Mutant

So yesterday I was cleaning up the vegetable beds, getting ready for spring planting when I finally pulled this baby out of the ground.

It has been growing for at least a year, probably more like 16 months if I'm remembering correctly when I planted fall carrots (August of 2015).

Giant Mutant Carrot, as I am calling it, was as long as my forearm and thicker than my wrist. It was left to its own devices in a bed of onions I watered but only harvested a few of, and for some reason it never went to seed and just kept growing.  So yesterday I decided it's time had come. 

It was flavorful and delicious, despite the scary appearance. But since it was so old, I decided to use it in a carrot cake instead of serving it straight up as a vegetable.

It was pure mutant deliciousness!

Winter's List

My chore list for winter is now about halfway done, which is good because I saw the first Bradford pears in bloom a couple of days ago outside the local supermarket, meaning spring is just around the corner.

I don't remember spring coming in January; by my accounts that's about three weeks earlier than in my childhood, but considering the impacts of climate change I don't doubt the change.

It does, however, make me want to speed the plow a bit where my winter list is concerned.  The barn quilts are almost done (I'll post pics once I'm finished!), the raised beds are almost ready for spring planting, I do already have some nice lettuce in the ground and the carrots are all harvested.

We have a couple of landscape projects to start, which will entail removing even more lawn than we already have.  In this drought, I just can't tolerate putting fresh drinking water on a pleasure lawn, and so we may end up with a bigger patio area (which means more room to entertain and lounge outdoors!). Plus we'll be adding some nice, drought-tolerant landscape shrubs, to provide some pretty color. 

If we can make it through this list, I will feel a great sense of satisfaction as the days grow longer and warmer.

How are your winter projects coming?  

Ginger-Carrot Soup

Maybe should have added a dollop of sour cream for embellishment -- but why mess with perfection?

Ah, the simple pleasures of one's own carrot harvest.  Some to freeze, some to eat now.  On the menu this last week we've had roasted carrots with broccoli and chicken, carrot cake, and this new recipe for ginger-carrot soup I found online.

It was so good I ate a bowl, poured Big Ag a bowl for later (he was still working around the property  at dinnertime) and then used a rubber spatula to consume every last drop from the saucepan I'd made it in. It was that good.

Combine it with some fresh sourdough bread, some mellow jazz, a nice sunset, and you have a perfect recipe for a great Sunday night in Central Coast Wine Country. The Tijuana Mule I had earlier (I was on a ginger kick -- what can I say?) didn't hurt the mood either.

Here's a link to the recipe -- for the soup.  The rest you'll have to provide for yourself.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ginger-carrot-soup-recipe.html

Givin' It Away

As I have spoken of in previous posts, I have a carrot glut this year.  I have made soups, awesome souffles, carrot cake, at this point -- you name it, if its got carrots in it, I've served it. Yet still I have about 30 pounds of carrots I simply have no practical use for.

I am giving most of those pounds to my lovely coworkers at the winery.

I guess if I was really enterprising I could sell them to someone, maybe by putting an ad on Craigslist.  Or I could give them to the Food Bank (although I'm not sure what kind of documentation I'd need to be a food provider there).  But it's easiest to just give them to people I know.

It was the same thing with eggs last year....when the girls were at their height of laying, I had leftover eggs galore, and I also took those in to the winery. Everyone was thrilled to get a dozen or so farm-fresh eggs.  Now that we've experienced our first big winter slowdown of laying, I wish I'd frozen more of them.  Eggs mixed with either a half-teaspoon of sugar (for baking) or salt (for general cooking) freeze great, and there have been times this year when we've run out of eggs.  But with the addition of a couple more hens, by late summer we should have another glut, and I will be able to put some up.

Leftover carrots and eggs....as table art?

But if you're committed to homesteading, one of the things you're committed to is using what you make, what you grow, and what your animals produce.  How do we justify spending money for feed and water, only to give away our harvests because we've got too much?

The fact is, we don't.  If this were the 1800's, I would put up every carrot we grew, and my family would have to content themselves with eating a lot (and I do mean a lot) of carrots over the next year or so.  But I have a modern family, and about the 5th night in a row I served carrots, you can be sure someone would say something.  We didn't grow up eating what was in storage, we grew up eating what our palate desired. Sheesh, it's hard enough to get people to eat leftovers around here.  A carrotpazooza might be all it takes to drive Big Ag and Groceries into Taco Bell on the way home, after which they'd just feign a mysterious lack of appetite when it came to my Carrot Surprise.

So the best solution seems to be to give those things we have in abundance to friends who will enjoy them.  It's probably not profitable, but it is a good turn, and my friends are thrilled with taking home some farm produce. 

And who knows, maybe sometime down the road it will inspire them to keep a garden or raise a few hens.  If I knew that was the case, I'd be thrilled, because I do believe in this lifestyle as a sustainable way of living, even though it is possible to have too much of a good thing (like eggs and carrots) at times. 

Carrot Glut

So we are getting ready to harvest carrots and I only have one problem...I don't need any.  Because this winter has been so unseasonably warm, we didn't make our usual complement of stews, lasagnas and other hearty dishes.  We've been much more about salads than stews these last couple of months.  So the upshot is that I still have several pounds of Spring 2013 carrots left in the freezer.

So what to do with this year's crop ... 

Carrot cake? (Yum!)

Carrot wine? (Like we need more wine in the house at this point?)

Sauteed carrots (every night until July, at the earliest.)

Find unlocked employee car doors at the winery and slip bunches of carrots onto the passenger seats (I have actually done this with squash during summer.)

I don't know.  The other issue is that because it didn't get very cold, the carrots are not as sweet as they normally are.  Probably not noticeable to anyone but me, but I can tell.

Along with the years when something you really wanted to grow does not, there are the opposite years, when something grows so abundantly, or that your previous years' stores last long enough that it turns out you don't need it after all.  All part of the gamble I guess, when Mother Nature is your business partner.

Carrot Harvest

Ready for the chest freezer in the garage

We're about halfway through harvesting and freezing the carrots we planted last fall, and they took a loooooong time to come to maturity.  I'm not sure if this is normal for the area, but next year I will be more realistic about expecting fresh carrots by Christmas. Not gonna happen.

There are about 6 bags of sliced, blanched carrots here, and we'll probably put up another 12 bags next week totaling about 20 pounds or so.  With these in storage we will be able to add carrots to stews and soups and other dishes all through next fall and winter. Some we will leave fresh, for carrot cake or in salads (notice I listed carrot cake first, once again indicating the place of honor anything sugary has in our household).

 Bu preserving at least some of them at home, my family can experience something few people will ever (sadly) ever know the deliciousness of:  pulling a bunch of carrots out of the ground and getting them blanched and in the freezer within an hour of harvest.  Truly, when these carrots are thawed and put into dishes, they will still be crisp and sweet, much better than the supermarket's frozen or even supermarket "fresh" carrots. (After all, if they're in the store now, when were they picked/harvested?  A week ago perhaps, maybe more?)  As for the ones we eat fresh, well, those are also incredibly delicious.  But there's something especially nice about pulling up a spring or summer crop, freezing it, and then enjoying a taste of that season in late fall or winter, when the days are short and a little spring on your plate can remind you of warm, sunny days to come. 

Carrots are one crop I would recommend making room for, if you have room to garden.  They may be slow to mature, but the result is worth it.