Very Sweet Carrots

The folks at Stoney Plains Farm were particularly excited this weekend about some very sweet carrots that they had available. I asked what made them so sweet, thinking that it had to do with the time of year, or a particular phase in the plant's life cycle. It turned out it did have to do with the time of year, but not in the way that I thought: it's a variety of carrot that matures during this time of year that just happens to be very, very sweet.

We tend to think of carrots--and most other fruits and vegetables--as fairly uniform, unless there are very obvious differences in shape, size, or color. But there are actually countless varieties of all kinds of produce, adapted to different microclimates, types of soil, and times of year--like varieties of carrots that are especially sweet in the fall.