No such thing as too many potatoes

April “comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers” the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay famously wrote.

But the poet left out a few things. On our farm, April strews not only flowers, but also seed potatoes.

Yes, April is when our landscape finally becomes green again after a too-long winter (and at my age, they are all too long). Crocuses arrive first, followed by violets and daffodils; but to me, April means the planting of kale, lettuce and broccoli, onions and potatoes.

Especially potatoes. It’s the one crop I am happy to help my husband get in the ground.

My husband has a glorious, four-syllable Italian last name that I gratefully declined to take when we married. The fact that his mother was half Irish went a long way towards reassuring my farmer cousin in County Mayo that he was okay. But when Pete started a farm himself 14 years ago and began to plant potatoes, approval from across the pond was guaranteed.

From me, too. It must be in my DNA.

Pete orders potatoes in midwinter from a company with the melodious name of “The Maine Potato Lady.” If he delays ordering, he can’t obtain the varieties popular with his customers at the farmer’s market because the company sells out of many kinds of the tubers by spring.

But this year, while paying the bills, I noticed the bill from Maine was higher than usual. A lot higher. I raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. Everything is going up, I figured.

A partial row of potatoes, with Pete cutting others. The pail is for the rocks we find in the soil, which are endless. The row of potatoes is next to a row of garlic, which will be harvested in July.

The mystery was solved when the seed potatoes began to arrive. Five-and 10-pound bags of Magic Mollies, which are a deep purple, arrived. Red thumbs, which look exactly as described. And Pinto Golds, which are a lovely combination of red and gold potatoes.

Then fingerlings, called banana potatoes for their long and narrow bodies, arrived. A 50-pound bag. Dear God. Will we have room to plant anything else?

Pete acknowledged his error, but remains sanguine. We can plant them in stages, he said. Every two or three weeks. And I saw his point. After all, by the end of August last year we ran out of potatoes to sell at the farmers market. This “mistake” guarantees we will be harvesting potatoes until the end of November, which gladdens my Celtic heart. Can an Irish lass ever have too many potatoes? Perish the thought.

So Saturday we spent planting potatoes and onions. We cut up the potatoes first, leaving several eyes in each piece. Pete dug trenches and I followed along, placing the potatoes with eyes facing the soil every 6-10 inches, filling several rows. At this rate we should put out a sign: Potatoes R Us.

The onions, too, are favorites of mine. It is beautiful to watch them grow, bigger and bigger, lifting out of the rows slightly as they swell. And harvesting them is incredibly satisfying, like pulling round Christmas ornaments out of the soil.

When Pete wasn’t looking, I doubled the price on the onions.

One year our onions were so gorgeous I didn’t want to sell them. Farmer Pete insisted, though. So, begrudgingly, at the market I set out a stack of our beautiful onions, some the size of softballs. When Pete wasn’t looking, I doubled the price, chortling happily.

There’s more than one way to keep the onions to myself, I thought with satisfaction. Who would buy them at this price?

Alas, the very first customer took one look at my stack of lovely orbs, none of which had ever been sprayed with anything but water, and, paying zero attention to the price, she bought every single onion we had, filling the bags she brought from her car.

Every. Last. One. I mourned as I watched her happily place the bags of my onions in her vehicle. Served me right, I guess.

So now Pete knows to buy many, many sets of onions if only so his wife will be less reluctant to share with customers, or engage in subterfuge. Hundreds of little onion bulbs arrived last week. When we finished planting the first wave of potatoes, we started planting the white, yellow and purple onions.

We planted until the throbbing in our backs and hamstrings became too uncomfortable to ignore, then, too tired to cook, we ordered take-out for dinner.

Pete can take things from here. Writing is so much easier on my aching back!

Magic Mollies. Aren’t they pretty?