Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Carrot Surgery


I finally finished weeding the carrots. If you’ve never had the opportunity to weed tiny carrotlings, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s akin to intricate brain surgery: the delicate little carrot plants are shaped exactly like dendrites, the dirt is the grey matter, and the dratted, abundant pigweed and lamb’s quarter are the tumors that must be extracted without destroying the little green (in this case) brain cells. Your fingers serve as precise surgical instruments that can discern the difference between weed stems and carrot stems even when they’re tangled together.

Of course, the carrots wouldn’t be so spindly nor the weeds so heavily populated had I got to that row sooner. All told, it took me almost three hours, and that was with Hubby digging out weeds on the row’s perimeter.

Non-gardeners are thinking, Are you kidding? A bag of baby carrots is really cheap at the grocery store, and you don’t even have to peel them! Well, I admit that the exact same thought crossed my mind, until I remembered that homegrown Danvers carrots taste at least 20 times sweeter than store-bought ones and are probably infinitely more nutritious. Besides that, the horses and goats absolutely adore the carrot tops and trimmings. (Meels, one of my goaties, who’s not known for having a discriminating palate, won’t even touch a store-bought carrot.)

I just have one question: How do organic carrot farmers, who raise acres of the popular orange veggies, manage their weeds?

“You’re here to bear fruit, reproduce, lavish life on the earth, live bountifully.”   –GENESIS 9:7


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