Reading and Writing the Adirondacks: The Knotty Calendar

Thursday, September 3, 2015

The Knotty Calendar

This week at Fledging CrowVegetables I discovered that I actually had no idea what carrots look like. What I thought to be a standard-looking carrot is in fact the result of centuries of hybridization and selective breeding to produce the most tasty and nutritious version. I decided to read up on this newly mystifying vegetable and found that cultivated carrots are believed to have originated in Afghanistan before the 10^th century. These wild carrot roots were very small at the time, and were purple or white. Eventually a mutation replaced the purple pigment with yellow, creating a new race. The cultivated orange carrot didn't become popular until the 1500s in the Netherlands, when a strain that was selectively bred to be sweeter than the yellow carrots was born. Interestingly enough, an old tale claims that these were bred specifically to honor William the Orange (who knows if that's true). Although now the majority of carrots (both genetically modified to organically grown) are orange, those that are left to grow naturally form all sorts of unique lumps and appendages as they avoid rocks in the soil.

Our group at the farm pulled out hundreds of carrots this Tuesday afternoon, and not many of them looked like the ones at the supermarket. In fact, those few hours in the sun ware peppered with exclamations of yet another discovery of an odd character. A dancer (“I found a Rockette!”), a mother holding her child, two friends holding onto each other, a monstrous villain with endless growths. Some of the favorites however, made up what we decided to call the “Knotty Calendar.”

January - The Honeymooners