Here we have quite possibly the oddest photograph yet posted on The Self-Reliants. If you can guess what it is in two seconds or less, you win! Time’s up, it’s carrots. I had to stir up these few from their long winter’s nap so I could get a picture. They look curly and squat like most of our home-grown carrots from previous years, but there were some splendid specimens this year too. I wanted to get a shot of some of the behemoths Jessica pulled out of the garden, but they came out of the ground and went into the sawdust lickety-split, before I had a chance to record their monstrosity for the ages. (What’s that, you say? Just photograph them when she takes them out again? Won’t happen. When she pulls them out it will be approximately four minutes before they get hacked up and tossed into soup, and at that time I will still be at my employment, counting the seconds ‘til 5.)

We’ve heard tell that you can actually store carrots in the ground, and pull them up as needed over the winter. In our neck o’ de woods that won’t happen either, since when the snow gets going it will take a backhoe to get down to ground level. We pulled these guys up and now they’re sleeping in the root cellar. But I’m so encouraged at this year’s crop that I’d like to plant twice as much next year. It’s great to have a garden that actually produces. Wait, is that a pun?