Mining for Gold...or maybe it was carrots

This year I planted less than half the amount of carrots I've planted the last few years. Last year the gophers or moles ate about half the carrots so this year I decided to give them less satisfaction.

One sunny day in October I went out to the garden and started to dig. I hadn't pulled any carrots since planting and was just hoping they would be intact. I tried pulling them out by their tops, but they were stubborn so I resorted to the shovel. I loosened the dirt around the carrots and my girls excitedly discovered carrot after carrot. To my surprise and delight not a single carrot had been touched by underground rodents.

_{There were times when I wasn't sure if she was putting carrots on the pile or taking them off.}

_{Many of the carrots had meager greens so it was hard to spot where exactly they were. My rows weren't always perfectly straight so I had to do exploratory shoveling in a few areas.}

After about an hour we had a nice pile of carrots. We cut off the tops and loaded them in the wheelbarrow. Its hard to say how many carrots were eaten before we were done working. The girls ate them whole, dirt and all!

_{My tomatoes grew much bigger than I was expecting, then they complicated matters by leaning right over the row of carrots. I had to pull the dead plants aside to get underneath them. I was pleasantly surprised to find a whole row of carrots had grown under the bushy tomato plants.}

Compared to what you buy in a grocery store, these carrots taste like a totally different vegetable! We promptly had cooked carrots for supper and will enjoy these in vegetable stew for the rest of the winter.