July Carrot Harvest

A garden is such slow magic, here Jackie is harvesting her carrots in mid July. This photo was taken in the same spot as the earlier photo where she is planting seeds. See how lush the garden is looking, an amazing transformation between May first and July 16th!
And if you observer closely you will see that one carrot Jackie is holding is a very beautiful light yellow. (in the world of carrots it may even be called white)
The first carrots in written records ( from the area we now refer to as Afghanistan) had light colored roots from white to yellow and over time they have shown up in a rainbow from white, yellow, orange, red,to purple. This year we grew a variety called Dragon, with purple skin, orange flesh and a yellow core, incredible!
It really gets me thinking about diversity and all the different varieties that are out there, all are called carrots; foot long tapered points, short chubby two inch long carrots that are shaped like little tops, and the fore mentioned color spectrum.
All of them bring a richness to my life, I am grateful to all the ancient knowledge and care that have carried this diversity to my farm. And now as fall turns to shades of gray, looking at the two wheelbarrows full of this wondrous array of carrot love and brilliant colors I feel full.

Jackie Freeman planting carrot seeds.

Here is a photo of Jackie planting carrot seeds towards the beginning of May 2007.

Fall on the Farm

Some of you have suggested that we start a blog about Quillisascut to keep you updated on what is going on around here and to help keep us all in touch. My hope is that this blog will be more then just my ramblings about goings on around the farm and the Pampered Pets of Pleasant Valley. This is a place for all of us to meet and share our discoveries about our local food communities and new insights or revelations about things that matter. My dream is that this will be a safe place to continue to share our stories.

Fall always surprises me, in that there is still so many projects to tend. The garden has been harvested and now we need to prepare everything for storage. Today carrots will go into bags and be buried in our barrel root cellar (a galvanized garbage can that is buried in the ground) the carrots are put in bags of around 3 pounds each and then layered in the can. The lid fits on nice and snug to keep out unwanted visitors, then the whole thing is mulched with a layer of straw and covered with plastic. On a brisk sunny winter day we can uncover the pile, take off the lid and pull out a bag or two of fresh crisp carrots. Oh such wonderful memories of spring they will reveal, when Jackie Freeman was planting her first garden and we photographed her putting in the line of seeds. She was wearing a great big smile!

Spring Ruminations from Quillisascut