After 16 years, Lena and Ola Påhlsson, who reside near Mora, Dalarna, in central Sweden, had given up hope of ever finding Lena’s lost wedding ring.

The ring, which Lena had designed herself, went missing after she had put it on the kitchen counter in midst of a holiday baking session back in 1995.

The couple engaged in a frantic search for the ring, even checked behind the appliances and beneath the floor boards when renovating the kitchen a few years later, but to no avail.

But as Lena was about to gather the last of the carrots from the family vegetable patch last October, she pulled out a carrot that had something attached to it.

As the carrot was so small, she was about to throw it away when she realized what it was that appeared to be “growing” around the finger-sized vegetable.

“Our daughter Anna was at home at the time and she heard an almighty scream from the garden,” Ola Påhlsson told The Local, recalling the day of the miraculous find.

Anna thought Lena had hurt herself and went running to her mother.

She instead found Lena sitting on a chair looking rather shocked.

“It was Lena’s wedding ring that had been missing since 1995 after Lenas annual Christmas baking. It had surfaced, wrapped around a carrot. Quite amazing,” said Ola.

Ola had several theories as to how Lena’s ring could have made its way from the kitchen to the vegetable patch.

“We thought maybe it had fallen in to the compostable food bin. Perhaps it ended up in compost that was spread over the vegetable patch later,” he said.

He also theorized that the family’s sheep, which is often fed kitchen scraps, may have had a hand in the mysterious migration of the ring.

“Maybe it had been eaten by the sheep and then ended up in the manure that we then spread over the vegetable patch,” said Ola.

The soil in the vegetable patch has been turned over several times without revealing the ring.

Last year, however, Lena didn’t plant the carrots in a row but spread the seeds randomly.

“That could also be the reason as to how the carrot grew through the ring. A seed could have landed in the middle of it after turning the patch, just by chance,” said Ola.

They were both pleased to find that the ring – made of white gold with seven small diamonds – was as good as new after all those years in the soil.

While overjoyed at the find, Lena hasn’t yet started wearing the ring again yet, as it still needs to be re-sized to fit her now somewhat-larger fingers.

“We’re keeping it in a safe place,” she told the local Dalarnas Tidningar newspaper.