PlantingPotatoes

IT'S THE FRIDAY BEFORE EASTER, potato-planting day. The whole family is in the garden patch where we grow Pontiac, Kennebec, and Yukon Gold potatoes. Putting in the potatoes is a big job—we grow a lot, as much as two tons, because they are a really significant part of our diet.

The soil was tilled yesterday in furrows three feet apart, dark streaks showing where last year’s mulch has decayed. We haul buckets of cut potatoes to the garden and divide into teams: one person to drop a piece of potato (sprouts up)every twelve inches or so; the second person, with a hoe, to cover it with a few inches of soil.

Teamwork

We are often aware of how much farming has made us a family, a team, through our work together. Some folks go to Disney Land for a Together vacation; we stay home and work on a project. It’s easy to see how this has formed us over the years; the young people are good planners and problem solvers and know how to collaborate. Luke and Jess’s new deck includes nails put there by everyone in the family, down to their five-year-old son; the bricks in William and Ashley’s house were repointed by all the Dougherty women. The boys built us a barn in April of 2020, while most of America was trapped indoors by mandates. This isn’t just work for us; when we do it together, it’s fun.

So gardening is a family task. Beginning in January, when the first seed catalogs arrive, we make lists and charts of what to plant, where to plant it, and how much to grow. The children are as likely to take the lead as we are. They’ve known this routine all their lives; they have the experience and judgment, and they, too, will be eating the results.

Put in the ground on Good Friday, potatoes just seem to grow better. Planting times are one of the things our work is teaching us, one of the helps we are passing on to one another. Timing the potatoes right can mean the difference between great potatoes and an only so-so crop. By the end of the morning we have almost 2,000 planted, two-tenths of an acre. We head to the house for lunch; Beowulf, the farm dog, who has been bored by our steady work, races ahead, barking at sparrows to show that he’s on the job.

Growing the Community

Just up the road, neighbors and family have been planting potatoes as well. As much as the food, the sharing of knowledge and community are fruits of homesteading. New people move in, not knowing this place and its soil, its climate; folks just starting out in gardening or animal husbandry have questions, need assistance with difficulties. Neighbors can be there to help.

So, last spring our community took the initiative to meet this need and offer help on a larger scale. The Healing Land homestead group held a whole day of workshops, and over three hundred folks from five states attended. There were talks on homestead planning, dairy management, and sheep care; workshops on canning, butchering, grazing, fermenting. It was wonderful how many people turned out to learn about growing their own food. We met folks new to the area and old-timers who had been here for generations. Ties were forged, and everyone went away with new information, fresh resolve.

It turns out our community is a real mix! A local family doctor milks a cow before breakfast; so does the brickmason down the road. Matt is a computer operator who works remotely, Gwen is the mother of eleven; both milk cows, grow gardens to feed their families. Young couples with small children raise dairy goats, keep laying hens; one family just starting out has planted a you-pick flower garden. In the nearby town are many folks who keep a few chickens and fill their yards with vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

The Healing Land

Lunch over, the family disperses to its own tasks, some to farm work, some to work of other kinds.

Pulling together the resources to make another Homesteading Skills Festival happen takes a lot of time— and people. Johanna, mother of six, spends hours, squeezed in between all the duties of a homeschool mom, on the computer coordinating our event. Terry builds spreadsheets of presenters, workshops, and finances—although we operate on a shoestring, accounting is still necessary! Luke, as a farrier, sheep shearer, and itinerant butcher, gets around a lot, finds skilled people and asks for their help with workshops and advice. Brian—the family doctor with the milk cow— often advises patients who need access to better food; many are anxious to get involved in a neighborhood food initiative. We Doughertys are the old-timers of the homesteading community, sharing our experience, making connections.

In May, the potatoes planted this morning will have sprouted, poking their first tiny, dark green leaves, deeply creased like tiny mouse ears, above the soil. Given warm weather, they will grow quickly, and just as quickly we must be there to hoe the sprouting weeds and hill around the plants. When the spring rains are over we’ll spread a deep mulch to keep the soil moist. Then, in July, we’ll get the whole family out again to dig under the dying vines for the generous harvest of red, brown, and gold potatoes we pray will be there.

The Healing Land Homestead Skills Festival will take place on Memorial Day weekend this year.

Important as that harvest is to us a staple for a whole year the human harvest is more important still. Farming is partly about food, yes, but it’s also about community, about place. And place is a function of the people who live there. No matter how much food we grow or how delicious or nutritious it is, it is our relationships that will really determine the quality of our lives. If we are to be fed, if we are to be healthy, if we are to be happy, it will be because we all of us make this a good place to live, and help one another live well in it.

You're Invited!

The Healing Land Homestead Skills Festival will take place on Memorial Day weekend this year. We’ve moved to a new site, a bigger one, better suited to the many families who plan to come, with space for demonstrations, for children to run and play, for music and dancing, tents and campfires. Elkhorn Christian Service Camp in Carroll County is hosting us, and we anticipate bringing together many folks from all over the region and the nation, with whom we can build community, share knowledge, make friends.

Next winter, God allowing, we will be eating the potatoes we put in the ground just before Easter, drowning them in butter and sour cream from our dairy cows. Good food is a celebration all by itself. Equally, we hope to rest at night in the knowledge of our fellowship with a community that is continuing to grow, in friendship, in skills, and in strength, with people all over the country who are finding their way toward an ever-deepening connection to their families, their neighborhoods, and their land—their Healing Land. //