Week 21 CSA, 2020

Don't pretend you don't Carr-ot all! Please join us loving these big fat carrots!  Aspen Moon Fall carrot varieties have the best flavor. Pictured here are the Chantenay, aka French Fatty, which do look a bit funny at first glance, but they are often the sweetest carrots of the year and they continue to get sweeter as the weather gets colder.  This is because the cold temps turn the starch stores into sugars in the carrot.  The large size is characteristic of this variety and contributes to their good storage quality and great flavor.  Wonderful sliced into thin circles and eaten raw as a snack or appetizer.  Add some water to the slices to keep them moist and crisp for best flavor.  Also wonderful roasted, or cooked into carrot soup!  Don't bother peeling them, just give them a gentle scrub; the skins contain a significant amount of vitamins worth cherishing.  What's even more fun about these carrots, is... Aspen Moon grew the seeds for them, meaning: we grew the carrots one year and selected for quality and stored them throughout the winter, then we replanted them the second year and they quickly grew tops that extnded into flowers and then eventually into seed pods, we collected those seeds and sorted and cleaned them, then we planted those seeds the third year and for several years after.  This is the full brilliant life cycle right here at your local Farm!  You would be surprised how beautiful the carrot flower heads are.  They look similar to the Queen Anne's Lace flower.  We grow out several varieties of different vegetables for seed each year and it is amazingly satisfying because the vibrancy and germination rate of our own seeds is strikingly better than our purchased seeds.