When Mary Grams lost her diamond engagement ring in the garden in 2004, she thought it was gone for good.

This week it was found on a carrot, plucked from the soil on the family farm.

"I recognized it right away," she said.

Grams, 84, said she thinks she lost the ring while pulling a large weed from the garden in September 2004.

"We looked high and low on our hands and knees," she said. "We couldn't find it. I thought for sure either they rototilled it or something happened to it."

She has had the ring since 1951, a year before she married her husband, Norman. After it was lost she quickly replaced it.

"I didn't tell him, even, because I thought for sure he'd give me heck or something," she said.

'I've never seen anything like that'

Grams now lives in Camrose. But the farm near Armena, Alta., has been in the family for 105 years and they still maintain a garden there.

Her daughter-in-law, Colleen Daley, was the one who pulled the lucky carrot from the ground.

Mary Grams, 84, holds the carrot encircled by her long-lost engagement ring. (Iva Harberg)

"I knew it had to belong to either grandma or my mother-in-law," Daley said, "because no other women have lived on that farm.

"I asked my husband if he recognized the ring. And he said yeah. His mother had lost her engagement ring years ago in the garden and never found it again. And it turned up on this carrot."

The carrot looks a bit like a finger wearing a ring, she said.

"If you look at it, it grew perfectly around the [ring]. It was pretty weird looking," Daley said. "I've never seen anything like that. It was quite interesting."

Grams's husband died five years ago, a month after the couple's 60th wedding anniversary. She's looking forward to putting her original ring back on.

"I'm going to wear it because it still fits," she said.