A tradition that has lasted at least four generations on our farm now is planting sweet potatoes. I think I've mentioned before that I don't even like to eat the things. But planting and harvesting them each year is something I have very fond memories of. As kids my grandpa would assign my sister and I jobs to help him with planting. We would either poke a hole in the ground with the stick so he had a hole to place the plant in, or we lugged a small cup of water to water the plant after he had placed it in the ground.
This summer, I was pregnant with my sweet Baby Farmgirl while I helped my dad plant them. However, I didn't get to help with the harvest because she was a little hungry. But she is the fourth generation in our family to help ;-)
But my dad is always quite proud and glad to share the bounty of his sweet potato crop. So here are some pictures of his crop this year.
We usually wait until after the first hard freeze to harvest the potatoes. But some pesky rats forced dad's hand this year. It is hard to know how big this potato would have been, but dad lost a big part of his crop to the rats. Dad doesn't remember ever having this problem before.
We should have some pretty healthy rats around our place. They sure did a number some of the potatoes.
I noticed something else different on the potatoes this year. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture above, but the potatoes looked like they had veins running down the side of them. Weird.
This is my hand holding the largest potato. I think Dad said it weighed 2 1/4 pounds.
That would be a meal in itself!
Some of them had some splits in them and you could also see the rat teeth marks on this one.
Dad also said the most potatoes he got off of one root was over 8 pounds.
Seeing how big these guys are almost makes me want to eat a sweet potato...almost.
