Record-Breaking Sweet Potatoes

We got a group coming today. They've already started to— it's 30 minutes early. Last group of the year. Got a big garden project ahead of us. Henry, let's go! They're waiting on us. We got a big day. We got a lot of people here. We don't want to disappoint. They're going to want the farm experience, which we can use to help. I mean, so it's a win-win. You're gonna be shy? Oh, come on. All right, look at this group. Everybody eager to get a little warmed up? It's a little chilly out here. From all over the place. Who's furthest away? We have Asheville. We have Asheville. We have where? 2 hours. Jordan? 2 hours. 3 hours near Atlanta, right? 7 hours. Y'all win. 7. Are y'all near each other?

Chesapeake, Virginia.

Both of y'all's? We're from Indiana. Oh, okay, okay. We're gonna really just explode on this, okay? So I've been having a short— you guys know I've dislocated my shoulder, and then I went on this crazy fast. I've been a little slower, so we got a little catching up to do. And you'll learn— well, you'll learn what to do with sweet potatoes, how to get them out of the ground, out of the— out of the weed fabric, out of the ground, what to do with sweet. It's going to be fun. All the animals love the sweet potato plants. You know, people will tell me, Justin, you can eat the sweet potato plants. And I say, I know I can, but so can pigs, and I like pork better than I like sweet potato greens. All right, nature's greatest miracle, turning these weeds and greens into nutrient-dense protein. What? Into bacon. Into bacon, right? So some people will actually admit to it. Sometimes I'll ask, do you actually like kale? We'll have a confessional time. Mimi's always one that's proud to raise her hand. I have a kale no shirt. Rebecca has a kale yes shirt. So you're in the kale yes club. But even if they will admit to liking kale after I let everybody— you know, because we feel this pressure as homesteaders, oh Oh my God, you gotta like everything. You gotta, you got, you, you gotta grow everything. Kale, because it's cool, right?

Kale?

No. If you don't like it, grow what's close to your heart. Well, if you will admit to liking kale, do you actually like kale more than pork? More than bacon? No, no, no. Okay, I'm going to turn it into bacon.

You can throw a little in your soup though.

Yeah. Yeah, okay, so we'll, um, we'll pull up weeds there. We'll get up these sweet potatoes. We'll actually dig up the sweet potatoes, see how many we get. I don't know how good they'll be this year because it's been so wet. The green is good and the greenage will be good, but the tubers might not be so well. We'll cover it up so you'll learn how we cover up a garden, or we'll shape it. We'll put that— we'll put on compost. We'll shape those beds, making sure we keep them straight in straight line, which is important, and then cover them up. We got some tomatoes too we can feed to the animals. Not— relax, Mimi— not the good ones. I know you're going to look out for Rebecca here today since she's not here. The ones that have fallen on the ground and have rotten. Is that okay? Is that okay? I think that's it. We got all tools on deck. I know there's a lot of us, so I'm going to try to keep everybody busy. Don't feel like this is a slave camp. You don't have to keep going if you don't want to. If you don't feel good, just pull over. I'll be sitting over there under the shade sipping tea. So don't feel bad. More the merrier over there with me. Okay, anybody have any comments, questions, derogatory remarks? You knew it was coming, didn't you? She's quoting my jokes now. If you have a derogatory remark, back up where you parked. We have the— we have— it's, it's been going for a while. It's been going good. About a year and a half we've had this. It's a complaint department. It's a red building about this big, white roof, all the, all the paper you could ever want. Come get a pen from me if you need and just write all your complaints on it. Deposit in that hole. Tell me as many complaints as you want. Okay, y'all stack that cart till you think it's full and then double it. Having a little experiment this year. We planted sweet potatoes down in weed fabric. Now how are we gonna harvest the sweet potatoes? Well, we're gonna harvest all the sweet potato greens first, feed those to animals. It looks like we're gonna have sweet potatoes under there. I was a little worried. It's been so wet this year. The, the vines do great, but they do do great when it's wet. The tubers don't necessarily, but it looks like they might have. If this works better, that it's so long and all together, we might just drag it all as just a big snake. If that works better, we'll just drag it to the animals. We're going to split this up between chickens in the front yard, chickens in the back, pigs in the back, and then the sheep up on the hill. Justin and his wife Rebecca believe it or not. Okay, grab— oh, and remember him from a long time ago? They won our blank check. Here's a blank check. Don't go over. Spend what you can. If you go over, you don't get any of it. Do you guys think you went over?

