New potatoes and peas
12/07/25 03:06
Our daughter-in-law and grandchildren dug some potatoes yesterday. New potatoes and garden peas dictated the menu for dinner last night. I couldn’t resist potatoes and peas in white gravy. I made country-fried chicken. The menu would have been complete had I baked a few biscuits, but we had a small loaf of French bread and some Gouda cheese, so I made bruschetta with store-bought tomatoes. The basil was fresh from our plant, but our tomatoes aren’t ripe yet. Even better than the taste of the food was the taste of nostalgia that the menu brought to mind.
Both my father and Susan’s father grew up in North Dakota, and both wanted new potatoes and peas as soon as the peas were ready to pick. It was Susan’s father, however, whose story taught me to appreciate peas and new potatoes every summer.
Like all of my stories, there is a story behind the story. The story behind the story is of Susan’s grandfather, the father of her father. And like many family stories, I am not sure of exact dates or even the precise order of events. His name was Clarence, and I met him around the time he turned eighty, hearing only some of the stories of his life. Clarence was born in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He and his wife settled onto a dryland farm in central North Dakota, where they raised their two children. They faced some hard times. The Great Depression was not kind to farmers. Markets dried up. Crops failed. Dust storms ravaged the plains. Somehow, they survived. Clarence’s wife taught school. He found various jobs.
Sometime around the start of the Second World War, Clarence suffered a heart attack. I don’t know the exact timing, and I don’t know the details. The only story of the event Clarence ever related to me was that the doctor who attended him at the time told Clarence that the attack was severe enough that he didn’t have long to live. Having met Clarence, I would be surprised if he went to the doctor when his heart symptoms started. I imagine he felt a twinge of pain, consulted the farmer’s almanac, and mixed up a bit of tonic of cayenne, vinegar, honey, and aspirin rather than consulting a doctor.
When the attack occurred and forced him to consult the doctor, he was advised to go south to a warmer climate. When Clarence told me the story, he was expressing a bit of skepticism about doctors and ended his story by saying that he attended the funeral of that doctor. It is clear that if the doctor had predicted that Clarence’s life was nearly over, he was wrong. Clarence was still alive 40 years later. He lived to the age of 92 and got to meet his great-grandson.
However, Clarence did take the doctor’s advice about going south. He spent at least one winter in Arizona, leaving the farm behind in the care of his young adult son. They were raising turkeys at the time, shipping them live on the train. I guess that the war effort provided a market for all kinds of fresh meat, and turkeys became a reasonable cash crop for a small acreage farm emerging from the hard times of the depression. I’ve seen a few pictures of the hundreds of turkeys in the farm yard. Clarence’s son, who 30 years later became my father-in-law, ran the farm single-handedly while his parents went to Arizona.
Clarence didn’t stay in Arizona. He came back to small-town North Dakota life, had the farmhouse moved into town, and served in a variety of positions until he retired. When I married into the family, one of the staples of their life was potatoes. Clarence ate potatoes three meals a day. Fried potatoes for breakfast, boiled potatoes at lunch, sometimes in potato salad, and baked or mashed potatoes for dinner. I think the practice of eating potatoes at every meal was a long-standing habit in his life.
During the winter, Clarence went to Arizona, and the root cellar was filled with potatoes. His son ate potatoes all through the winter. Potatoes keep well in the cool, dark cellar, which was deep enough to keep them from freezing. But as time passes, some of the eyes begin to grow. Some of the potatoes will become seed for the following year’s crop. Some potatoes in the cellar develop soft spots and begin to rot a bit. If you are eating them, they need to be washed and have the bad spots cut out. Safe food can be harvested from a bin of stale potatoes, but it takes a bit of work.
When spring finally comes, which can be slow in North Dakota, the ground finally thaws, and root crops can be planted. The potatoes go into the ground and will emerge in their own time, depending on how warm the spring is. The potatoes can get by on subsoil moisture and don’t need much tending until the plants have emerged. Peas are another spring crop. Dried peas from the previous year are planted and are among the first crops in the garden to flower and produce food. Sometime in late June and early July, the peas are ready to be picked. Although most of the potatoes will be left in the ground for a month or more, a few small potatoes can be dug.
After a winter of eating potatoes from the cellar, those first new potatoes must have tasted wonderful to my father-in-law. Wash and boil the potatoes with the skin on. Add the shelled peas to the same pot. In the skillet, melt butter, whisk in some flour, season with salt and pepper, and add milk while stirring until you’ve got gravy. Drain the potatoes and peas and stir them into the cream sauce, and you’ve got a meal worth remembering.
