United Nations International Year of the Potato 2008

From Dave Smith

Potatoes On The Front Line Against Poverty

Dry-Farming Organic Potatoes

David Little - Organic Potato Farmer
Dry-farming is a soil tillage technique, the art of working the soil. Starting as early as possible when there is a lot of moisture in the soil. Working the ground. Creating a sponge-like environment so that the water comes from down below, up into the sponge. You press it down with a roller or some other implement to seal the top. You’re not pressing the whole thing down, just the top layer and it creates a seal so the water can’t evaporate and escape out, and saves it for long periods of time, hopefully all summer long and gives you the moisture you need.

The Time I Worked On An Organic Farm | Part 1 | Part 2
One Saturday afternoon, a Dodge Caravan pulls up to the farm followed by a Ford F250 Super Cab. A couple of screaming kids jump out of the minivan, with their exasperated parents in tow. Their grandparents ease down from the pickup. Paul appears out of nowhere like he normally does, able to be in four different places juggling eight different tasks, to welcome his family to the farm again. We all spend the rest of the lazy afternoon picking potatoes.

Wood Prairie Organic Potato Farm Web Tour
We have been farming organically for 30 years. We own 110 acres. Like most Maine farms, half of our acreage is in forest. We farm 55 acres, including 48 acres in rotated crop production. We have a 4-year rotation: Year 1: Potatoes; Year 2: Spring Wheat or Oats underplanted with Clover and Timothy grass. The clover sod from Year 3 is plowed down in Year 4 and the field is then planted first to plowdown Buckwheat, then to plowdown Rapeseed as a biofumigant. Year 5 is back to potatoes. Our rotation allows us ten to twelve acres of potatoes a year. We also grow lesser amounts of other root crops like carrots, beets, parsnips and onions. We plant in May, harvest by early October and ship from underground storage until June.

Organic Potato Gardening Tips
Many store-bought potatoes, those gotten from the grocery store, have been treated to prevent sprouting, making them last longer on store shelves. These potatoes are thought to make poor quality harvests.

Plant A Row For The Hungry
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one in ten households in the United States experiences hunger or the risk of hunger. Many frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for an entire day. Approximately 25 million people, including 9.9 million children, have substandard diets or must resort to seeking emergency food because they cannot always afford the food they need. In the past year, the demand for hunger assistance has increased by 40%, and research shows that hundreds of hungry children and adults are turned away from food banks each year because of lack of resources.

Pro-organic folk aren’t foolish, just health-conscious
My animals graze the fields for as much of the year as possible and are healthy without the use of antibiotics and extra hormones. We get almost as high of yields from our land and I do less tillage than ever. My neighbors who farm conventionally are going back to more tillage and using the moldboard plow. We don’t want to feed the whole world, just our little corner of it. Farming organically doesn’t interfere with any other way of farming. But the organic farmer has to deal with the consequences of some technology mainly genetically modified organism drift. Pandora’s box has been opened.

Potato Recipes From Around The Web
Lori’s Skillet Smashed Potatoes (101 Cookbooks)
Vanilla Mashed Sweet Potatoes (101 Cookbooks)
Roasted New Potato Salad (Whole Foods)
Creamy Potato Leek Soup (Organic Valley)
Best Baked Potato Recipe (Recipe Zaar)

Also see OrganicToBe’s Recipe List and The Great Potato Race (with Johnny Carson Potato Chip Video)
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Susan over at Farmgirl Fare writes: “One of the five things you must eat before you die…

Homemade potato chips, preferably made with thin slices of freshly dug, organic red potatoes (scrubbed, not peeled), fried in homemade lard in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, and prepared by someone you adore who is willing to stand over a splattering pan of hot oil for an hour or two while you both devour batch after batch of warm, salted chips as soon as they are cool enough to touch. Serve with lots of laughs and plenty of iced tea or cold beer.”

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Dave Smith is author of To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work and lives in Mendocino Country, Northern California.
Image Credits: Potatoes in water © Michal Adamczyk | Dreamstime.com
Skillet Potatoes by Heidi Swanson 101 Cookbooks
OrganicToBe.org OrganicToGo.com
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