How do they put the baby in a baby carrot?

People often ask me where I come up with ideas for this weekly nonsense. It’s simple, really. For example, today’s topic came from a simple question asked at a bridge table. One of my friends was eating a handful of those little “baby” carrots. He held one up and said, “Did you ever wonder how they make these?” Well, there you are! You can’t let an idea like that just sit there, can you? The conversation turned to how much waste there must be in the process, and from there to how toothpicks are made. Logical progression of ideas, don’t you think? It turned silly after that, with people wondering about very tiny lathes run by elves and who knows what else? So, like I said, you can’t just let it sit there festering, so I Googled “How do they make baby carrots?” Well, there’s a ton of information out there in cyberspace. I settled on a website called todayifoundout.com and found out quite a bit about the carrot industry. And, by the way, it’s a big industry! One of the first things I learned is there are two different kinds of baby carrots: “true” baby carrots and “cut” baby carrots. True baby carrots are of two kinds: those that are genetically engineered to be small and those that are simply harvested before they are mature. True baby carrots have the same cone shape as normal sized carrots, but are smaller. Sometimes they’re sold with their stems attached to prove they are “true” baby carrots. But the majority of baby carrots sold in supermarkets are not “true” baby carrots; they are manufactured to look that way. Did you know that the manufactured baby carrots that we know today didn’t arrive in stores until 1989? Here’s the story: A successful California carrot farmer named Make Yurosek operated a produce farm and processing plant, and he believed there must be a way to use over 400 tons of carrots his plant was throwing out each day. The carrots couldn’t be sold in supermarkets because they were broken or too misshapen. Yurosek said there were times when as much as 70 percent of the day’s processed crop was being discarded. So, in 1986, he experimented using an industrial potato peeler and a green bean slicer to reshape the throwaways. He sent his new baby carrots to a large West Coast supermarket chain, and the next day got a response saying it was the only kind of carrot they wanted. Cut baby carrots had found a life! From those humble beginnings, the process of manufacturing baby carrots has been refined and streamlined. Now carrot producers plant full-size carrots close together so that they’ll grow straight. It minimizes the amount of carrot that will be trimmed later. After harvesting, the carrots are sorted before being cut into 2-inch sections. Then they’re peeled and rounded in a spiral slide made up of a grated surface. What about the waste? The extra carrot bits either end up as cattle feed or become compost. So, OK, that’s the carrot issue. What about the toothpicks? I found a site called askdoctorscience.com that clarified the process in just a few short sentences. Here’s a surprising fact (for me, anyway): all the toothpick factories are in Maine. Once the birch logs reach the factory, they’re cut into thin sheets of wood called veneer. This is accomplished in one of two ways. In the first method, a giant saw is used to cut a thin slice of the log. This is wasteful because the saw turns a lot of the wood into sawdust. The more efficient method is to slice a thin sheet off the log with a really sharp blade. This is done by mounting the log in a machine like a giant lathe that turns the log on its axis. A very long, sharp blade is pressed against the side of the log, and as the log turns, a thin sheet is sliced off. The thin sheet of wood is then steamed. This makes it soft and easy to cut. Flat toothpicks are just stamped out of the wood, dried, boxed and sent to market. Round toothpicks are stamped out of slightly thicker sheets, then passed through a machine called a “rounder,” which grinds them into the nice round, double tapered stick we all know and love. The waste can be used in making particle board and wood stove pellets. So there you are. Don’t ask me about clothespins and spools! You’re on your own!