Carrots and beets and rain - oh my.

Awoke to the sound of snow falling off our top roof and plopping onto the lower roof by our bedroom window. I lay in bed thinking of all the frozen carrots, beets, turnips, jars of milk and soup, all sitting around in our natural freezer, also known as outside... I guess when I heard that it was suppose to rain today I should have taken action and moved things into the chest freezers. Thankfully it is just above thirty degrees, so things are still frozen.

It actually has been raining this morning just as predicted. It is a slushy sloppy mess - chores are going to be wet today. Fortunately D was thinking ahead and took the snow blower to the driveway yesterday.

On Saturday Noah and I dug the last of the frozen beets and carrots out of the hay pile. It was never my intention to let them freeze, I'd hoped to have room in the fridge for them by the time the temperatures dropped. Now that they are frozen I thought I'd just leave them outside and bring them in as needed, but the voles were beginning to nibble. So I thought I'd bag them up and stick them back outside, or as of now, into the chest freezers. Thankfully, the beets cook up well and I can't even tell they've been frozen. I just scrub them frozen and boil them till tender. The carrots, I've also been scrubbing and peeling while still frozen and then using them for juicing or soups as soon as I can cut them, or cooking them whole. While not as good as fresh carrots, at least they'll not go to waste.

The last couple winters we've had fresh carrots from our garden up until January and even February, but we had a second fridge taking up precious room in the house, and packed with root vegetables. This summer we had carrots and beets ready for eating so early in the summer, that we ate them all summer and didn't end up with much of an end harvest. We ate most of the colored carrots fresh, these are mostly Bolero, a storage carrot and some Early Sugarsnax. I'll be growing a lot more carrots and beets next summer.