As reported earlier, Dave has been busy digging potatoes and a little early afternoon rain today has only helped with this effort. He started with the Yukon Golds and has done just a small portion so far but the volume was sufficient enough that we needed move forward quickly on storing them. With about 50 pounds at first glance, I decided to look for burlap bags. A visit to OK Hatchery in nearby Kirkwood was productive today. When I explained why I was looking for the burlap bags, they went looking for some but I guess burlap isn’t as efficient as other materials for storing and transporting goods today. Instead, I found these nice yellow mesh bags to be best for our purposes. These had whole peanuts in them originally which are sold in large bins in this supply store. (This is a great place to buy things like bird seed, chicken feed, and all sorts of gardening supplies.) They were happy to give me these bags and I’m sure I will go back for more of them soon!You don’t wash the potatoes before they go into the bag but we needed to contain the dirt a bit as we loaded the bags so we set up the mesh bags over a kitchen trash can in order to proceed. The first 50 lbs will go directly to the basement for storage. We aren’t nearly done with digging potatoes since we have not even begun to dig in the Pontiac Red rows but this is a good start. We look forward to tasty potatoes all year long now!

Here is a short bee report: The bees had a real treat this morning when I gave them the empty frames of honeycomb after yesterday’s extraction. The bees love to clean up the last bits of honey that remain in the honey supers after the honey has been extracted. After they do this work for us, the fully drawn frames will be clean and ready for next year’s season. I will leave these on the hives for one week and then I’ll take them off for the winter storage. This is what the hives at Seven Oaks looked like today with the extra honey supers on top for a great feasting opportunity!  I’m busy dreaming up the ways in which I’ll transform 36 pounds of honey into beautiful jars with Seven Oaks labels!