Thursday, November 2, 2023

Carrots - From One Crop and Into the Next

A few weeks ago I got the fall/winter crop of carrots in the ground.  The germination was pretty good except for some old carrot seed that I had saved from 2012.  I was rotating my seed stock and planted the old seed and it didn't come up.  No worries.  I got some new seed planted.  We have a lot of carrots coming up.  This photo was taken last week and the plants are about 3 times as large.  This weekend I'll thin them out.  Actually, what I'll do is dig every other plant up and replant them in another row.

As I thought about the carrots, it reminded me that we're still eating on last year's crop.  We pressure canned a bunch of quarts and froze a bunch, too.  With the onset of colder weather, Tricia was talking about making Cream of Carrot soup.  Delicious!

Another thing that we do is make Fermented Ginger Carrots.  We shred carrots in a food processor and put into a large bowl.  Then we add grated fresh ginger into the bowl with the carrots.  Then we add a third cup of whey.  We use a meat tenderizing mallet to mash the carrots, making the juices come out.  We use a spoon to fill quart sized canning jars with the carrots, pressing them into the jar so that they are packed tightly.  Pour the liquid so that it covers the carrots and put a lid on the jar, loose.  We leave out on the counter for 3 days and then put in the fridge.  We find the longer you leave it, the better the flavor.

Here is a jar we pulled out of the back of the refrigerator that has been there since June 15.

Cold.  Tangy.  Delicious!

We like to plant and preserve so that we never run out.  As soon as the last frozen, canned, or lacto-fermented produce is consumed, it'll be harvest time again!

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