We’ve been very blessed to have a local produce farmer in our lives 🙂

A couple of our kids work for her during the planting/harvesting season and she blesses us with excess (when she has it).  Some years our own garden doesn’t produce as well as we’d like so this has been a wonderful arrangement for us.  At times we will barter a couple piglets for produce as well.

One year she blessed us with tomatoes… we had so many I canned over 100 quarts of sauce and such.  Here’s how it works… “I’m plowing down row 2 tomorrow, come clean out the row”  We drive over with the truck, some laundry baskets and some able bodied kids, and spend maybe a half hour picking anything that’s red in that row.

One year it was corn, over 100 quarts of that as well.  Same gig, “I’m plowing down that middle row, go clean it out”

Last year it was potatoes.  The deer were having a field day eating anything what was showing on the surface, so she calls and says “Deer are cleaning me out, go pick anything that’s showing”  We ended up with probably 600 lbs of potatoes!

She plants different varieties; red skinned, russets, sweet.  My favorite, by far, is the Satina .  This tuber has a dense yellow colored flesh with a thin skin.  It makes heavenly mashed potatoes that are light and fluffy, home fries that don’t fall apart, baked potatoes to die for.  I almost never peel them as the skin is so thin.  Being a dense potato they store remarkably well.  We built some wooden bins and store the potatoes in layers of sand.  Even now I am pulling potatoes out that are firm and delicious!

There is something incredibly satisfying about digging out your own taters, or opening a jar of produce that you canned.  Or taking some greenbeans out of the freezer that you grew.  But, that’s for another post 🙂