taters ~

The fall season is fast upon us here in the Northwoods.  The leaves are in peak color ~

 ~ along side the highway by our house ~

It won't be long and Old Man Winter will be sneaking up on us.  Time to get the gardens cleaned out and the harvest put up.















My sister Darla over at darsstuffings ... you may be one of her followers.  Anyhooooooo ... if you are a follower of her blog she has mentioned earlier this spring about a trial potato patch that they had going on over there.  Testing out seed potatoes for this climate.  You can get the details of it all over on her blog :)



Well ...
Last night she calls and says "Do you want some potatoes?"  Bring some buckets and bags and we'll see you tomorrow morning.

So ...
This morning it was off to Dar's to get some taters.  We didn't grow any of our own in the garden this year because we were told earlier in the season that there were going to be plenty to go around.  WOW... they weren't kidding!

Bill (Dar's hubby) had a potato picker all hooked up to the tractor when we got there; but there was a problem.  He had tried it out earlier and because of the rocks in the field they kept catching in the chain and it broke.

So ...
Handyman that he is and along with his brother Pat ~ they rigged up an OLD  straight plow - like the kind they used to use behind a horse and modified it to pull behind the tractor.  It worked okay ... it furrowed the potatoes out but we still had to get in there the old fashioned way and find those taters using pitch forks and our hands.

There was quite a crew on hand ... everybody was picking for themselves and each other.  The work went pretty fast ... but ohhhh ... tonight ... our aching backs.

Today's total for everyone ... around 1300 pounds!

Here's what we bought home ...  3 of the 4 kinds planted.  One kind they are waiting a couple more weeks yet before harvesting.

Viking Purple

Norland Reds 

and

Yukon Gems

Talk about a pile of taters ~ and that's just a fraction of them!

Thanks Dar & Bill !  

and THANK YOU GREG for doing a test plot in their field 

and letting us share in the bounty!!

Until next time ...

So it goes in my neck of the woods.

~mel