirt...Then came the stemming - not actually that was kind of fun, and then the cleaning. That part required rinsing the carrots in 5 sinkfulls of water and then each one. Honestly by the end I was ready to be done with carrots completely...I still can't believe I have more growing outside - at least it won't be as many to deal with. Looking at those three gallon bags filled with carrots that we'll be eating over the next year gives me a sense of pride. It feels good to provide in this way. In the next month or so I want to go through the same process with the peas and the zucchini. We also should have plenty of onions and potatoes to store for [hopefully] the next year, or even just to get us to the beginning of next spring.