Diggin' for Gold

Boy I can feel my back after spending a good couple of hours bending over and picking out the finds... WE ended up with about a 100 lbs. Yep not as big a haul as last year but we were digging for not exactly the kind of gold that you are thinking of... YOU see Natureman and I were digging for Yukon - Yukon GOLD 'potatoes' that is. And we certainly got enough for two people for the year.

It was time to get those babies out of the ground before they rotted. The lesser weight amount was due to the drought like conditions in the Midwest and we certainly could see it in our potato crop this year. I have never seen so many itty bitty potatoes that never grew any bigger.

Potatoes are tubers which means that they grow underground so when their foliage dies back, you know it's time to dig. 'Thought you might like to see what the underground stuff looks like at the end of its life as the bigger potatoes have already dropped off.

Natureman's the digger and I am the one who picks up all those taters, throwing them in the bag trying to remove most of the dirt and extra vegetation along the way.I remember one year we had 4 different types of potatoes. Let's see 4 X 50lbs/each feed bags making that year's crop a little under 200lbs. My school cohorts may remember the 'potato' bar goodbye luncheon that fed the staff and there were more "potato" bar dinner parties with other friends. I scoured high and low for good potato recipes. I made soups -potato soup, potato leek,threw them into End of the Year Garden soup, and there was Shepherd's pie, potato salads- Potatoes prepared every which way- baked, fried, mashed, boiled ... If I was asked to bring any dishes, you can bet your sweet bippy a potato dish accompanied us.

SO if you have any good potato recipes that you'd like to share, you know you can send them our way to the End of the Rainbow Valley even if you consider us are a 'small potato' operation ... :)