Spud Harvest

We dug potatoes last week.  It took us a whole 2 hours to harvest our potato crop.  It took longer to hook up to the digger then it did to dig them.  Yep, that's me picking up the spuds.  I finally got my Farmer to snap a picture of me working so I could post it.

 Here is my Farmer in the tractor starting down the potato rows.  He is pulling the cross-over digger.  This machine digs 2 rows at a time.  

 As the blades go down in the ground under the potatoes, the dirt and potatoes go up a chain that has a slight bounce to it.  As it all travels up the chain, the dirt sifts out, leaving the potatoes on the chain.

Then the potatoes fall onto another chain that is crossing over in another direction.  This chain then drops the potatoes on the ground.  Typically, the spuds would drop between 2 un-dug rows and then another digger would come along and pick up the two un-dug rows along with the dug potatoes, so 4 rows total.  The spuds then travel up the chains on that machine and eventually travel up a conveyor that dumps them into a truck.  Since we only have a few to dig, we skip this last part.  No big digger and no spud truck.  We just pick them up by hand and put them in sacks to store in the potato cellars.  And now instead of filling the cellars with 30+ semi-loads of potatoes, we put a pickup load in.  It also seems pretty crazy to use the one machine for such a small amount of spuds, but we have it so we use it.  And it does go faster than just using a shovel.   

This is me admiring a nice baker.  This is something my Farmer's grandpa did.  I can still picture him standing beside the sorting table, watching the potatoes go by, and when he spotted that perfect baker he would pick it up, and start gently rubbing the dirt off, almost as if he was petting it.  He knew how hard it was to grow a nice crop of spuds, so he would take the time to admire a nice looking potato.  He took a lot of pride in our potato crops.  I think he is the reason we still grown the large garden spot of potatoes that we do.  I believe it's my Farmers way (and mine too) of staying connected to his family heritage.

Potato Chip Cookies

Recipe #1 in honor of potato harvest.   I got this recipe from a country magazine a long time ago.  This cookie tastes a lot like the pecan shortbread cookies you buy at the store.  yum yum.....


Potato Chip Cookies -makes 7 dozen
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 sticks butter or margarine
2 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup crushed potato chips
1 tsp baking soda
3 cups flour
1 cup pecans (or walnuts)
Mix all ingredients together well and roll into balls the size of a walnut.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, pressing down with the palm of your hand or a fork.  Bake for 12 minutes at 350 degrees.

Down time means Domestic duty time............

There's not much going on around our farm these days.  My farmer is delivering hay with the semi-truck and that does not require my help, so that leaves me with time to do my domestic duties.  Which I pretty much hate dislike greatly.  My mother told me as I was growing up that I should never hate anyone or anything, so I came to just dislike greatly those things that I hate.  And one of them is housework.  I would so rather be out helping my Farmer than doing housework.  However, if I don't do the domestic duties, they don't get done. (was that a double negative?)  Now don't get me wrong, my Farmer does help me out around the house.  Just ask him.  However he does drawn the line at;  laundry, vacuuming, dusting, mopping, dishes.......you get it.  Oh wait, I think he did do the dishes one day 5 months ago.  And as far as the laundry, he does create that, and very well I might add.  But that's OK, he does the farm work and I will do the house work. So as I am doing my housework, I'm thinking about my blog and what I can blog about when there's not much happening around here.  And I decided I would share recipes.  Lots of people out there blog about cooking and share recipes so I might as well join in.  My recipes are usually very simple.  If it's not simple, I probably won't make it.  And I am really not into making fancy things.  My Farmer is pretty much a meat and potatoes kind of guy so that's basically my cooking style.  So next time you stop by my blog to check out what's new, if there's not much going on around the farm, I'll be sharing a recipe.  But first I had better finish my housework.  I've been working all summer off of the philosophy, "Don't fret about it, it'll still be there tomorrow".  And yep, the housework is still there, only deeper.