Newsletter 5/16/18 – Eat your carrots!

Newsletter 5/16/18 – Eat your carrots!

Eat your carrots! Is that a familiar phrase from your childhood? It’s true, carrots are exceptionally good for you. Vitamin A helps prevent vision loss; antioxidants protect from cancer; and beta-carotene reduces risk of heart disease. In addition they are touted to boost immune system function, improve skin, improve digestion, detoxify the body, and provide a whole host of vitamins, minerals and fiber. Need more reasons? They taste DELICIOUS! Especially the baby carrots in your share this week.

These babies are from our greenhouse (un-heated high tunnel). I seeded these in mid-March, exactly 2 months ago. With a little extra heat and protection, they are ready to harvest super early.

Since carrots are so popular and delicious, we strive the have the shortest carrot absence as possible each year. This year, we pulled off a mere week! We sold the last of our over-wintered crop in the farm stand last Tuesday, and your share this week marks the beginning of the new carrot crop. Last year, we were pretty proud that we got it down to a 3-week gap. Next year we will be aiming for no gap!

Some fun facts about carrots:

  • They originate from Asia, probably Afghanistan.
  • The first carrots were not orange, but white!
  • Early carrot cultivars were yellow, red, and purple. Orange came later.
  • The carrots we know now were stabilized by Dutch growers in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Hope you will enjoy this tender spring snack, and look forward to many more carrots to come over the season!

~Karyn

Ever heard of Red Kitten Spinach?

We are growing Red Kitten Spinach for the first time this year at Red Dog Farm. Red Kitten variety is a unique in that is has dark red stems and veins, with deep green colored leaves. It has an excellent sweet flavor that goes very well with other spring greens. Use it just as you would other baby leaf greens in a salad. It’s sure to leave you wanting more.