Roasted garlic & potatoes 

This summer it rained. And rained. And rained. It’s been super for some things, like the the geraniums that I never remember to water when it doesn’t rain. But for the potatoes, well, it was a bit much. The great slop that was summer 2023 meant a lower field of moist, crumbly soil took on a frosting of wet gooey slippery get-inside-your-muck-boots-mud. We did look for some potatoes at the end of the summer (which entails digging up under where the above-ground green parts have wilted over), found nothing worth fighting the worms for, and there it was. Potato free 2023 (it rhymes if you say it out loud). 

But we were wrong, and we found out only because the sheep intervened. Thanks, sheep. 

You see, they escaped. The sheep, not the potatoes. If the potatoes had escaped it would mean they had feet, not just eyes. 

Now, when our sheep escape, they don’t go very far. Usually. There was that one time this spring that they bolted right through the fence and ran through the cows’ pasture, then across the road and way up through the fields into an apple orchard. But that had more to do with the bejesus being scared right out of them by something big and loud falling off the barn roof not too far from where they’d been grazing. It wasn’t a person (thankfully). I think it was a ladder. With no one on it. Whatever it was, the noise blew their pastoral vibe and they were out of there. Anyway, the solar installers helped get the sheep back. There was a lot of drama because the cows got really interested and we had to get the sheep through the cows’ pasture without the cows getting out. But that’s another story. 

So like I said. Most of the time when the sheep escape, they don’t go very far. I will now use the passive voice to explain, without pointing fingers or taking any responsibility, that their fencing is moved every few days for rotational grazing, and sometimes the segments of the fence aren’t properly reconnected for the current to run through them, or there’s something else that is done or not done that makes it delightfully easy for the sheep to get to that grass that’s always greener on the other side of the fence. 

So they got out and got to that greener grass right away. And when Paul was getting them back inside the fence (the funny thing is that the grass is still greener on the other side of the fence, which was at that point where we wanted them to go, so it worked out well), he got to wondering just how much of a complete wipe out of the nearby potato fields it had been. So he dug a little more, and holy moly, potatoes. So we dug potatoes for hours. It was, of course, raining. Because it was summer 2023.  And yup, whole areas didn’t make it, but we salvaged about 60 lbs. of purple, fingerling and Yukon golds. None of which go to the sheep. All for us and friends. 

Roasted garlic and potatoes taste way, way too good for how easy they are to make.