Dear Readers, As the days grow shorter and the leaves change color it is, once again, time for that uber-fun gardening experience: potato digging!!!!! Nine months ago the gardening catalogs had promised hours of fall fun and garden drama so I invited my friends Patience Paisley and Evelyn Wells to help me dig potatoes… not knowing what magic we would find.
My garden is a peaceful and harmonious ecosystem. Although this balance was recently threatened by my husband’s insistence that the compost pile be located a minimum of one hundred feet from the house. But, he relented after my convincing argument that an inability to keep an eye on it might pose a grave threat to my plan to corner the world manure market. To which he replied, “keep writing!” The garden is laid out on a grid system - much like a formal English garden. The raised beds are filled with a variety of carefully selected heirloom flowers and vegetables. Some of the plants are chosen for their color, some for their taste, others simply for their name. I grow Bloody Butcher tomatoes, Boothby Blonde cucumbers, Red Leprechaun lettuce, Tequila Sunrise peppers, Minnesota Midget melons, and Truckers Favorite corn. I’ve even named a few myself, such as: In-Your-Eye potatoes, and Tastes-like-chicken corn.
Potatoes have always been a standard part of our diet except the time before it was discovered that they were edible. Potatoes are the fourth largest food crop following rice, wheat and Buffalo wings. The average American eats 73lbs of potatoes a year. (By the way, they eat them as - #1, French fries, followed by #2, Potato Chips) Spanish explorers brought the potato to Europe in 1536. They were promptly smacked upside the head and sent back to the New World for ketchup. And, as if the heroic efforts during the February earthquake and rescue of 33 trapped miners weren’t enough, 99% of all cultivated potatoes worldwide are descendants to a species native to Chile! Dig THAT! 
To dig potatoes out of the ground the gardening implement of choice, for sophisticated, know-it-all gardeners and lunatic fringe farmers everywhere, is the pitchfork. Not only do the tines lift and separate potatoes from the earth, but the potential for organizing a peasant mob is enormous. I own a pitchfork, my neighbor owns a scythe and I’m sure that the retired fireman across the street could fashion tar-dipped torches so that we would have all we needed to form a mob, and drive any Van Helsing monster from our neighborhood.
Patience and Evelyn accompanied me to the garden. I suggested to Evelyn that she help us dig. Her facial expression looked like she was experiencing the worst intestinal discomfort of her life – as if she’d just eaten Montezuma’s rottenest potato… So I took the pitchfork away and handed her the camera. We dug at least a full bushel basket of potatoes out of the ground – and Evelyn was able to snap a few Action Photos. The photos showed us in our gardening gloves and shirts, earnestly smeared with dirt and Potato dust. With our bushel basket and pitchfork we looked like a hormonally imbalanced version of Elmer Fudd. Sort of like Elmira Fudd…
Then came the real test: a taste comparison between store bought potatoes and potatoes that we had just harvested. By now, both kinds were baking in the oven. Plus, moving inside was a chance to get out of the pouring rain. We decided to rate them in several categories: taste, texture, color, eatability, and just because we like to say it, mouth-feel. I’ll say it again: “mouth-feel” - but only because it makes me feel vaguely dirty. Hm, come to think of it, I WAS dirty!
Me: “Would you say that the flavor is a complex amalgamation of taste and texture”?
Patience: “I don’t know. It’s just really good”.
Me: “What could enhance the flavor?”
Evelyn: “I’m thinking a big, giant steak would make an excellent topping.”
Me: “What about the …"mouth feel…?"
Both: Stop it! You’re SO dirty!
We did find that the garden potato was fluffier, lighter in color and creamier than its store-bought rival. And that once each potato was piled high with butter, cheese, sour cream, olives, mushrooms and chives it was virtually impossible to add more butter. Other than that there was not a big difference between the potatoes leading me to believe that organic food is a lot like Santa Clause: we want to believe.
I realize there is an immense satisfaction in coaxing anything edible from the Colorado soil. And, also that by growing my own food I lessen my carbon footprint, don’t support industrial fertilizers and take a little pesticide out of the air. But a garden allows you to learn about the precarious beauty of life, the beginnings and the endings. Nature can be a capricious partner in a garden where the investment of time and energy is a long term one. To sit around my warm kitchen while it pours outside, to eat one of life’s supreme comfort foods slathered with butter and cheese, with two of my favorite friends in the world is one of life’s unforgettable pleasures. Happy Spud Day!
Evelyn Wells wrote: Look forward to "To Pop or Not to Pop: The inside story of home grown popcorn". Note: I believe any butter we didn't use during the great potatoe bake (my homage to Dan Quail) will come in handy!
