Last night I went down to the basement and rooted around in a bucket of sand until I had unearthed all the carrots I buried there in August. The sand was cold and damp. Some of the carrots had sprouted on top, and a few were bumpy, but all are bright orange and fresh looking.
I wish there were more. More! More! More! I had that greedy feeling I have when bringing up the last of anything fresh (potatoes, onions, garlic, squash, beans, beets, parsnips) from storage, that it sure didn’t last that long. I know this is actually a good thing because it shows I’m cooking more vegetables, cooking through, and next year I can always grow and keep more…. Next year I’m hoping to be harvesting carrots directly from the ground in December, out in raised beds in the greenhouse, the “candy carrots” Eliot Coleman writes about in his four-season harvest books.
And really, garden carrots in December. These carrots, now being kept in the fridge, will be part of a couple pans of roasted vegetables I’ll make during Christmas week when I have a house full of 20-somethings.
I’m reading books on mini-farming, winter gardening, greenhouse keeping. I am skeptical about the talk in them of making money or of saving thousands of dollars on food. I actually think it’s more or less a wash for me, financially. But I also know what my food tastes like now that I get it from the garden, and what a bag of carrots from the grocery store tastes like. I am going to try to track more things next year: weigh produce, record how much I give away, keep a better list of expenses on seeds and amendments and equipment. The truth is, I spend more money on my garden than on anything else. But it is in little increments– what’s $30 for the seed potatoes in spring? What’s $50 for beautiful seed garlic in July? What’s $120 for seeds in January? Who can argue with money for new hoses and compost and some seedlings in May?
And who knows. I might just become a market gardener some day.