Women Involved'
In Farm Economics
COLUMBIA, S.C. With
the hope of laughter, love and
tears of joy, motivational
speaker Jim Mathis closed the
26th National Women Involv
ed in Farm Economics
(WIFE) Convention in Co
lumbia, S.C. on Saturday,
Nov. 16.
Mathis offered thanks to
WIFE on behalf of a well-fed
America for being providers of
safe, nutritionally-sound food.
Farm producers and agri-busi
ness women had gathered to
establish policy, elect officers,
apdcdu?*tc themselves on ag
©BWto Schnabel, Dr.
James Rathwell, and Powell
Smith from Clemson Universi
ty introduced WIFE members
to strawberry production and
marketing. Moving from mat
ted row production to an an
nual hill culture system,
strawberry production has
grown into a thriving pick
your-own aiid/or pre-picked
industry. Diseases and mar
keting were discussed. Many
of the theories related can now
be applied to other specialty
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crops grown across the nation.
Wearing black armbands,
WIFE members “mourned”
the loss of family farms and
ranches due to natural disas
ters that attacked agriculture
this year.
“Agricultural security is
vital to national security,”
stated President Cindy Cruea,
Cottage Grove, Minn. WIFE
members united in urging the
immediate implementation of
disaster aid as a means of pro
tecting the vital U.S. food sup
ply.
Cruea went on to say,
“America is only as secure as
its food supply. It is impera
tive now to improve the
Homeland and Food Security
through standardization of en
vironmental regulations with
our trading partners.”
Leading the organization in
2003 will be President Ina
Selfridge, Burdett, Kansas;
First Vice President Marlene
Kouba, Regent, North Dakota;
and Second Vice President
Pam Potthoff, Trenton, Ne
braska.
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On Being a
Farm Wife
(and other hazard:
Joyce Bupp
Almost, it was too late.
Most of the garden was al
ready history, scruffy dried stalks
and stems poking up among
thriving, vibrant patches of
perky, cool-tolerant weeds. A few
turnips, small patch of lettuce,
and two half-hearted heads of
cabbage hung out with less desir
ables running rampant following
an extended fall with more than
the usual amounts of moisture.
As garden years go, this year’s
was mediocre. Severe drought
and heat took their toll, despite
heavy mulching. Weed control
was tolerable until late August,
when a deluge of other things de
mands allowed no time for gar
den maintenance.
And the weeds knew it, turn
ing into an unruly, wild bunch al
most overnight. By early Septem
ber, I was resigned to scrounging
for late tomatoes among a shrub-
by forest of redroot and
lambsquarters.
To one side of the patch,
though, from a raised, plas
tic-mulched row, grew a tan
gle of incredibly thick vines,
belying the summer’s incred
ibly dry conditions. My guess
was that all the energy of
these sweet potato roots had
gone into leaf production.
Sweet potatoes are not a
crop we normally grow,
mostly for lack of space. But
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a few wrinkled, leftover, old
fashioned, yellow-fleshed ones
had been left from mother’s gar
den of the year before. Sentimen
tality nudged me into sticking
them into the ground, even as it
was already under seige in early
summer from lack of moisture.
A sunny afternoon a few weeks
ago (after frost nipped the leaves)
beckoned me to tackle what lay
under the mass of vines. What
was there was astonishing.
Poking out and around the
mulch at places were the biggest
sweet potatoes we have ever seen.
I gleefully carried the largest,
football-sized root to the barn
and bagged up some of the boun
ty to share. Harvest of the row
had filled a lawn cart with sweet
potatoes and there was no way
we would eat them all before they
would begin spoiling.
The first warning that all was
not hunky-dory with these mon
sters came when The Farmer
sliced into a fresh one and noted
that the whitish-yellow flesh was
streaked with gray. Uh, oh; not
good.
But it wasn’t until I began
peeling sweet potatoes for our
family Thanksgiving feast that
the extent of the potato affliction
became apparent. A first, medi
um-sized one was fine. Then I
sliced with a butcher knife
through a big one...and another
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big one...and another big one.
And headed to the basement for
more, because they were discol
ored and pithy in the centers.
Suddenly I hoped that no one I
had shared them . with were
counting on these sweet potatoes
as a main part of their holiday
dinner. Because they were going
to likely be disappointed.
To my embarrassment, the
shared ones were no better. I in
tercepted the giant, football-sized
sweet potato still in the barn of
fice. tucked it under my arm, did
an end run around the house to
the kitchen and touched down
with a large knife. It, too, got
tossed into the end zone across
the road for recycling.
The good ones are delicate in
flavor, delicious with a syrup of
brown sugar, butter, and maple
syrup from a Vermont frientPi,; Y
Sadly, those are in the
No doubt I left them in the
ground too long. But were there
other factors? Too dry all sum
mer? Too wet all fall? Too over
grown, since the smaller ones ap
pear to be the better ones?
Gardening is sometimes trial
and error. If a few of the good
ones store long enough, they’ll go
into flower pots in spring, to start
shoots for next year.
Maybe I can get it right the
next time.