Getting the Last Potatoes Up Before the Ground Turns

I got the last rows of potatoes out of the ground this week, and if you’ve still got some sitting in yours, now’s the time to be thinking about it.

Why I don’t leave it for the frost to do the job

Up here on the edge of the moor, the ground has a way of telling you when it’s had enough. The grass goes stiff and white of a morning, the soil loses its give, and once that happens a fork goes in about as easily as it would into a brick. I’d sooner do the digging on a soft, forgiving day than fight for every tuber on a hard one. At this height, roughly 200 metres, I reckon on the last week of October into the first week of November. Down on lower ground, a couple of hundred metres below me, you can usually leave it a fortnight longer. Higher than me, bring it forward by about a week for every hundred metres you’ve got on High Intake.

Whisky’s idea of lending a hand

Every year it’s the same performance. I turn a fork’s worth of earth and a potato rolls free, and she’s straight in after it like it’s the most interesting thing to happen all week, which to her it probably is. She’s shifted more spuds sideways than she’s ever helped me lift, but she keeps me company through a job that would otherwise just be me, a fork and a sack.

There’s a particular kind of quiet satisfaction in a full sack by the door and an empty bed behind you, knowing the ground can do what it likes now. That one’s done.