The Sweet Potato Harvest

Do you remember when we planted sweet potatoes back at the beginning of summer? That seems so very long ago, doesn’t it?

When we arrived back from visiting family, the same trip on which Stewart’s adrenal fatigue became severe, we had a community work day. Stewart was still in bed for most of his days and the ladies here were kind enough to come over to our place and help me dig up two of these 35 feet rows. Then they helped me plant a cover crop of sodbuster radishes.

Not only that, but they also cleaned out our chicken coop while I frantically searched for shovels and buckets and waddled chased after our toddler. I can’t even begin to tell you how much this day, and the many more helping hands extended our way, have blessed our family.

That day we filled a very large cardboard box with sweet potatoes, a harvest that we are estimating at about 50 pounds. They cured for about a month before we started eating them and now it’s all the sweet potatoes you can eat around here. But nobody minds roasted, boiled, mashed, and fried sweet potatoes because these guys are good.

We are looking at a frost this week, so we wanted to get that last row of sweet potatoes in to cure. We rallied the gang of very willing helpers and headed to the chicken field to see what treasures lie beneath. This time Daddy was able to join us.

The boys oohed and awed with every scoop of dirt we pulled back. There were sweet potatoes upon sweet potatoes and besides my wielding of the shovel, most of the treasures were dug by these little folks on hands and knees. Annabelle, meanwhile, continued to yell “Tato! Tato!”

That girl loves her taters. So much so, in fact, that in the harvesting of them she actually began to embrace them closely as one might an old friend. If there were a stick of butter in that field she might have wept with joy, and then taken bites from both.

After much digging and sorting and moving and thanking the Lord for this harvest, we brought two more buckets of sweet potatoes up to the house to cure. Stewart estimates the final harvest to be somewhere in the realm of 75 pounds, after today’s joyful digging.

These plants also provided us with a summer’s worth of greens when lettuce and cooking greens could not handle the heat. If the Lord wills, we’d like to plant more of the best yielding varieties next year, as part of our desire to expand upon the staple crops like beans, squash, and potatoes.

But this harvest could not be described as anything short of bountiful and we have nothing to add except gratitude.