Carrots!

Carrots! Carrots everywhere! The discovery of carrots growing wild on the farm was pretty amazing. It was one of those truly awe inspiring moments. We were out on the farm for the girls' spring break and our friend Mat had brought a bag of carrots he had picked up at the Grant Park Farmers Market along on the trip. I was getting ready to start shuttling water back to the food forest with the girls when he offered me a carrot, leaves and all. I thanked him and took one, crunching on it happily while planting what was left in an 18 gallon container full of sprouting things, squash, confederate star jasmine etc. I filled up a couple of 5 gallon jugs and hopped in the truck with the girls, cranked up the 1960's country on the radio and headed down the hill. I parked the truck with the taste of carrots still in my mouth, still thinking of planting the carrot nub in the container garden with just its leaves poking out of the dirt. I grabbed a jug of water and started watering a paw paw tree. As I was pouring the water on the ring of mulch around its base I saw a little clump of familiar leaves and thought, "huh, those look like carrots, I wonder what they are". I finished pouring out the jug and investigated further. I dug around the base of the leaves, found the taproot and pulled, slow and steady. Out came a long, slender carrot. It was actually the broken one in the picture, three times as big as the second one I pulled that is shown full. I broke it after removing it to taste a bite first, confirm my discovery and shout for the girls to come see. After we jumped up and down and squealed for a while I started looking around for more. Carrots. More carrots. Carrots... everywhere. I knew that the area we chose for beginning the food forest, down by the muscadines, had been planted as a garden by the previous owner, but I hadn't seen any carrots the year before. After I thought about it I realized that I didn't mow this particular area over by the paw paws until later in the year last year. I must have mowed off all of the carrot leaves that had already grown. This year I mowed much earlier and the carrot leaves stuck out like sore thumbs. What had become mainly an orchard to this point was already more of a food forest than I had originally thought. I can't wait to see what we find next!