Potato – Potahto

Here’s a quick update from Coulee Creek Ranch. Also, I finally added content to the other pages – Garden, Hen House, Sisters’ Soapworks, and Grassfed Beef.

Today, we spent our Sunday morning harvesting potatoes. With the frequent rains this fall, I was unsure if they’d be edible or if they’d be on their way to producing the next crop already. Luckily, there were no sprouting spuds in sight. We pulled up slightly less than last year since we planted only 8 – 40 foot rows instead of 15 this year. Nonetheless, we’ll still have plenty of potatoes for at least half the year! Now to just finish that root cellar so we have somewhere to store them…Bart has been busy milling logs in order to finish our corrals. One more solid week of work, and they should be ready to go, just in time to sort the calves out next month.

With so many projects in the works, our home site still looks like it did in the spring when our friend Dave came over with his Cat and dug a big hole for us. We had high hopes of pouring concrete before winter, but we can’t get a concrete company to call us back. Next year, we may just have to tackle it ourselves. This is not an exciting prospect. For now, our root cellar is in place at the home site, but is not fully covered. Now that our potato harvest is dug up and curing in the shop, we’ll prepare at least the back half of the cellar for winter spud storage.

Bart cut doors into an old gas tank and welded brackets on for shelves. Then we scrubbed it 3 – 4 times with hot soapy water to remove any lingering oil. Eventually my pantry and kitchen will adjoin the door to the cellar – perhaps in another five years.

The biggest news, and perhaps most important development is that we now have water at both the corrals and house! We’ve piped our well to a cistern and down the hill into the coulee. It is cool, refreshing and delicious! Next year, we’ll move our potato patch out here where it is sandier, both easier for the potatoes to grow and easier to harvest.