Harvesting Winter Carrots
Eliot Coleman talks about his trouble with voles in The Winter Harvest Handbook. This was the first year we’ve ever had trouble with voles, remember my sweet potatoes? They also ate a lot of my winter beets and were moving in to the carrot patch.
I was planning on leaving the carrots in the ground and harvesting them as needed, but with voles threatening our harvest we decided we should get them all out of the ground. We happened to be having our annual New Year’s sauerkraut family meal yesterday (a few days late), and I thought it would be a perfect time to harvest the carrots (since they’re growing in my mom’s garden).
My niece Hannah was thrilled to help, she wanted to save all the tiny baby carrots and the carrot tops for her guinea pig “Patches”. Every time she’d find a carrot she’d squeal and show it to me. She was super happy when she found a nice hand full of large ones.
These carrots were planted way back in August and have been waiting in the ground. We harvested a yellow one in November to see how they were growing. It was sweet and tasty, but needed to size up a bit.
We had them covered with a floating row cover to protect them from the cold, I meant to cover them with greenhouse plastic but never got around to it. They didn’t seem to mind though. We only lost about 15-20% of the crop to voles, not as bad as we thought.
We planted 10 different varieties of carrots, most from Baker Creek. Some varieties did better than others with the purple ones doing the best of all. We grew both ‘Atomic Red’ and ‘Cosmic Purple’. The ‘Muscade’ carrots did very well, other varieties included: ‘Parisienne’, ‘Little Finger’, ‘Chantenay Red’, ‘Blance a Collet Vert’, ‘St Vallery’, ‘Kind Midas’ and a few I can’t remember any more.
We ended up with a pretty decent harvest, my mom and I both got a tub full of carrots, and Miss Hannah got a HUGE container of greens for her little guinea. I’ll be pairing mine with all those potatoes I harvested this year and venison roasts from the 3 deer Mr Chiots got during hunting season. My mom will most likely do the same since she has venison in the freezer from my dad’s 2 deer.
What’s your favorite way to eat a carrot?
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A Disappointing Harvest
Last Thursday when we went to my parent’s house I harvested our sweet potatoes. It was a disappointing harvest because the voles had chewed on almost every single sweet potato, especially the nice big ones. They pretty much ate through our entire crop, which was really nice this year because of the hot summer.
Since sweet potatoes will cork over their wounds, I think managed to save enough that we’ll be able to enjoy them on Thanksgiving. Sadly sweet potatoes won’t be on the menu much this winter.
Have you had trouble with voles eating your harvests?
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Fresh Greens from the Garden
I’ve been harvesting some of my fall planted veggies, mainly spinach and arugula. These two greens are my favorites, with arugula being my favorite of the two. If I had to choose only one green to eat the rest of my life it would be arugula.
There’s just something about it’s wonderful peppery complex flavor that I love. It works beautifully in salads, as a substitute for basil in pesto and it makes a marvelous BLT. No boring iceberg lettuce here at Chiot’s Run!
I like to grow heirloom arugula and collect seed from it each year to keep it going in the garden. Mine is the white blooming variety, I’ve grown the yellow blooming variety as well but I didn’t like it as much as this kind.
What’s your favorite garden green?
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Everywhere We Go
“Everywhere we go we end up foraging something” said Mr Chiots yesterday as we were picking up chestnuts at the family cabin.
Several years ago when we harvested them it was a huge pain, literally. The spiny husks weren’t easy to open and we were constantly yelling “OUCH” as we were picking them up. I donned leather gloves and removed the nuts of most of the ones we gathered. They nuts were rather small, not nearly as nice as the ones we picked yesterday. It was a great year for chestnuts, they’re all nice and plump and 99% of the husks were already popped open on the ground, no yelling involved.
Several years ago we roasted some at the family Thanksgiving meal, but none of us were really huge fans, except one of our nieces who enjoyed them. I’m never one to check something off until I’ve tried it many times and in a variety of forms. So, I’m hoping to roast some and I will try my hand at making some chestnut flour to use for pasta, pancakes and maybe some gnocchi.
We ended up with about a half a bushel of chestnuts, they’ll need some attention here in the next couple days. I think I’m going to try a variety of preservation methods from drying, storing in the fridge, freezing the roasted ones, and boiling a few to freeze as well and of course roasting some, drying them and grinding them into flour.
They’re a healthy treat, not technically a nut, they’re classified as vegetables since they’re a starch. They contain fiber, potassium, iron, zinc and manganese. Hopefully we can learn to love this classic healthy food, especially since we can get it every year for free.
Any experienced chestnut eaters out there?
Any recommendations for ways to eat or store them?
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It’s Going to be a Busy Saturday
I went to my mom’s yesterday to spend a little time working in the garden. We share a garden at her house since she has great soil and a nice full sun area. This year we doubled the size of it from last year to grow more food. Every time I go, I come home with a carload of fruits and veggies that I have to can, freeze, dry or eat.
This is what I brought home yesterday, along with small bag of seckel pears that didn’t make it into the photo. Mr Chiots picked the pears, which weren’t as abundant as they were 3 years ago, but we still got a decent amount. The peppers were all getting red, which is what I’ve been waiting for to make a batch of fire roasted peppers.
Last night I made 4 loaves of zucchini bread, a batch of squash blossom sauce, and I put three trays of tomatoes in the oven to roast overnight. Since we have today off I’ll be spending my day making: ketchup with the roasted tomatoes, canning crushed tomatoes, fire roasting and canning the red peppers, pickling the Hungarian peppers, making up a batch of pesto, cooking up the green beans and broccoli for lunch and most like getting those pears in the oven to make pearsins. Whew, just thinking about all of that while I type this after midnight at the end of a long day makes me tired. But it’s the season and I know there are tons of you out there just like me spending long hours squirreling away garden goodies in the pantry for the long winter.
What have you been squirreling away lately?
