This year was different. As posted previously, I have had some beautiful carrots with outstanding flavor and had intended to harvest most of them this week and put them in canning jars. We had a lot of rain the past two weeks with some very summer like weather-hot and humid. So the carrots were sitting in the mud. Carrots are as hard to dig in the mud as they are in the dry. So I planned to let things dry out a bit and then go pull them.
I pulled up my first carrot on Thursday and watched the bottom half and center of the carrot ooze out on to the ground. Almost instantly, I knew what had happened. They had sat in the mud and in the heat long enough to rot. One carrot after another oozed out on to the ground; Big lovely carrots….gone one by one. I have about a 70 foot row that I plant by broadcasting seeds in the space of the row…so we are talking about a lot of carrots! I managed to save a few and I left some of the smaller ones that were not rotted in hopes of getting a bit more size out of them in the coming weeks.
I would guess that I probably lost about $200 of carrots. There went my fall market garden staple and our personal supply.
As in all things, in God’s timing, we accept those things we consider negative along with His blessings, understanding that we rely on His care for us.