A one-carrot gold ring? Priceless, and a little muddy

There are plenty of 14-karat and 18-karat gold rings out there, with the most special and the best deals, of course, at Dallas Gold & Silver Exchange.

But it’s not every day you find a one-carrot gold ring. Yet there it was, sitting pretty in the latest crop of vegetables dug up last week from Dave and Lin Keitch’s garden in Monkton Heathfield, a small town in southwest England.

“Dave dug up the carrots and left them outside the back door,” she said. “I cut the greens off and scrubbed them, and I thought, ‘What’s that? Goodness, it’s my ring’.”

The ring, a gold band with a heart-shaped amethyst stone, was a present from Dave to Lin on her 40^th birthday almost three decades ago. When it got too small for her, she gave it to her daughter Sarah, who somehow lost it in the garden in 2006.

“We searched high and low but couldn’t find it,” Lin said. “I was gutted. I never thought it would turn up again.”

Dave, an enthusiastic gardener, never stopped looking for the ring. But a carrot found it first, growing inside the ring until David harvested it for dinner.

Sarah is also happy that the ring was found, although she may not get it back.

“I’m deciding whether to give it back to her or not,” Lin said. “I may just clean it up and keep it in a box.”