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Apple and sweet potato stories


Hello everyone. Today I have some stories for you to enjoy. About 30 years ago when we we bought the farm that my Dad lives at there was an old orchard (estimated that it was planted in the late 1800s) in the pasture. It was all grown up with brush. We cleared it out and pruned the trees and also planted a few acres of new orchard with a mix of heirloom and modern kinds of apples. In time they started giving apples. The old heirloom apples as a whole give reasonably nice apples with no chemicals. That can not be said for most of the other trees we planted. Over time Grandpa has been grafting and has changed most of the trees to better kinds. The original old Blue Pearman tree is a pretty big tree. This year it give 44 bushels (1800 lbs.) of nice big apples off of that one tree. The dry weather this spring held back the development of scab and our apple crop this year is the nicest as far as quality that we have ever grown. There are over 200 bushels of apples in storage and for sale at the stand both now and into the winter as supplies last. We have nice organically grown apples at reasonable prices for eating, pies, sauce etc. Come and get them!. We have been growing sweet potatoes for many years. They are a very long season, heat loving crop. It takes into September before there is much there for potatoes. Each year when we dig them it feels like they would give so much more if the season would just be few weeks longer before the frost or cold rain comes. This year I dug the first few rows in the third week of September to sell at the stand as I normally do. The yield was about 1.5 to 2 lbs. per plant as is normal in the north. This year it has stayed warm late so I waited to dig the rest. We dug 3 rows yesterday and little potatoes had become big and what is normally little tails are useful potatoes. The yield has almost tripled in the last three weeks and we have more sweet potatoes than I have ever had before. To store sweet potatoes we first wash and cure them by keeping them in a warm place (80-90 degrees) for a week or 10 days. After that they store in a warm dry space (50-70 degrees) Come and get them! Daniel