Thanks For The Roots Of Our Labor



Even though the ground has frozen, it doesn't mean there still isn't work to be done in the garden.  Or that there is still access to food from the garden.  This past weekend I got to, for the first time, get root vegetables ready for the root cellar at Coggeshall Farm Museum.

 

Now I've never had a root cellar before.  So this was all new to me.  I have grown root vegetables before.  Carrots, parsnips, beets, and turnips!  I know onions are a root veggie as well, but they certainly don't belong in a damp root cellar.  And though I was not there in the spring to start the growth of these particular root veggies, I know how time consuming they can be.  Having the right soil texture to grow straight and true.  And how parsnips seem to decide whether or not they truly want to grow from seed, or in the garden bed you plant them in.  And the great turnip saga that I have every year, and I'll update everyone on in the spring when I probably, once again, do something stupid to jeopardize the existence of my turnips only to find that they are resilient suckers and will not die because of my stupidity.  And carrots, it wasn't until this year, in a different garden, that I was able to successfully grow some excellent carrots on my own.  Only 6 years!

 

But those were other gardens and this time our parsnips did excellent, our beets did alright, our carrots were incredible, and our turnips numbered six in total.  But like anything in gardening, it could be the complete opposite next year. 



 

So Shelley, farm manager at Coggeshall Farm Museum and gardener extraordinaire, and I started in the late morning of this past Saturday, battling wind and a head cold.  At least I was battling a head cold.  They're not fun.  But the biggest battle was to come.  We had to get all the root vegetables in before dark because it was supposed to get down to the teens in temperature.  Now you're supposed to wait till the first frost happens for the root veggies before preparing them to go into the root cellar.  But a ground freeze wouldn't be good.  I guess the integrity of the vegetable.

So Shelley, pictured here, and I had our work cut out for us.  The first bed we tackled was the parsnip bed, and you can see in the baskets the fruit of our labor. 

A labor that took several hours because, unlike the beets and carrots, the parsnips didn't want to be pulled out of the ground by hand.  So a shovel and a pitchfork became our best friends as we loosened the soil and prayed we didn't cut up too many of them.  Cuts would just make them rot in the root cellar. 

Then we pulled out the beets and carrots.  By this point the warmer weather of the morning (if you call high thirties warm) was turning colder and windier and warmer hats and gloves became a necessity.  By now you must have notices that every picture has had a knife in it.  If you take a look at some of the carrots in the basket you'll notice the tops have been mostly cut off.  When you are putting up root vegetables you need to leave some of the top on, to trick the vegetable into a dormant state, without wanting it to rot.

Look at this carrot!  Please leave all lewd comments to yourselves.  I know what it looks like, to man who doesn't need to overcompensate.  I technically thought it was cool that there was three carrots in one.  But, now seeing it a second time, I can now see the other side of the carrot story.

Once the veggies were prepped and carried to the root cellar they were laid out on the ground to allow the shallow roots that grow off the sides of the root veggies themselves, sorry I don't remember the name, to die off, also causing the root veggies to grow dormant.  That way they don't continue to grow leaves or rot.  Those are the carrots in the picture above.

And those are the beets and the parsnips we picked earlier.  Again laid out on the floor to cure for a few days.  Now they only cure for a few days until they are packed in clean sand and kept for the winter, to be used as needed.  It was a really great feeling, once everything was laid out and it still was light out and we got in all the root veggies in that needed to be brought in, even though my hands were frozen and my head was fuzzy from phlegm.  It truly made me thankful for the "roots" of our labor. (Sorry for the pun.)

And, to end the post on a good note, cute kitties staying warm by the fire.