No.

Do you maybe want to go up a little bit then?

Because you're only at $1,181.

These items right here will double it last. Now remember, if you go over, you don't get anything. $2,000. Could have had $2,000. That's all right, that's still amazing. I'm thinking, because it's clumping together like this, why don't you grab a chunk, see how much you can just drag? I'm thinking the cart might be a waste. We'll take this down to the— let's take this to the other chicken posse. I think you've got enough to make worth the walking trip. Let's take it to them. Okay, what's wrong? Did the calves stay separated? How much milk did you get? I got a gallon, but I don't know how much. Yeah, let's get it to Beefcake before he's had his, uh, junk food. Where are y'all from, Dad? Columbus, Indiana. You like it there? Yeah, sure do. Feels like home. You gonna be buried there? Yeah. Nice. What brings you and your family all the way from Indiana to North Carolina to work for somebody else for nothing? Oh, we followed you for a while. Great opportunity to meet, connect, be a blessing if we can. Yeah, beautiful area. Turn into a long weekend. Hey, I think you've jacked up a little bit since you won that competition, huh? You've been training? I've been trying to keep up. Just recently did a Spartan. Oh, heck yeah! Weekend. So yeah, how'd you do it? Pretty good. Heck yeah, beat all the obstacles. And they're a, uh, win in your age group? Um, you know, upper percentile, but heck yeah, I'm not elite. Good. How'd you do? Oh, I didn't do it. Oh, I didn't do it. She's into it. Permaculture farm, everything services everything. The garden feeding the pigs. Feed the garden by making them their compost on this deep bedding. All right, Pop, you said you were piping the vlogs to heaven. What about this group of volunteers? If you don't know, my dad was big on— we had friends over or whatever, he'd put us all to work. He didn't care. He put anybody to work that came to the farm. So you had to be a real friend or else you wouldn't keep coming back. This is all an experiment. So that worked out nice, didn't it? There's no weeds here. Rebecca and I are leery, to be honest, of the possible leaching of this plastic, so I don't know how long we're going to keep doing that. But given that Grandma died this year, we had the hurricane, we really wanted to get going, quit in the grocery store, which we basically have since August. We did weed fabric. It would do fantastic. You guys are analyzing it with me right here. Now let's take the stakes out of it. And actually, we can do— we can divide and conquer, guys, because we can go through here and some people can pick up weeds from out of these holes, and then other people can be doing the sweet potato roll, picking up the staples. Now, I've never done greenhouse plastic, so I'm not sure the best way to do it, but I'm thinking we'll find the staple Oh, that's fine. I just pulled it up with the material and I was able to grab the staple. He's got a Leatherman. Just don't leave the staples, hang on to those. And I'm thinking once we get this up, we can dust it off, roll it up, and go digging at sweet potatoes. Jordan's third time here. Jordan, why do you keep coming back? Uh, you got a beautiful place here. Oh, thank you. You learn something new every time? Yeah. Okay, good. Whoa! Holy moly! Also, Pop, if you're watching, every year we plant sweet potatoes in memory of Boots. That's okay, these sweet potatoes did just fine. All right, whoever came the furthest away, Justin or Rebecca, we got a, uh, survival— a pack of survival seeds for you. Whoever finds the biggest sweet potato, we got a pack— we got a bucket of survival seeds for you. Hey, that one might be— get it, get in now! Get everybody— if people are gonna start digging potatoes, you got to get the potato fork. You could throw them right in the sacks, Gideon. You don't have to handle them twice. This might be our biggest sweet potato year ever. This is like a pumpkin. This is a pumpkin. Oh my gosh, is this real?

What?

This is a record-breaking year. We should have got these up.

Okay, for the fair, these would have won first place.

