Day: January 28, 2008

carrot farming

A long time ago there was a landowner.  Having lots of land, he decided to lease it out to people.  Some lease-holders decided to dig in their land, melt what they found, and sell it.  Others decided to build something on top of the land and do some kind of business with that.  Mostly it was used to build a place to live on.  Everybody liked the idea of having land, so many times people fought about who should be the rightful lease-holder.  The landowner was gone so long, most all the lease-holders forgot that they were not really the landowner themselves, and made up all kinds of theories to try and explain why they were the real landowners.  But the real landowner sometimes shook up the land or sent lots of water to start the whole land-leasing program over again.

What the landowner really wanted was carrots.  Nice, juicy, perfect carrots.  Not too bitter or too sweet, and not stunted either of course.  Just nicely shaped, healthy, yummy carrots. The perfect color was the way to tell from the outside if the carrot had actually reached perfection yet – a golden-orange color that is not reproduced in any other vegetable or fruit.

He left excellent instructions in a manual about how to raise perfect carrots, and made it available to anyone who desired to be informed.  Instructions were clear on how to prepare the soil, where to plant seeds, how and when to water, what kind of fertilizer to give, how to get rid of pests, how much sunshine and weeding etc. they needed.  While it was hard to tell exactly how the carrot was faring, being that the main desired part was buried in the earth, many clues were given in the manual regarding observation of the leaves, top part peeking out of the soil, and even of the soil condition itself which told a lot about how the buried carrot was developing.

future carrot patch

A little group of lease-holders decided to start a carrot patch to grow only perfectly golden-orange carrots, carrots that would be solely for the landowner, and would be grown strictly according to the manual.

It took lots of work.  Many were the obstacles they had to overcome.  Many who brought their seeds to these lease-holders angrily carried their seeds back when they found out only golden-orange carrots would be produced.  The lease-holder’s association was amused at first, and then antagonistic as they found out someone was actually going to use the landowner’s manual to grow carrots.  But the worst opposition was from those who were growing the mixed carrots.  Their double-mindedness would be made plain for all to see if they allowed someone to actually try and carry out the instructions as laid out in the landowner’s manual.  They ostracized them, they circulated falsehoods about them, and they even took this little group to court to try and make them stop attempting to produce golden-orange carrots.  But thru all these problems, the little group of lease-holders saw the answers in the manual, and kept diligently working to produce perfect carrots.

The ground was stony, the monetary reward nil.  Droughts were scarcely over when the floods came.  A fence had to be erected to keep the young carrots from looking over at the other carrot patches, and becoming envious of the blue carrots they could see during the day, and hear during the nite.  Cold spells came that threatened to freeze everything to death.  Sunny days in the summer were enough to make not only the most perfect carrot want to wilt, but even the lease-holders too!  When the leafy tops appeared nicely, many bugs were attracted which required constant oversight.  It seemed that the carrots needed even more care as they came to perfection than they did when first planted.

one carrot patch

 Once, there was a group of lease-holders who wished to grow more carrots.  They searched far and wide, and finally decided to lease some land in a country renowned for its hard-working elephants, loose morals, beautiful beaches, and world-class traffic jams. Ostensibly, they wished to grow perfect carrots for the land owner, but in fact, most of this group wished to make lots of money.

So they leased land in a place contrary to the landowner’s manual, and constructed an elaborate carrot patch, again, contrary to the manual.  One of them who professed great love for the manual became the chief caretaker, and a team of caretakers were assembled from all over the world.  Unfortunately, the instructions in the manual regarding hiring of caretakers was not followed, and it soon became evident that even the chief caretaker was not doing what the manual said to do to raise perfect carrots.

Into this background carrot planting began. Seeds were planted, daily they were watered, and many of them grew.  However, the seeds did not produce golden-orange carrots.  Some of them produced some lovely leaves on top, with some symmetrical properties, but when the carrots were dug up and inspected, it was seen that they were mostly blue, with just a hint of orange here and there on them.  This did not seem to concern the chief caretaker much, as he was too worried about how to get more seeds. The other caretakers weren’t too displeased either, as they had been trained in growing blue carrots, and did not bother too much with really studying the landowner’s manual to see for themselves how to grow perfect carrots.