Come harvest, store, and cook potatoes with me!

and the art of food storage

Hello my friends,

I sat around a lunch table recently with a beautiful array of people, all of us from various walks of life and all of us equally (okay, perhaps me slightly more than others) intoxicated by the potato. It is a food that spans the globe and perhaps singularly (with corn being a close second) is the most important vegetable that is grown and harvested to feed the people. We talked about the various adaptations that potatoes take across the continents and how they are used and have always been used.

The importance of this crop in history cannot be overstated. Potatoes nourish and sustain - filling in the gaps left by lean times, unpredictable weather, and limited budgets.

But this is a silly conversation, really, isn’t it? Potatoes don’t need a spokeswoman shouting their praises. They do that just fine on their own.

Our storage crop of potatoes is much smaller this year - that is by choice. This year, in growing my potatoes, I experimented with growing the potatoes further apart to see if that would result in a large size (frankly, I’d rather peel 1 large potato versus 6 small ones). I also grew fewer rows of potatoes in the hopes that the harvest wouldn’t get away from me and end up sprouting in bins on the root cellar floor. What’s the point in growing 700 pounds of potatoes if 200 of those are left at the end of the season?

Growing food for winter food storage, I’m slowly learning, is an art form. The balance of effort to reward is forever in limbo here on our farm and learning to predict, execute, and reap from that effort is a balancing act to say the least.

Come along with me as we harvest, store, and cook up some potatoes here on the homestead…

Don’t forget - if you’d like more whole-food, no-nonsense based recipes, be sure to checkout our Cooking Community. This month, we’re cooking up dark chocolate ice cream, breakfast bread with dried cherries and chocolate, southern breakfast bowls, tomato salad with cannellini beans, and autumn lentil soup with… you guessed it… potatoes.

Enjoy.

Cheers,

Shaye