In the fall of 1971, at a farm liquidation sale outside Viroqua, Wisconsin, thirty-one-year-old Della Vickers raised her bidder card and spent sixty dollars on a lot nobody else wanted.
Forty-seven warped wooden produce crates.
One hand-cranked root washer with a cracked drum.
And the right to dig whatever carrots remained in the back six acres of the Holmgren farm.
The auctioneer had grouped the three things together because selling them separately would have required him to pretend each one possessed enough value to deserve its own number.
He was not willing to do that to a crowd of people he would see again at church on Sunday.
"Lot fifty-eight," he called from the back of the flatbed truck.
"Forty-seven produce crates, one root washer, and remaining carrot crop in the south field."
Someone near the back laughed.
The auctioneer looked toward the six acres of dark Wisconsin soil beyond the barn.
"Whatever you can get out of it is yours."
That produced another laugh.
The carrots were the joke.
Everybody in Vernon County knew about the Holmgren carrots.
The largest vegetable cannery serving the region had rejected the entire fall harvest.
Too crooked.
Too forked.
Too knobby.
Too inconsistent in diameter.
Too many split roots.
The cannery's mechanical peeling system had been designed around uniform produce. Straight carrots entered the guide rollers, passed beneath the cutters, and moved down the line.
The Holmgren crop refused to cooperate.
Some carrots had grown around stones.
Others branched into two or three roots.
A few looked less like vegetables than something pulled from the bottom of a lake.
During the trial run at the cannery, the line had jammed repeatedly.
After less than an hour, the manager had stopped the test.
He told Mr. Holmgren they could not use them.
Forty tons of edible carrots remained in the ground.
The Holmgrens had neither the labor nor the market to harvest them.
So the carrots stayed.
Then the farm went to auction.
The wooden crates were almost as unwanted.
Half were warped.
Several had broken slats.
Some had gaps wide enough for a small carrot to fall directly through.
The root washer was worse.
Its cylindrical drum had a crack running four inches along a weld seam.
The brush rollers had worn down until the steel cores showed.
The handle worked, but only if someone leaned into it hard enough to make the entire frame shake.
The auctioneer opened the bidding at one hundred dollars.
Nobody answered.
"Seventy-five?"
Silence.
"Fifty?"
Della raised her card.
Her brother-in-law Gene Vickers, standing three people to her left, turned his head.
Someone else offered fifty-five, mostly because the number was low enough to be entertaining.
Della raised to sixty.
The other bidder stopped.
"Sixty once."
The auctioneer looked across the crowd.
"Sixty twice."
Nothing.
"Sold."
The hammer came down.
Della Vickers owned forty tons of rejected carrots.
Gene found her ten minutes later near her 1963 Ford F-100.
The truck had a dent in the left rear quarter panel, fading blue paint, and more than 140,000 miles on the odometer.
Gene stood with both hands in his coat pockets.
"What are you going to do with forty tons of carrots?"
Della folded the auction receipt and placed it in her purse.
"Feed them to horses."
Gene stared at her.
"The cannery just told Holmgren he couldn't sell them."
"I'm not a cannery."
"That isn't what I asked."
Della looked toward the field.
"What did you ask?"
"What are you going to do with forty tons of carrots?"
"I told you."
"Feed them to horses."
Gene looked at the pickup.
Then at the six-acre field.
Then back at Della.
"You're going to need a bigger truck."
"I know."
"Whose?"
"Yours, if you'll lend it."
Gene stared at her another moment.
Then he laughed.
"I knew there was a reason you were being polite."