Curing and Weighing the 2021 Sweet Potato Crop

To finish up the sweet potato post from last night, we'll tell you that once you dig them up, you're not quite done!  The hard work is done, but you can't kick your feet up just yet.  We gather all of the harvest together and use different tubs or containers to sort and grade the sweet potatoes into different sizes.  We sort them (from smallest to largest) from the small ones deemed "Cattle Feed," because the cows love 'em, to medium, to large 'bakers', to Jumbo.  

We separate them and pour all the ones for human consumption into onion sacks.  Onion sacks are breathable mesh and allow air flow to dry them out.  You don't want to wash them - leave them with dirt on them or they may start to rot.  I hang them up in the garage and will leave them there for 2 - 3 weeks.  During this curing period, the starches will convert to sugars, the scratches and scars on the sweet potatoes will heal, and the skins will get a little tougher.

Here are the JUMBOs!  It is hard to see perspective, but these guys are big - too big for any one person to eat.  We cut these up for eating.  Jumbos are the largest in size, but smallest in number from the crop.

Here are the large 'bakers.'  These are the classic, traditional size you see in the produce department.  They are the perfect size for baking, cutting open, and putting a big pat of butter to melt inside.  Maybe you like to sprinkle a dash of cinnamon or two.  We got one full sack of these - the second largest volume grade we harvested.

These are the medium sized ones.  We got two sacks of these - the largest graded amount harvested.  This is the size we primarily peel and mash.  They make great Mashed Sweet Potatoes.  We also cut these up to make Sweet Potato Fries.

And that concludes the sweet potato harvest of 2021.  We'll eat on these for several months.  It still amazes us that we never have to plant them!  They continue to come up every year on their own and bless us with lots of good food.  Oh, before I forget.  I always put them in a tub and weigh them to see how many pounds we harvested.  This year, we harvested 121 pounds of sweet potatoes!