Digging for buried treasure

Benjamin is our resident treasure hunter.  We read Treasure Island and other books about discovering treasure.  He has a big interest in coin collecting and has rummaged through every old piggy bank to find "wheat" pennies, silver Mercury dimes, or other collectibles.  He's collected a full set of the State quarters.  He also has a metal detector and likes to search around the yard and pasture and has unearthed many old pieces of farm machinery, nails, cans and other junk.  So far nothing of value, but who knows?  One day he may strike the Mother Lode. 

Isn't it exciting when you find something you weren't expecting to find?  It is a nice feeling.  Did you ever put on a coat or a pair of pants that you haven't worn in a while, put your hand in a pocket and pulled out a $5 bill that you had forgotten about?  That'll put a smile on anyone's face.  Digging up things that aren't visible can be a thrill.  Expectation of the unknown can be suspenseful and alluring.  So when Benjamin came up to me Saturday and said, "Dad, are the potatoes ready to dig up yet?" I knew a treasure quest was underway.

We assembled the tools of our salvage operation, a shovel and a bucket, and then headed out to the first row of potatoes that we had planted back on March 9th.  In fact, if you missed the post, you can read about it here:
Potato Planting at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm

All you do to harvest potatoes is simply turn the earth over at the base of the plant, being extra careful to dig far enough away to not cut any potatoes.  As the dirt loosened, Benjamin's eyes grew wide - buried treasure!  Thar's gold in them there hills (of potatoes, that is).

Benjamin grabs the first Irish Potato of the season

The red potatoes are all different shapes and sizes.  Here is a nice big one:


Fits in the palm of your hand

Our bucket slowly began to fill, plop, plop, plop, with bounty from beneath the surface. 

Treasure

Each plant had 6 or 8 potatoes under it and it looks like this will be a successful crop of potatoes.  No great potato famine at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm this year.

Healthy plants produce healthy potatoes

Here is my potato harvester posing with his shovel standing by just a half row that we dug up.  Just that little bit of land yielded an overflowing bucket of potatoes.

Quitin' Time.  I's the foreman.  I's the one says its quittin' time at Tara.  Quittin' Time!

Here is a close-up of Mr. Potato Head and his chest of buried treasure:


Nice work, Cap'n.

You're not supposed to wash them until you are ready to cook them, so we'll brush them off and bring them inside just as they are.  Potatoes will last for a couple of months if kept dry, cool, and in a dark room.  Trouble is, we don't have the first two items in South Louisiana in the summer, so we'll be eating lots of potatoes!

Yum!

We took the tops of the potato plants and tossed them to Stryker and Maggie.  A hen even got in on the action.  The animals enjoyed eating the plants, so the potato harvest was beneficial to man, beast and fowl.


We'll take care of this, boss.

We only dug up the small portion that you can see below:

Harvest Progress

And we have 5 1/2 rows left to dig.  So we're thinking about all the potato salad, baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, potato latkes, small potatoes cooked with fresh green beans, potato soup, roasted potatoes with garlic and Parmesan cheese, pesto roasted potatoes, etc...  The list goes on and on.


The harvest remaining that we'll dig this weekend

The "X" marked the spot, indeed.  This was a successful treasure hunt!