The other day I had one of those overwhelming and proud moments. We’ve been incredibly busy boxing up and selling sweet potatoes the past couple of weeks. We are simply out of money to pay for any help so we have just been doing it all ourselves, my husband, my mother-in-law, and me. It has really been at least a part time job for me and full time for both of them. The great news is we have pretty much gotten rid of the majority of the potatoes. Don’t worry we still have plenty left, we just have moved tons. My proud moment happened the other day after we had delivered a load of boxes to a store that is right up the road. They have been selling lots of potatoes for us. Everyone knows that everybody has a sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving and lots of people are going to be eating our sweet potatoes. All the blood, sweat, and tears are worth it, when I think about how many people are going to enjoy something from us. We have had so many wonderful compliments about how tasty the potatoes are. In the end I am proud of what we did and I am thankful for the life my boys get to have. We are definitely not going to get rich from what we are doing. This year we will probably lose money, as with any business when it starts out. We have just had tons of startup costs and have made stupid mistakes. We’ve had too many breakdowns, because all of our equipment is old. Even with all that it amazes me that we took on something that seemed impossible and we did it. My husband ran equipment he had never used before, planted something that we had never planted before, and harvested something we didn’t even really know how to harvest. We learned how to cure sweet potatoes and how to grade them. We have begun the huge process of developing a customer base. I have really started daydreaming of a day when we might have our own “sweet potato place.” Every journey begins with the first step and when that step begins with hundreds of people talking about the best sweet potato pie they have ever ate, then that sounds like a great journey.
carolinafarmingirl 