That phrase translated from Cajun French to English means, "Don't drop the potato!" That phrase also means "Don't give up!" or "Hang in There!" We won't be dropping any potatoes - at least not today. Our phone rang right before 5pm and the caller id said, "Parsley's Feed." I knew immediately what they were calling about. Mrs. Johnette confirmed it when she said, "Your seed potatoes are in." I told her I'd be over directly to pick them up. A couple of weeks back I had put our names on an order list at our local feed store for 10 pounds of LaSoda seed potatoes. Today they came in and we hopped in the car and drove over to get them.
At the feed store, they had a notebook with several pages of names and numbers and how many pounds of seed potatoes the customer wanted. As customers were called today, people were driving up to pick up their potatoes before closing time at 5pm. A gentleman from our church that just turned 90 years old had ordered 50 pounds of seed potatoes! (You read that right) I hope in 31 years when I'm 90 I'm still planting potatoes!
I always have the same exact thought every year when I open the box and look at the potatoes: "Should we just eat them?" It's going to get chilly tonight and a potato soup with bacon, green onions and fresh parsley would hit the spot. What if the yield on our potato crop is such that we harvest less than we plant? That's always a possibility, but hope springs eternal. We'll get these in the ground.
But something has to be done first. We cut the potatoes and let them scab over. You see the potato has a number of eyes. From out of these eyes, a plant will grow. Hopefully, each potato plant will grow numerous potatoes. I use a knife to cut each potato in half, being careful (not to drop it!), but also not to cut through an eye.
When I finished the task, I had an entire tray of cut up seed potatoes. I'll put the tray in a warm room and let the cuts scab over for about a week and then I'll put them in the ground in 10 days or so.
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