Fall has arrived here with a vengeance, today dawned crisp, clear and cold. Last night I got my first weather alert, letting me know that the snow level was moving down to 3500 feet. Not low enough to affect us, but low enough to remind me that the first frost isn’t that far away.
Mike and I are fall people. You might think we were summer people with all the work we’ve been doing outside and our usual mountain biking habit, but you’d be wrong. Or you might think we were winter people what with all the time we spend skiing and the fact that we both used to be ski instructors, but you’d be wrong. We’re autumn people, both of us heaving a sigh of relief that the hot weather is behind us and under-appreciated season is here.
As today and tomorrow are the only days this week without at least a chance of rain, I decided that it was a good day to start digging potatoes. 3 of our 4 varieties are ready to dig, and the fourth should be in another week or so.
Tonight we dug the King Harry’s, a white waxy potato. They are big and beautiful. We don’t have a scale that goes that high, but it seems that we dug about 70 pounds of them from a 20 foot row. Not as productive as they could have been, but pretty good.
We loaded the golf ball and bigger spuds into a double bag of burlap and hid them in the tack room in the barn. We don’t have a root cellar, so that dark space with the cedar walls and a concrete floor is going to serve the purpose this winter.
I was hoping that the Red Clouds and Yukon Golds would be more plentiful than the King Harry’s, but it seems from digging a couple of test plants that my abandonment of hilling in early July might have worked against us. Oh well, at this rate we’ll have close to 200 pounds of potatoes (at least) for the winter. And that is more than enough.
I was wearing an old barn coat of my grandfather’s while working outside and it was like having him there with me. I have vague memories of helping him dig potatoes as a small child. Of picking them from the dirt and putting them in his never ending collection of square 5-gallon buckets. What fun to dig my first homegrown potatoes in his worn, holey old wool coat.
Once we were done we sat on the porch and enjoyed the cool evening air. How nice to relax on the bench and know that the hardest work of the harvest is almost behind us. And laugh about how much fun it is to scrabble for spuds in the dirt.
As I sat on the couch and ate my simple dinner of boiled new potatoes with butter and parmesan, this annoying commercial came on.
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Really?!? It’s that hard to peel and boil a few potatoes? Who knew that Americans were that lazy. And no, it’s not home cooking if it comes out of a plastic, shelf stable bag. It’s heat and serve.
*****
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I sure wish we had planted potatoes. Oh, well, maybe next year. (I think we’ll need to get rid of at least some of our billions of Tenino prairie rocks first.)
Laura, you mentioned a weather alert…is there a service you’re signed up for that lets you know when bad weather’s coming? If so, would you please share? I’d like to get something like that for my area. We had our first light frost last night…unbelievable, but so welcome. I love Fall, too…in fact am very happily wearing my first sweater of the season today! Yippee!
Thanks!
What a contrast. An image of you plucking potatoes from the fields and tucking them into the barn for winter … and unnaturally white non-food pucks pouring out of a bag and being made edible through the miracle of radiation. I guess that is how your Sarah Palin “hockey mom” does it all. And why is that all-American Mom peeling her potatoes, anyway? Half the good stuff is in the skin …
Whew. Good for you for getting your root cellar’s worth. I’ll be interested to hear which varieties you plant next spring.
That commercial reminds me of Portland’s touted New Seasons market, that markets it’s produce as “home grown” when most of it is shipped from California instead of buying from the actual local growers in the Willamette Valley. People fall for it though, because they are a local company, the Wild Oats store near us actually carried more produce from Oregon and Washington even though they weren’t a local company.
You’re so right, how hard is it to fix a potato to eat? We never have been able to get Yukon Gold to yield very well here, German Butterball does much better under the same conditions.
My 14 year old and I were just discussing that commercial last night. Homemade my @ss.
Congrats on your amazing potato harvest!
That commercial is depressing. Not sure if you’ve seen it, but a friend told me he saw a TV ad for high-fructose corn syrup. I just YouTubed it, and sure enough, it exists. Ugh.
Saw it. Hated it.
Great-grandmothers everywhere are clamoring to escape their graves and give us all a big, hard cheek pinch.
I hate that commercial, too! The husband and I saw it the other night and we gave each other a look that says we were both in agreement– how hard is it to cook a potato??? I wish I planted more potatoes… oh well, there’s always next year!!
Are you sure it isn’t home made if I microwave it? LOL. I’ve never had luck at storing potatoes, I’m obviously doing something wrong. Do they need high or low humidity? I should be able to store them in my basement right? They always rot.
Amy – I’m just signed up to receive a nightly forecast and weather alerts through our local NBC station. I tried to figure out how to get the National Weather Service to email me, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet.
Audrey – I know! I never peel potatoes anymore unless they’re really sad looking. Must be how they do it all, but it seems like a poor tradeoff to me (but then I don’t have kids). I’ll be interested to see what we plant next year and how we plant them – I’ll keep you posted.
Trapper – It’s interesting how some of the markets that bill themselves as local are less likely to have local produce than others, huh? There’s a natural foods coop near us that’s like that. I get my local milk / butter there and bulk dry goods, but that’s about it. Maybe we’ll have to try the German butterballs next year – where did you get your original seed potatoes?
Michelle – Ha!
Risa – thanks! Yeah, I saw that ad the other night, I had to change the channel before I threw something at the TV…
Kim – you just made me spit water on my keyboard…
Jenny – yep, there’s always next year. Potatoes to me are the gateway plant I think. They’re easy to grow and so rewarding in their sweetness.
Christy O – I think nuking it falls under heat and serve as well, but I could be wrong
If they’re rotting and really nasty (like cream filling) they’re too wet, if they’re shriveling they’re too dry.