Growing potatoes: a modest tribute to the past

I’ve often envied people with a long family history connected to the places they live, especially those who live on farms or ranches. They might see trees their grandparents planted or remember stories of great-grandparents who first worked the land. As a city-dweller, I’ve never had that experience, never occupied a house where my parents or grandparents had been brought up. Now, living part-time on Linda’s 50-acre spread named Little Horse, I find myself wondering who lived or travelled this land before Linda bought it in the 90s. For generations, the Ute Indian tribes claimed it for camping and hunting, and I’d like to examine that history in another post; but right now, I’m looking at the mid-20th century, when potato farmers lived in this area, in or near the towns of Lake George, Florissant and Divide.

I have no records of previous owners, but I see evidence of their work from my southwest-facing windows—the remnants of ponds and irrigation ditches for collecting spring run-off after snowmelt.

There were other such features in the area. A Wikipedia article on Lake George asserts that the town was once the center of an extensive potato-growing area. A Ute Pass Historical Society document says that Divide was the only town with any real agricultural base, which was virtually gone by the 1930s. Another source reports that farmers in the 30s and 40s, in an effort to survive drought years, built ditches and numerous small dams to channel water; the dams were seen as an ecological
problem decades later, and have since been removed. Today the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado is the center of potato growing in Colorado and claims to be the #2 fresh potato shipper in the country.

It was a wetter climate during the last century, and we rarely see water here past early spring; this spring, an unusually wet one, we had a small waterfall when the snows began to melt and many rainy days ensued. The pond and ditches are marshy now—late July, with small pools that delight Linda’s dogs. Though we don’t use them for growing crops, we do grow potatoes, and this year’s wet, cool weather is just what this plant likes. In March Linda planted potatoes in a raised bed next to her greenhouse, as well as in my raised bed, covered with shade cloth. They were already growing vigorously by the time I opened my cabin in early June. It’s a small crop. This photo was taken in mid-July.

Of course, farming in hopes of feeding a family or earning income was a much more challenging proposition. The Ute Historical Society in Woodland Park has this planter*, a far cry from today’s modern, climate-controlled versions. Thoreau’s potato farming methods were even simpler; after hiring a neighbor to help clear and prepare the soil, he planted by hand and used a hoe to cultivate.

Though my relationship to the land here is recent, my connection to the potato is more fundamental. I would not exist if not for the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-46, which my Dad told us, was responsible for his paternal grandparents’ arrival in the US a few years later. Like so many other Irish, seeing widespread starvation in Ireland after the potato crop failed there, they came to the US seeking new lives. Railroad work, not farming, was their best option, and that’s what they did.

Growing up in Indiana a century later, my association with the potato was mainly through the delicious mashed potatoes my mother served often at dinner. (The potatoes were store-bought, as our small backyard garden featured only tomatoes and flowers). I never did develop a taste for the ubiquitous french fry—except during a childhood phase of craving McDonald’s perfect fries and thick, creamy milkshakes. That’s just as well, as this nutritious vegetable has become a starchy travesty on too many fast food menus, promoting monocultures on American farms, geared to the requirements of corporate buyers. Monoculture was the root of the problem in the Irish potato famine, historians remind us. A fungus attacked the crop, and there were no varieties that might have survived it.

Thoreau, who built his cabin near Walden Pond in 1845, just as the potato blight hit Ireland, had a number of Irish neighbors. At least one of them was skeptical of Thoreau’s decision to farm 11 acres—for food and as a means of earning “10 or 12 dollars by some honest and agreeable method” in order to meet his building expenses. The land, covered with pines and hickories, was considered by the skeptical neighbor to be “good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on”.** Thoreau focused on beans, but also grew potatoes, corn, peas and turnips. Come harvest time, he had 18 bushels of potatoes and a rather modest income after expenses: $4.50. He was pleased with that, all things considered that year—plowing expenses and a late start.

Here at Little Horse, Linda and I are resisting monoculture in our small way. We have yukon golds, reds, and some fingerlings. Potatoes thrive when temperatures are between 45 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, just what nature has provided this year, and Linda’s plants are already flowering. We continually hill straw and soil around them, and it seems that just a day or so later, they’ve popped through, seemingly as tall as before. This photo shows one day’s harvest late last summer.

We are already fantasizing about the harvest and possibly a small potato festival in honor of the crop and our unknown predecessors on this land. We’ll try new recipes and old favorites, and assuming I’m a successful shopper, a Mr. Potatohead game. Stay tuned.

*Thanks to Lee Willoughby for sending me this photo.

**Source is Walter Harding's annotated edition of Walden.