We are looking for a good harvest this year from the spring carrot patch, and it is time to commence. We have over 2,000 row feet of carrots in the ground. Future visits to the farm will entail the digging of these beauties for storage, sweetening, eating, and fermenting.

We hope you enjoy this first round and consider this week’s recipe. It is not often enough that we cook carrots as a dish of their own. We have a lot of ginger on the farm right now for the kimchi making, and it is a complimentary flavor for carrots.

The carrots don’t need to be peeled as they are fresh out of the ground. Just trim the tops and bottoms and they are ready for use. Parsley or other fresh green herb is a nice garnish to this dish.

Gingered Carrots

1 bunch carrots, topped, cleaned and cut into 1/2inch pieces
2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. oil
2 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. grated ginger
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter and oil in a pan, add the carrots, 1/2 tsp salt, and cook on high heat for 5 minutes
Add honey and ginger. Add a little water if needed to prevent burning.
Cook on high heat for 5 minutes.
Turn heat down and simmer until desired tenderness.

While we have used the word sabbatical to describe what we farmers are doing different this year, the true sabbatical refers to a resting of the land. We are doing what we can in our far fields to make this a year of rest and recovery.

One of the main things we are doing is taking time work on controlling weeds. One biological method is to cultivate the small weeds out every couple weeks, to reduce the number of weed seeds in the soil. In addition, we have gone on various weeding patrols with the farm crew to physically remove tap rooted weeds and their seed heads from the fields.

Cover crops with pastured chickens in the distance

We are following up the “stale seed bed” weeding with a cover crop. This keeps us busy. We are also looking this fall at having this area chisel plowed to help improve drainage.