It's been nearly forty years since Clarence died and fifteen since his son died. I tell their stories to our grandchildren, but I don’t know all of the details. We don’t have a root cellar, and while the garden at the farm produces good potatoes, they don’t last us year-round. We buy potatoes from the store during the winter. We live in a milder climate and have an easier life than Dakota farmers in the 1930s and 40s. But when our grandchildren dig potatoes on their farm and offer me a few fresh from the soil, I appreciate the taste of a new crop in ways that would be impossible without the stories of their great-great-grandfather.
Both my father and Susan’s father grew up in North Dakota, and both wanted new potatoes and peas as soon as the peas were ready to pick. It was Susan’s father, however, whose story taught me to appreciate peas and new potatoes every summer.
Like all of my stories, there is a story behind the story. The story behind the story is of Susan’s grandfather, the father of her father. And like many family stories, I am not sure of exact dates or even the precise order of events. His name was Clarence, and I met him around the time he turned eighty, hearing only some of the stories of his life. Clarence was born in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He and his wife settled onto a dryland farm in central North Dakota, where they raised their two children. They faced some hard times. The Great Depression was not kind to farmers. Markets dried up. Crops failed. Dust storms ravaged the plains. Somehow, they survived. Clarence’s wife taught school. He found various jobs.
Sometime around the start of the Second World War, Clarence suffered a heart attack. I don’t know the exact timing, and I don’t know the details. The only story of the event Clarence ever related to me was that the doctor who attended him at the time told Clarence that the attack was severe enough that he didn’t have long to live. Having met Clarence, I would be surprised if he went to the doctor when his heart symptoms started. I imagine he felt a twinge of pain, consulted the farmer’s almanac, and mixed up a bit of tonic of cayenne, vinegar, honey, and aspirin rather than consulting a doctor.
When the attack occurred and forced him to consult the doctor, he was advised to go south to a warmer climate. When Clarence told me the story, he was expressing a bit of skepticism about doctors and ended his story by saying that he attended the funeral of that doctor. It is clear that if the doctor had predicted that Clarence’s life was nearly over, he was wrong. Clarence was still alive 40 years later. He lived to the age of 92 and got to meet his great-grandson.
However, Clarence did take the doctor’s advice about going south. He spent at least one winter in Arizona, leaving the farm behind in the care of his young adult son. They were raising turkeys at the time, shipping them live on the train. I guess that the war effort provided a market for all kinds of fresh meat, and turkeys became a reasonable cash crop for a small acreage farm emerging from the hard times of the depression. I’ve seen a few pictures of the hundreds of turkeys in the farm yard. Clarence’s son, who 30 years later became my father-in-law, ran the farm single-handedly while his parents went to Arizona.
Clarence didn’t stay in Arizona. He came back to small-town North Dakota life, had the farmhouse moved into town, and served in a variety of positions until he retired. When I married into the family, one of the staples of their life was potatoes. Clarence ate potatoes three meals a day. Fried potatoes for breakfast, boiled potatoes at lunch, sometimes in potato salad, and baked or mashed potatoes for dinner. I think the practice of eating potatoes at every meal was a long-standing habit in his life.
During the winter, Clarence went to Arizona, and the root cellar was filled with potatoes. His son ate potatoes all through the winter. Potatoes keep well in the cool, dark cellar, which was deep enough to keep them from freezing. But as time passes, some of the eyes begin to grow. Some of the potatoes will become seed for the following year’s crop. Some potatoes in the cellar develop soft spots and begin to rot a bit. If you are eating them, they need to be washed and have the bad spots cut out. Safe food can be harvested from a bin of stale potatoes, but it takes a bit of work.
When spring finally comes, which can be slow in North Dakota, the ground finally thaws, and root crops can be planted. The potatoes go into the ground and will emerge in their own time, depending on how warm the spring is. The potatoes can get by on subsoil moisture and don’t need much tending until the plants have emerged. Peas are another spring crop. Dried peas from the previous year are planted and are among the first crops in the garden to flower and produce food. Sometime in late June and early July, the peas are ready to be picked. Although most of the potatoes will be left in the ground for a month or more, a few small potatoes can be dug.
After a winter of eating potatoes from the cellar, those first new potatoes must have tasted wonderful to my father-in-law. Wash and boil the potatoes with the skin on. Add the shelled peas to the same pot. In the skillet, melt butter, whisk in some flour, season with salt and pepper, and add milk while stirring until you’ve got gravy. Drain the potatoes and peas and stir them into the cream sauce, and you’ve got a meal worth remembering.
It's been nearly forty years since Clarence died and fifteen since his son died. I tell their stories to our grandchildren, but I don’t know all of the details. We don’t have a root cellar, and while the garden at the farm produces good potatoes, they don’t last us year-round. We buy potatoes from the store during the winter. We live in a milder climate and have an easier life than Dakota farmers in the 1930s and 40s. But when our grandchildren dig potatoes on their farm and offer me a few fresh from the soil, I appreciate the taste of a new crop in ways that would be impossible without the stories of their great-great-grandfather.
