Preserving the Harvest

Our carrot harvest for 2021 was a bumper crop.  Unbelievable!  We planted three rows of carrots this year.  Carrots will fool you.  The seeds are so tiny.  They are a little hard to plant.  In the fall when we sow the crop, I pinch some seeds between my thumb and forefinger and sprinkle them down the prepared seed bed.  They are hard to see, and I often overplant.  Once they are established, I struggle with the act of thinning them out for some reason.  This results in large carrots nestled by smaller carrots on the same row that were crowded out.

We posted earlier about how we harvested a lot of the big carrots and ate a bunch, blanched some, and gave a bunch away.  Carrots, with their vibrant green shoots are a gorgeous crop.  This weekend, I decided to go ahead and harvest a bunch more.  On two of the rows, some had grown too big and started to soften on the ends - some were not fit for eating (by us).  The cows, however, loved them!  Here are some of the crop all washed up and ready for processing.

Some of the shapes of the carrots are interesting.  We pulled some that had two "legs" that looked like someone running.  This carrot looks similar to a woman with an hourglass figure.  One of her legs is quite swollen, though.

We take them inside and cut off the tops and the bottom.

We save the tops and bottoms for the goats.  They are like candy to those goats.  They'll quickly eat them all and beg for more.  Nothing, and I mean nothing goes to waste.

Using my knife, I cut the carrots into chunks - not too big and not too small.  These are all placed in a tub for further processing.

Tricia bought this contraption years ago that speeds up the cubing process.  It has a sharp blade, so you must be very careful.  You lay the carrot cubes on the blade and pull a handle down with force.  This pushes the carrot through the blade and into the container below.

Quicker that you can say, "Peter Rabbit," the container is filled.  Then you repeat the process again and again.

These cubed carrots are poured into a pot of boiling water.  The timer is set for two minutes.  Once the timer goes off, the blanched carrots are poured into a colander and drained.  The water is returned to the pot and the process is started again for the next batch.

The blanched carrots are thrust into chilled water to stop the cooking process.  When they are cool, we pack them in quart-sized freezer bags for storage in the deep freeze.

When all was said and done, we had 29 quart bags of carrots to put into the freezer!  That's a big supply of carrots.  We'll be eating on carrots for quite some time.  And we still have half a row to harvest.  Note to self:  Next year only plant 1 row!!