They would have won first place. Who said Sweet potatoes don't like wet years. I guess sweet potatoes don't have the internet. There you go, Justin. This weed fabric worked amazing. I don't know about the leaching of the plastic in the soil, if that happened. I hope not. They are UV treated. I don't know, I'm torn, I'm torn. This worked out too beautifully. Y'all know how to braid garlic? Yeah. Oh, well, okay. When we get done with this, we're going to braid garlic so we can free up the produce curing rack for the sweet potatoes because the garlic's on it right now, but it's done. What do you think about these sweet potatoes, bro? Huge. I told Lily sweet potatoes on the menu every day. Cubed sweet potato fries in the morning, sweet potato fries supper, mashed sweet potatoes, sweet potato casserole. Hey, you want to make a sweet potato Well, this is kind of— these kind of need to cure. What can we make with sweet potatoes? Because we need to have sweet potatoes every day and not get bored. Okay, what's your favorite sweet potato dish? Soufflé. What's a sweet potato soufflé? She's looking at me like I'm crazy.

Yeah, it's like— it's almost like the base of a sweet potato pie.

Okay.

And a little creamier. Oh, and then So you have that, and then you put, um, some people do their toppings different. So you can take candy pecans on the top, chopped up pecans, and then the mini marshmallows.

Nice. All right, favorite sweet potato dish?

Um, I love doing like a sweet potato black bean corn casserole. It's like a Mexican dish, you know, just put a little bit of chicken broth in there when you cook it so it stays nice and moist and not too dry.

All right, Mimi. Yes. Best sweet potato recipe?

French fries.

Oh, dollar fried sweet potato fries. Best sweet potato dish? Uh, I just like sweet potato, just straight up, straight up baked with butter. Okay. Favorite sweet potato dish, Nick? Probably curry, sweet potato curry. Oh, I thought you were gonna put some cultural heritage on it, right? Don't you have a Mexican background?

Yeah, we're Mexican.

Oh, you're Mexican? What? How do you make— Mexicans don't mess around with sweet potatoes?

I mean, my grandma only made sweet potato casserole. Okay, so, but we like french fries.

All right, nice. Mercy Grace. Uh-oh, we might have to give her a seed pack for this. Oh, happy day! What does that verse actually say? 118:24, Psalm. Now we're going to braid garlic. My jerry job, but it does it. Oh yeah, that looks good, Lily. You're You're doing— you're nailing it. A lot better looking than mine. Jordan, you're getting it done too. I know what's for dinner for the next half a year. All right, Jordan, let's roll up these two. Oh, that'll work. Let's do like that. Yeah, yeah. And I'll keep people busy. Yes. Where should we store these things? But, um, the root cellar? Yeah, that's where we've been, because now they'll at least stay warm in the winter. The beautiful one's with us, everybody, also known as Rebecca. Beautiful one's called me away. We gotta deal with this tub of water from the pork harvest. Okay, empty that water please, and then wash your hands after it's done. It's gross. Seed weevils. Okay, let's get this out of here. Take this, Gideon. Yeah, throw it, throw it into the pigs. That doesn't look like rat or— no, it's not. It's seeds. Seed weevils or mice or something like that been getting into our cover crops. Rebecca, have you seen how big our sweet potatoes are? These are like the big ones. All right, Jonah, let's get the curing rack over here. Our green beans are coming up. Put the tomatoes to cure in here. Frost will come, but when we're— frost is coming soon. A little bit of tomatoes left, maybe she doesn't have the heart to pull them yet. Uh, what we can get on the curing rack, we'll put over in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks, and the sweet potatoes will cure out. You want your driest, hottest spot. In the past, we had unfinished room in our house. We just put them in that. It worked fine. Okay, we got the curing rack available at homesteadbuilds.com. It's in my— it's one of 12 builds. It's very handy. It started out as just, we've got a couple of screen doors, let's put some posts on it, does that work? It worked. Now we have an official build with 2x4s. That's good enough. All right, let's start putting it— just, just one layer. Okay, Lily, these probably need to go to the greenhouse, the other ones to the high tunnel. If you guys want to get that big cart, the big, big cart. Jonah, help her get that cart. Mimi, we might as well clear your room because we're gonna have to put it on these tables. Okay, so let's stack trays. Okay. Yeah, let's stack them underneath. Mimi, why are you gonna spend some Sunday and come volunteer?

