carrot farming

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.

Many people owned one of these manuals, but hardly ever cracked a look at the inside of it.  They would pay fantastic sums of money to people who claimed to represent the landowner tho, and huge monuments ostensibly to the landowner were erected in various places.  Most of the people however, could have cared less about what the landowner wanted, and many of the lease-holders even used their land to make blue carrots for the sworn enemy of the landowner.

Yes, blue carrots.

Most of the lease-holders got caught up in the craze to have blue carrots.  Now blue carrots were exactly what the enemy of the true landowner wanted, and it was he who was behind this folly, to make everyone believe that golden-orange carrots were actually bad for you, and that blue carrots were good.  Being a clever guy, he was able for the most part to conceal himself, or to appear as someone who was really interested in making good carrots too.

It became a a madness among the people to have the bluest carrots.  No one seemed to care that the landowner’s manual explicitly stated how the perfect carrot should look – with a symmetrical, leafy top, top of the carrot itself barely peeking out from the soil to get a slight green tan, the main body of the carrot being a golden-orange color, and the whole of it standing gloriously straight and tall, but not so tall as to shade the other carrots growing nearby.  Each perfectly-produced carrot was to tell to the wisdom and goodness of the landowner, to show what could be done with the land if it was worked in the correct manner.

It was hard, back-breaking work to nurture the carrots to their peak perfection that the landowner required.  With each succeeding generation of carrots, the effects of shoddy workmanship, and the desire among even those who had the manual to produce blue carrots became more and more visible.  Shortcuts were introduced that reduced the level of effort required, but also did not quite produce the perfect carrot that the landowner wanted.

Fortunately, a spark left by the landowner within the carrot seeds themselves made them resist becoming blue so easily.  “Carrots are supposed to be orange!” they seemed to cry.

Some carrot producers found that not only was it easier to make blue carrots, but that they could get more money from them, so they started to try to turn all the carrots blue.  Several methods were tried.  It was found that injecting orange carrots with blue dye required too much effort and was slow.  A blue coloring agent was created, and the formula was adapted for each country’s soil conditions.  Various names were given these formulas such as Buddy, Ally, Ganny, Monky etc., and sold to the people as being the “official fertilizer approved by the landowner”.

The blue dye and blue coloring agent had the desired effect that the landowner’s enemy wanted.  Before long vast swaths of land had become solely blue carrot land.  The landowner’s manual was actually forbidden to be seen in these places.  Any orange carrot that was found was liable to have its leaves cut off, its top crushed, and the orange part being minced till there was nothing left.

The landowner saw to it tho, that the lease-holders could not go beyond certain boundaries in keeping carrots from turning orange. He blessed those places that allowed anyone to grow any color carrot they wanted, until nearly everyone saw the value of at least allowing orange carrot production.  So here and there, some perfectly golden-orange carrots were still produced.

The landowner’s enemy slowly learned the the most effective way of all to make blue carrots, was to just make it appear that the blue ones were so fashionable, and that the leaves on top that were withered and flopping about on the ground actually looked so cool that all the orange carrots would want to emulate them, and become blue carrots themselves.  Even in areas where the landowner’s manual was allowed, orange carrots became very much out of favor, with any carrot showing a predominately orange color being the object of much ridicule.

A system was introduced by the enemy of the landowner to judge all the carrots.  The biggest, best-looking ones were judged to be the highest class, and they were packed accordingly and shipped to the best markets where not only did they fetch the highest prices, they made the people want more of the judged carrots.  The lowest-class ones were shunted off to a dimly-lit factory where they had to lie until they grew moldy and died, but they were not missed by many people.  Before this time, even the ugly carrots had been prized for their nutritional value, but all had changed now as no one wanted the stigma of eating “low-class” carrots.

Nearly all the people clamored to get their carrot seeds into the best carrot patches, ones that been certified by the land-leasor association to produce top-class carrots.  It was no accident that the land-leasor association was mostly made up of those who favored blue carrots, as they had no use for the landowner’s manual, so they naturally judged the orange carrots to be of inferior quality.  This drove even more people to seek to get their seeds into carrot patches that not only produced carrots judged to be in the top-class, but blue ones, as only blue carrots could fetch top-class prices.

The consumers had reservations about blue carrots, as there was something naturally repulsive at the sight, but the catalogs and TV shows talked about nothing else, and the highest scientific journals solemnly declared that blue carrots were not merely “just as good” as orange carrots, but were in every way better.  “Why, weren’t most of the scientists themselves trained only to produce the top-class blue variety?” they asked.  “What could the common person possibly know about carrots?  Could they know about the genes and chlorophyll and somablastm?”  They said this because they had made their own manuals which made them feel at ease about saying things contrary to the manual of the real landowner.

Fortunately there was a small group of lease-holders who said that they wanted to grow carrots to please the landowner.  Everyone in this group had the landowner’s manual, and made attempts to put the instructions it gave into practice.  Unfortunately tho, it was quickly seen that almost everyone in this group was using part manual, and part the practices of those who produced blue carrots. Blue carrots looked so fashionable, and everyone in the world praised them so highly, that imperceptibly the orange carrots under this group’s care started turning blue too.  Not a solid blue, but a mix between the golden-orange color of a perfect carrot, and the blue color of the what now had become – top-class carrot.

This group of lease-holders also wanted their carrots judged. Were they doing well?  Were they producing top-class carrots? Sadly, they did not stop to think about who was doing the judging, and what manual was being used as the standard to judge by.  Yes, many of their carrots were judged highly, and they pleased many carrot seed owners by showing them what a great thing had been done with their seeds.  “So what that the landowner’s manual was being partially ignored.  It was also partly being kept, so the landowner should be happy, right?  Perhaps the landowner isn’t so particular now about his carrots because he hasn’t been seen for a long, long time. Besides, if we produce enough of these mixed carrots, this might help everyone to value orange carrots again.”

While they seemed to enjoy success, the lease-holders who really studied the landowner’s manual knew that the landowner would not be happy with anything less than perfectly golden-orange carrots. They decided to follow the manual to the best of their ability, and trust that the landowner would bring the carrots to perfection.  While cooperating with the other lease-holders as needed, they made no attempt to get their carrots judged by the lease-holder’s association, did not use their many manuals, and did not make any pretensions about selling their carrots for the highest price. They were growing them solely for the landowner, and he could value them however he wished.  They did instill a deep sense of worth into their carrot seed owners, that the carrots grown would not be going to the market, but instead, would be at the table of the landowner himself.