Seeing Red

Most mornings we try to get up and pour a mug of coffee and sit in the sun room before the sun rises.  We'll read a chapter or two in the Bible and the commentary notes to aid in context and understanding.  We're in the book of Micah now about to finish up.  It is a peaceful way to start the morning.  The sun room is aptly named.  It has a big window that faces east and we look out and watch the day begin, slowly and then in earnest.  On this particular morning, God was painting a masterpiece in the eastern sky, using blazing red, bright orange and muted pink and rounded out on top with columbia blue hues on His palette.  The red, specifically, was something to see!  "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning," I think the old Navy warning said.

But we weren't done with things red on this beautiful day.  We had already harvested the Cosmic Purple carrots last week, but before the upcoming rains, we needed to get all the Kyoto Red carrots pulled.  Tricia and I teamed up on the task, pulling, washing, clipping the tops off and feeding the carrot tops to the cows.  

While the cosmic purple carrots have purple skins and an orange interior, Kyoto Red carrots are red through and through.  In the past some of our carrots grew into weird shapes with multiple roots.  Not this year.  The Kyoto reds grew long and straight.

We brought them inside, scrubbed them with a vegetable brush and used a sharp knife to cut them into manageable pieces to cube into the vegetable chopper.  This photo shows how the carrots are a red tint all throughout.

They are quickly all cubed up and ready for processing.  The other day, with the cosmic purple carrots, we blanched and froze 10 quarts.  I think we'll pressure can most of these carrots.  When two people are inseparable, there's an old saying that goes, "They go together like peas and carrots."  These cubed up Kyoto red carrots remind me of that.  We would eat Swanson Hungry Man TV dinners sometimes when I was a kid.  I haven't eaten a TV dinner in a coon's age.  But these carrots cubed up remind me of the side dish of peas and carrots in those dinners in aluminum trays.

We began filling the jars hot pack and load into the pressure canner.  The canner will hold 10 at a time.  We'll have several batches to go until we get the job done.

Once we have the red carrots processed, we'll begin with the (boring) orange carrots.  We still have a row of those to harvest.