Peter Rabbit's Arc

Chapter 11 of 13

The fence held now, but the harvest could not wait. Peter pulled his oldest carrots at dawn and found them fat and orange. He laid them in a basket and felt no relief. Picked carrots do not keep. Left in a warm burrow, they soften and rot in days. Winter's debts were weeks away. One basket owed to the shop, three to the families, one in four to Mr. Todd. If the crop spoiled before then, every promise broke at once. He needed a cool, dry place to hold them, and he had none. He carried the basket to the village grocery. Ginger stood behind the counter in his green coat, wiping a jar. Beside him Pickles knelt over the ledger, his brown coat open, running one paw down a column of numbers that never balanced. Both looked up when Peter set the basket down. "They're ready," Peter said. "But they'll rot before I owe them. I have nowhere to store them." Pickles closed the ledger. "Carrots want cold and dark. A root cellar." He tapped the floor with his paw. "We keep ours under the shop. Stone walls, dry sand." "I can't dig a cellar in two weeks," Peter said. Ginger set the jar down and grinned. "You don't dig. You borrow the cold that's already there." He came around the counter. "A stream bank. Clay soil, north side, out of the sun. Cut a hollow into it. Pack the carrots in damp sand. The bank stays cool all winter." "I have a stream," Peter said. He thought of the bakehouse spring above his patch. The clay divider he had built held the flow. The bank there was firm and shaded. "Damp sand, not wet," Pickles said. "Wet rots them. Layer the roots so they don't touch. Cover the mouth with straw." Peter ran home with the basket. He found the shaded bank below the divider, where the clay stayed cool under his paws. He dug a hollow arm-deep into it, careful not to weaken the barrier that fed both his rows and the mill. He hauled sand from the stream shallows and let it drain. Then he laid the carrots in rows, each one apart, packed in the cool sand. He stuffed straw across the mouth and stepped back. The next morning he pulled one out. It was firm and cold, no soft spots. He rebuilt the wall of straw and let the rabbits keep picking. The oldest rows came out row by row, and each basket went into the bank. The harvest would keep now, safe until the debts came due. But the cellar sat below the clay divider. Peter looked up at the fragile barrier holding back the spring. One heavy rain would swell the flow, break the mud, and flood the bank. Every stored carrot lay in the path of that water. He had found a place to keep them. Now he had to keep the water out.