Because you do so much for everybody else and giving free content and everything. It's the least we could do.

Well, you do so much for us too, you know. You're a member, you watch the shows. We appreciate it. Our number one fan.

I've heard you say that on other people before.

You're not fooling me. You caught me.

You forget we watch every show.

Uh-oh, uh-oh. Who's my number one fan?

It's some lady that was coming. She lives nearby. I don't remember her name, but I'm your number one fan.

Okay, you got her beat. I don't even remember. Does that mean anything? So I remembered you. They're getting the tables clear. Let's see if we can't get our— we need a drill bit. To get our warm down. The warmest we can get it in there, the better. All right, there you go. The name of the game with this group is keeping up with everybody. Hey, are you out of room on the curing rack in the high tunnel? Okay, take those to the greenhouse. Mercy, you want to go with Gideon and unload these sweet potatoes? Royal, you take advantage. He knows no guests will kick him off. Pulling up plastic now. Not a growing weed in sight. It'll be tempting not to use this again. Let's talk to Rebecca about this. There's one, barely, barely. Rebecca, it's gonna be hard not to use this weed fabric again, isn't it?

Well, no, I want to use burlap.

Look how amazing this was. I understand, but see how amazing this is? Take a moment and realize there's basically no weeds. This is new dirt. I'm glad you called the broadfork down here. Marking the beds with our twine. This would be a good workout for my shoulder. Half the garden is 50 feet. Is new ground. We used the pigs to help us till this over the last winter, spring, and this ground is particularly more difficult. You can see the difference from here to what we've been cultivating for years, and it's a testimony to regenerative homesteading because it just keeps getting better, not worse. You saw those sweet potatoes, right? And that was down on the end we've been cultivating. So this broadfork is going to let air in, it's going to let moisture in, it's going to aerate, hydrate, and the worms are going to love it. And the worms will get in there and do a real nice eco-friendly till. Job for us. All right, one of the best feelings in homesteading— you won't know it till you try it— resting the hard-working garden, the hard, the hard jam at the end of the season. Got the silage tarp over it, got them shaped, got them composted. They're ready to be pulled back in the spring when we're full of energy and hope and to start again. What a wonderful feeling. Here comes rest. Here comes rest. Y'all ready? Who came the furthest away? Quickly panned it up. 7 hours. I think we're close. All right, well, Mimi gets what we're gonna give. This, uh, Survival Gardening Seeds sent us these after the hurricane. We used what we needed to. Thanks to the help— thanks to the help of them and Farmers Friends and other people like that, we got back on our feet very quickly. Pick fast! All heirloom, open-pollinated means you can save the seeds.

Thank you.

Thank you. Who drove the shortest distance? 30 minutes. Where are Mr. Brown's shoes? Nobody knows. That's the best answer right there. What was Beautiful One's favorite movie growing up? I think I might be cutting edge. Lily, you get to give this away. Go give it, give it to Jordan. Who's been here the most? Twice. Okay, okay, I don't remember the first time. I'm sorry. To our number one fan who does never misses a webinar, encouraging word on YouTube, and it's there for thick and thin.

Oh, thank you.

For everybody else, Boots would just be so happy that y'all came out down here and helped us cultivate this land, and you guys got to work for us. Every year we plant sweet potatoes in honor of Boots because he was determined to plant them despite not having done a garden in 50 years. But he didn't make it through that winter, so we plant the sweet potatoes for him. You get the weird gigantic— yeah, feed your entire family. GAPS soup today for lunch, everybody. I am on the GAPS diet to refeed after a super long fast. We're gonna make another video about the, uh, the GAPS, using it as a refeeding diet. It's the farmer's diet, y'all. Lily has made— well, Mom has made too. You guys have both collabed and made sweet potato— or no, green onion fried green tomatoes. I think I'm— got brain fogs back. What is so good? Fried green tomatoes. Do you nail it? Mom made them and Lily cooked them. La la let, la la let me be free.