We’ve grown sweet potatoes for the last 45 years here on the farm. Out goal is to grow enough (along with winter storage squash) that we can eat them in every meal from early November until April or early May – when it will seem too warm to eat them. It is certainly a labor of love – “labor” being the operative word. From mid-May when we raise the hills to plant them in through a summer of keeping down weeds, fending off dear, and wrangling their rangy vines to fall when we dig, clean, cure, and store, I estimate we spend 25 or 30 hours nursing this crop. But, as with much of the work we do in the garden, every step has its own satisfaction. It is much like a sand mandala – the labor is as much of the joy as is the final product – which vanishes by the time we begin again, next spring.
Dick Westheimer 