Potatoes, crawdads, blackberries

It was high time the boys and I pursued some more wild edibles, and they had just finished summer school, so we went to the farm and left Ann at home so she could focus on her job.

When we arrived at the farm, it was about 10 a.m., and my Dad was ready to set in on our potato harvest before it got too hot. You might question me referring to potatoes as wild edibles, but the way we raise them they are. We don’t really garden them, we just set them free. We planted them during one of trout fishing trips back in March, my Dad strawed them soon after, and we hadn’t seen them since.

The little patch of ground we had fenced off from the cattle and pony behind the Quonset building was certainly growing something, but we were hard pressed to find a potato. The most plentiful plant was the cocklebur. But when we dove in, we were able to find a few old, dried up vines, and a couple that were still a little green. The potatoes were all close to the surface, and the red ones were bigger than the white. We dug a little more than a five-gallon bucketful.  I’m sure there a few more there, but it wasn’t worth more exploratory digging.

After lunch my sister Christy took us to the Bourbuese River near Highgate to catch crawdads. The boys used Oliver’s tiny dip net from his aquarium and a lid from a coffee can to capture several. While we were catching them we heard something bleating like a goat. I went up the river bank to check it out, and found a young deer caught in a fence. It was caught between wires at the haunches, and it’s hind legs were hanging above it. I was able to get it out without too much trouble. It seemed alert and active, but it’s back legs were stiff. I’m hoping that once it got it circulation back to its legs it was able to fully use them again.

Even standing in the river, the heat quickly drove us back to the house. We took a swim in a neighbor’s pool after dinner, and then followed my sister’s tip to some blackberries on my cousin’s farm. With everything running so early this year, and the heat, and the drought, we were afraid we’d missed blackberries for the season. But my cousin’s farm got a good rain that my father’s didn’t, and it had blackberries and green pastures to show for it. A lot of the berries were still red, and the ripe ones were small and sparse, but Dad, the boys and I did gather enough for a few recipes. Not bad for less than a day on the farm. More to come on the next day.