The Carrot Saga (Because it's the most interesting thing in our life right now)

We love to grow a garden each year. We have amazing soil so we can't take too much credit for it, but things grow in our garden pretty easily. Each year we grow a bunch of carrots in one of our little garden boxes next to the fence. If you've never had carrots straight from the garden, you are seriously deprived. They are so sweet and delicious. Apparently in my mind there are about 7 people living in our house, because we always end up with a ridiculous amount at the end of the harvest. Each year we have tried to come up with a way to preserve them so we can enjoy them throughout the winter. We have tried something different each year, taking someone's advice on their tried and true methods, and each year has been a complete failure:

- One year we tried putting them in buckets of sand with a bit of water so they wouldn't dry out too much. By the time we opened the buckets in January they had turned into carrot sand soup! I didn't think I added that much water, but apparently the moisture from the carrots multiplied in the buckets or something. It was so sad to see all of them ruined!

- One year we tried leaving them in the ground and added hay and leaves on top to keep them from freezing. Guess what? Nothing can keep the Rexburg ground from freezing solid. We couldn't even come close to getting a shovel into that ground until Spring, and by that time they had all molded. Disappointed again.

- Last year was the craziest. We dug them up and put them in big bins of dirt with no extra water. A few months in we opened one of the bins to get the carrots and they were ALL GONE! There was not one speck of evidence that the carrots had ever been there! They all just disintegrated into the dirt.

So this year we gave up. We just decided to put the carrots into storage bags in our fridge and use them until they went bad. This week, we used up the last of the carrots! The last one was just as good as the first and they never went bad! We were just working way too hard. I know it sounds silly, but it was so nice to actually get to enjoy all of our beautiful, delicious carrots.

And now I have Spring fever. I want the snow to melt so I can go play in the dirt and plant more carrots. :)