We have been very busy the past couple of months with planting season. Sometimes it feels like we have too much to do in too little a time to do it in. All our corn is planted and the sweet potato slips are in the ground. They should be ready in about two weeks. This next week my husband will be getting the ground ready for sweet potatoes. We will start making the beds ready, because sweet potatoes should be planted in about two weeks. This year we have added more acres than ever before. We will also be adding another storage trailer and more bins. It is amazing how far we have come in only a couple of years. After looking back at last year and how we did I was pretty proud of it. We were able to clear some profit, even with an intense drought throughout our state. We were able to grow our operation and hope for the best this coming year. We are hoping to save even more money by growing all of our own slips this year. We will also be able to sell some slips to the public. We do not know how many we will be able to sell until we get started with planting our own acres and then we can see how many will be left. It is pretty exciting and scary all at the same time. After planting, we will be on to harvesting our winter crops. This year my husband grew both barley and wheat. On top of all the farming, my two oldest are wrapping up their first year in school. It is hard to believe that my kids are growing up this fast. I have one finishing up with Kindergarten and another with Pre-K. I am really trying to enjoy every minute that I can, because I feel like they are growing up in front of my eyes.
Two rows of sweet potato slips down and we were working on a third.
So I have included some pictures of our sweet potato slips. I didn’t take enough pictures to really show the process that we had to go through. It isn’t an easy one. We took our smallest potatoes, the ones that we call seed potatoes and planted them in rows. They were then covered in dirt and then plastic. Think about it like a small green house. We planted these in early March, before the weather was warm, so they needed a little extra warmth.
Everyone is put to work around here. The boys jumped right in and tried their best to help. They really enjoy being outdoors and getting something done.
This is our almost finished product at the end of May. They look really good compared to last years. The hubby was mowing over them taking some of the tops off of them. The goal is to have a more uniform looking slip so that it goes through our machine easier. This actually a ton of slips. Each individual stalk is a sweet potato plant with the potential to grow 5-10 sweet potatoes.
carolinafarmingirl 