We grow sweet potatoes.
Life is sweeter here.
Life of a sweet potato farmer
It starts with a slip.
We bring up slips in June from NC and immediately plant them in soil that has been warmed by plastic mulch since May.
We wait.
Once the slips are planted, it is crucial to keep weeds at bay and water flowing to the roots. We also need lots of sunny days. But that, my friends, we can’t control.
We wait.
We continue to cultivate the wheel tracks to keep weeds out, focus on irrigation, plant next year’s cover crop, and cross our fingers.
Yep, still waiting and weeding. Eventually, we won’t be able to move through the rows any longer because of the vining sweets. At this point, we start lining up harvest help, and prepping barns for harvest.
We play.
For a few short weeks in August, we check on our cover crop, put up the hammock, and enjoy life.
We harvest.
We snap the vines with our hands, roll up the plastic, use an under cutter to loosen the soil, and then hand dig each one. Sweet potatoes have very delicate skin, which is why they need to be dug by hand. We fill buckets on the ground and then fill bins on the truck, culling in the field. Whatever is left is usually either too small or has already been enjoyed by wire worms or woodchucks.
We wash.
Each sweetie is loaded onto a conveyor that washes the dirt off. From here, they are graded (No. 1, fancy, commercial, diced) and stacked in bins.
We pack.
After orders are received, sweets are packed out into 40# cases, bagged in 2# bags, or diced into 16 oz containers.
We ship.
We ship throughout Vermont and to select stores in NY, NH, & MA.
We eat.
Check out our cook ‘em page for ideas and recipes!
(And then we do it all again…)
Our year is a little backward from most farmers, with the most intense times in June and then September through March. Once the rush of harvesting/washing/boxing/delivering ends, we focus on getting the rocks outta the fields, the cover crop plowed in, and the plastic down on time.
We are excited that 2020 brought solar to our farm! We worked with Same Sun, out of Rutland, and soon we will be using the sun to power the farm stand, as well as the barn. We are lucky to have the ability to bring renewable energy to our homestead and look forward to teaching our children about how we can make a positive difference in the world, in this small way.
We want to acknowledge that we are living and working on Abenaki land. We recognize the indigenous culture and people that existed in Vermont long before Europeans arrived in North America. We take our stewardship seriously and with an emphasis on caring for the land, we are an organic farm. It’s important to us that the land is healthy, so that our crop is healthy. Plus, we want to be sure that when our kids are digging around in the dirt with us, they aren’t being exposed to stuff they don’t need to be (ya know, like Twitter.)
Click below to learn about our family of six and how we make it all work.
