If We're Gonna Starve, It Won't Be This Year

Summer has been good to us.  We dug up our sweet potatoes a little over a week ago, and it was a chore.  We had planted 200 slips, and I do believe that each and every one of them put out.

The Queen Mother (I mean the potato).

I didn't expect such an early harvest, but they were ready, indeed.  Ben had seen one poking up out of the dirt, and that was that.  I prefer them on the smaller side for baking whole, and the majority of them were just so.  However, we did have quite a few giants.  The one pictured above was the biggest.  Potatoes that size will be chopped up into fries for used in roasted root vegetable mixes.

The potatoes were cured under the carport for ten days.  During the curing process, starch is converted into sugar, and the result is a sweeter, creamier potato.  Now they're waiting in the basement for me to very gently wipe away the dirt.  Ben is building a few storage bins for them.  The bin we used last year just won't do.  We planted twice as many slips this year as we did last year, but we got about five times the potatoes.  The deer and a late frost did a number on them in 2010.  I estimate this harvest at about 1,000 taters.

Thurgood Morsel says, "I'll have mine baked and cut down the middle lengthwise with a farm fresh egg cracked on top, please."

He also says, "Get out mah face wit dat camera.  Cain't you see I'm nappin'?  Stupid biotch."