Laughing Owl Farm

Our seed potatoes, 825 lbs of them, are inbound from Ronniger Potato Farm in Colorado and we expect delivery early next week.Our most popular potato last year was Bintje and is similar to German Butterball. We ordered 500 lbs of those.

We will be planting 125 lbs of fingerlings that seem to work well for us, Russian Banana, Austrian Crescent, and Red Thumb.

We have two shots in the dark. 100 lbs of a red-skinned potato called Rio Colorado and 50 lbs of Russet variety called Sierra. Russets are supposed to be non-friendly to the southeast and I have never tried to grow any so I thought I would give it a try.

I ordered the 100 lbs of red Rio Colorado for the very worst reason any experienced market farmer orders any kind of seed stock…it looked pretty in the catalog.

Traditionally around here, you should have your potatoes in by St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe in a good year but we have had a lot of seed potatoes rot in the ground following that advice. From our experience, late March to early April is more conducive to a good potato stand.

This is why I have never participated in the North Carolina “Education” Lottery. Not enough risk. We are going to take a thousand dollars worth of seed potatoes, cut them up, bury them along with $300+ worth of organic fertilizer and soil amendments on unproven ground, and hope they grow.

Ways to be Wicked

When we got our new flock of 8-week old birds, our intention was to place them in the wagon, let them acclimate to it for a day or two and then move them to grass. Between the snow-rain-rain-snow and low’s in the 20’s, we left the wagon parked in front of the barn running a drop cord to it to power two heat lamps for about 10 days. I think the chickens would of been fine without the heat lamps, they were not huddled up under them at night, but we felt better about it.