Fresh Carrots Dug on New Year's Day

How about some fresh carrots on New Years Day? On the Bupp family farm, my mother used to store carrots in the basement of our old farm house over the winter. She would fill an old wash tub with dirt, and then in the fall, she would replant the carrots in the moist dirt. Since the cellar floor of our old farm house was just dirt and unheated, the carrots would keep till spring.

Sacks of Leaves Covering the Carrots

I developed an alternate technique here in the Finger Lakes that seems to work very well. When freezing cold weather comes, I cover the remaining carrots in my organic garden with a couple of sacks of leaves. The deer had already eaten most of the leaves off the carrots, but this doesn’t affect the roots! The purpose of the leaves is to keep the ground from freezing around the carrots. A rock or two holds the sacks in place when the winter winds come.

Uncovered Carrots

Carrots preserved this way are the sweetest, juiciest carrots that you ever have tasted! After scrubbing them in water to remove the dirt, we like them cut up and boiled in a little water. And for soups, my organic beef vegetable soup can’t be beat with fresh carrots, red potatoes, and onions from last summer’s garden. I’m sure that the family farms, market farms, vegetable farms, and dairy farms in the area use similar techniques to store their winter root crops. But my technique doesn’t require any electricity for refrigeration and very little effort on my part!

James R. Bupp