Museum of Carrots

Created more as a lark than as a serious homage to a hearty vegetable, the Museum of Carrots in Belgium is an extremely specific labor of love.

Berlotte is a tiny village directly on the Belgian-German Border and lays claim to the only “Carrot Cultivator Society” (“Möhren Zucht Verein (MZV)”) to exist in either country. Some suspect the MZV of being a practical joke but the dozen or so members emphasize that growing carrots is a serious business and nothing to joke about.

Over the years the club collected so many carrot-related pieces of memorabilia, often sent unsolicited by people learning of the Carrot Club via the Internet, that they decided to transform the abandoned electrical tower in the village into a museum. The tower is so small that visitors cannot even enter the building, but can look through a single window at the collection of vegetable tchotchkes. The exhibits even rotate when a button near the window is pushed.