How many of ya'll rub the sprouts off your potatoes ?

Spent about an hour this morning going thru our potatoes in the root cellar, rubbing off the sprouts. We generally do this once in the fall (mid Nov), and twice in the winter....mid Jan, then again it late Feb. Keep the potatoes more firm and usable until the next crop comes in.

I built some drying screens out of 2x lumber and 1/2" hardware cloth, set into a saw kerf on the inside of the screens. They have a short block of 2x4 screwed/glued on the bottom for legs...that gives them enough room so air can circulate around the potatoes nice, and they don't go soft/rot like when we used to store them piled together in old milk crates.











The one in bags hanging on the wall are next year's seed potato. In February, they'll come out of the bags and get spread on screens to get good sprouts going, then go in the ground as soon as I can work up the ground to plant....like about a month later. Planting them with 4-6" sprouts gives them a good head start on growing.

 

Very nice job of building the potato drying screens using the Kreg Jig, I use it as much as possible!!!
Thanks for sharing.

 

@TnAndy hands down, you have one of the nicest, most organized homestead. Nicely done. Re: you potatoes, did you start your original crop from store potatoes or did you buy starters?

 

That is the nicest looking root cellar I have ever seen! Well, done!

 

We bought seed potatoes from the local farmer co-op some years back, and save our own for seed. We'll do that about 3-4 years, then go back to disease free certified seed, then repeat the cycle. Store potatoes have been sprayed with a chemical that keeps them from sprouting, so you really don't want to use them for growing (or probably eating when you think about it....aahahahahaaaa)

Yeah, I've got a Delta hollow chisel mortiser in the shop that is now a hat rack. The Kreg jig is just so much faster for everything, it's the go-to tool.

Ya...but ya'll know Bruce tends to exaggerate, right ?

 

It was an add-on project. Some years back, had a guy here with a track hoe doing some other stuff, and got him to dig a hole for it on the upper side of the garage wall....garage is built into the mountain on that side with about 7' of bank against a block wall. (House is built on a real sloping area). He dug me out an 8x12 hole, then I sawed a hole in the block wall to access his hole.



Hand poured a small footer, and laid up block walls




Formed it up with some temporary lumber off the bandmill to support a concrete ceiling/roof




Then had a 6" cap pumped on it when another project was in motion (I try to get double or triple duty out of a subcontractor when here....line up multiple things to do)





Finished the inside with paint, electrical, and ventilation...the 6" pipe on the left is the intake, the one with the little fan is the exhaust...it's on a timer to draw in more air when it's colder to help cool the inside faster in the fall. Outside, put a layer of EDM roofing rubber on top, then a some foam board, then about 12" dirt (all I could get without hitting the siding on that gable end).
Built a door out of plywood, 1x red cedar and 1' foam board sandwiched between....about as good as a commercial cooler door.

 

Really nice root cellar, well thought out and ever better done. Rub mine off a couple times, use potato racks that are all wood, rather than screen bottoms. Cover the racks with old pomace mats to keep them dark. Been buying seed potatoes from either Agway or the Maine Potato Lady. Here in southern NH, the blight has been so bad that it is only worth trying to grow certified seed and then I am down to growing mostly Kenebuc. The Green Mts, Katadin, Norland, all grow good until early Sept, die back, and 3 weeks later all the potatoes are stinking slime. It makes you feel a real empathy for the Irish and like them, if you had to depend on them you would die.

 

Really nice root cellar! potatoe racks are lovely! Thanks for pics.

 

Good to see you again Andy, been wondering about how you were.

We stopped growing potatoes here, well except for sweet potatoes. I'm diabetic and have issues with Irish potatoes. Used to grow 'em and yes we'd brake off the sprouts when needed.

 

Once again! The very nicest root cellar I've ever seen! Great drying racks too!

Back on the grand folks farm the family would spend an afternoon scraping potatoe eyes, while my grandma cooked kataffle shnits (potatoe chunks) and spatzli (little dumplings) and their homemade sauerkraut! Mix it all together in a big bowl with a little bacon water from boiling the potatoes and homemade pork sausage and pork chops cooked in the kraut. Wow, I'll never taste something that good again!

 

.... and why not? It sounds to me that you have the basic grasp of how the entire meal went together. Little steps my friend. Try various sausages until you find one close to what you remember your grandparents made homemade then beg borrow or steal the recipe and master that. Next the sauerkraut. BTW there is a huge group of German descendants in Fredericksburg Tx. Contact the local Chamber of Commerce or Library there about local German Cookbooks (the older the better). Spatzli is not that difficult, plenty of recipes out there on that and device for shredding of little bits of the dough into a pot of boiling salt water or broth. Potato chunks? Fried, steamed, baked??? insufficient data from my viewpoint, I wasn't there. Put it all together as you described above. Adjust as necessary until you master the whole process and taste, and record the whole process. Please then share it here for those of us who read what you wrote above and drooled. Good Luck! You can do it if you want too !!!

 

Oh I know how to make it! I'm just not krauting, slaughtering my own pigs, making my own sausage (I know how), etc! Mainly I can't put my grandma's love into it!
I'm a classically trained chef, I make it two or three times a year, and it's great! But, I want grandma to make me a bowl!

 

Sgt Nambu, we can never go home again and our children for the most part have different dreams. Some of my fondest memories are as a child waiting for my grand parents to finish cooking something, and growing things and preserving them and yes it includes holding the bucket for making Krub, or what they called blood pudding and stirring it until we got to the house. It is a whole different way of life and while we can remember it, know how it was done, and might even be able to get the ingredients, it will not very likely ever exist again outside our memories and every day there are fewer of us around who do remember. We ate every part of the hog, skin, cracklins, used the intestines, ate the heart, blood, hams, bacon, etc and butchered them, cured them, smoked them and ate them. Two of my grand children are vegetarians and would probably die if they witnessed the demise of a hog. I think that most of the present generation would starve to death on the same farm my grand father raised 6 children, helped them get started in life, and lived well. He always said he was never poor, just didn't have any money for quite a few years.

 

Know whatcha mean Nambu. Granny used to make me fried 'taters and onions. I could make them right now, but they just wouldn't be the same.
Nice job on the racks and a great post Andy!

 

SweeT!
Have to admit I'm jealous. Been thinking in these terms. Soon it will be time to convert it into action.

 

Man-oh-man did I step in it!... I showed the wife your root cellar and she hasn't shut up about having one now. When am I going to learn! (smack self in head!) LOL! Yeah, I'm jealous too, very jealous, and very doubtful I could build one that nice. Again, well done!