The Whole Farm Coop held its annual meeting March 24. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that this once-a-year gathering happens at the start of spring. Or maybe it is fitting that we have a chance to reflect on the past year while we look ahead to the future, just at the moment that many of us are taking a deep breath and preparing for the growing season to come.
One of the topics we spoke about at our meeting was our desire to put a face on our products and share with our customers “the rest of the story” behind their purchases. When we roast a chicken for supper, brown some potatoes to go alongside, grate carrots for a salad, and pour maple syrup over our ice cream for dessert, we don’t often think about the long road those products have traveled to be included in that delicious meal. For those of us who grow and raise that food, we want the goodness of our products to speak for themselves, but we also know it’s important for people to connect with the food they eat and with the farmers who raise that food. We hope, in the year ahead, we will find the time, and talent, to tell some of the stories behind our products.
To get us on our way, I would like to tell you “the rest of the story” of the WFC carrots that are finding their way to people’s homes this month……
To get a carrot that’s sweet and crunchy in the first weeks of spring you need a good root cellar and a carrot that gets sweeter the longer it stays tucked away. We grow Bolero carrots for that very reason—they’re good when you dig them in the fall, but they’re delicious after a few months of storage.
Unless we have a contract for a certain amount of carrots, (we’ve grown up to 5,000 pounds a year—all weeded, thinned and dug by hand….), we just try and figure out what we need and then grow extra to sell. Last year we ended up with about 200 more pounds than we could eat, and so we have enough to sell until they run out!
Because we are growing our carrots for storage, rather than for a summer farmer’s market, we sow our seed later than most people—usually in mid-June. Carrot seeds germinate slowly and so we till a few times to try and get rid of as many weeds as we can before we plant. While the seeds are germinating, it’s important to keep the beds moist but you hope you don’t get too many gully-washers that will wash away your work.
After you’ve checked the carrot beds at least twice a day for the next few weeks and decided maybe you will have to replant, there will appear, all of sudden, the tiniest of sprouts, all coming up in rows. Carrots!
Then begins the weeding (constant) and thinning (this takes a bit of hard-heartedness, but a good sized carrot needs shoulder room and leg room to grow) and watering (all season). By mid summer, we cover our carrots with Reemay, a light cloth fabric that protects the carrots from leafhoppers, tiny insects that transmit a disease to carrots called Aster Yellows. Once we cover the carrots (a lot of work!), we keep them covered until we dig the crop in the fall. The Reemay cover also helps to keep the deer away—but we usually find places in the beds where the deer have found a hole in the Reemay and help themselves to greens and carrots.
We keep our carrots in the ground as long as we can—the Reemay protects the tops from most frosts, and the tops, in turn, protect the carrots from freezing. We don’t want to dig the carrots until the root cellar is cooled off enough to keep them at about 36 degrees. We usually spend a few weeks opening our root cellar at night to let the cold air in, and closing it in the day to try and trap the cold air and bring the overall temperature down.
When the root cellar is close to being ready, what you hope for is a perfect dry weekend with temperatures in the 40’s and nothing else to do but dig carrots and pack them away. What you sometimes get, of course, is rain or snow, with a forecast of 10 degrees by morning. But dig those carrots you must—and I wish each of you could have a chance to do this job at least once in your lives.
When it’s time to dig, we take a fork and go down each row to loosen the dirt, so we don’t snap any carrots when we pull them out. Grabbing a handful of greens and pulling out a dozen gorgeous, dirt covered carrots is a feast for every sense. The sound of carrots coming out of the ground is deeply satisfying; the smell is of sweet earth; and the beauty makes you grateful you are alive. Of course, you can rub a carrot on your pants and eat one too—they taste good!
Dig the carrots, snap the tops off, fill the buckets, fill the cart, carry the buckets to the root cellar and say thank you to Steve for carefully layering the carrots, covering them with dirt, checking on the moisture levels and temperature all winter. And then wait for the call from Kristin and Robert—we need carrots!
Nancy Potter