With the start of school it’s time to raise the red, white and blue. The Red Pontiac, White Warbla and Blue Victor; we still raise them but in modest proportions to the past. That’s potatoes. My recollections from the past readings are that they originated in Peru, South America, and were introduced to Europe following the great “Scorched Earth Policy” to raise survival food underground. Up until then, root foods were not considered edible.

In fact, North Dakota’s Golden Valley County was well known for its commercial production of the “spud.” In the areas south of Beach and Sentinel Butte and hemmed in by Golva to the north, many specialized in seed potatoes that were sent clear across the state into the Red River Valley producers on the North Dakota-Minnesota border, due to being isolated and disease free of other areas.

I believe some even shipped out to the famous Snake River Flats of southern Idaho, as modern, more productive and disease free varieties evolved. Several producers up and out of the badlands participated. A couple continue still, but in their hey-day it was quite notable.

During my high school years of the early to mid ’60s (yes, that’s only four years, really) they might just as well shut school down for a week to 10 days in the fall when it was potato digging time. Boys and girls both would skip school and hire out for potato picking.

My Sentinel Butte High and the Golva schools were hit the hardest with “sick leave.” They would make their own meager spending money for their back-breaking efforts. I think it even got to be a sort of social thing they looked forward to, but my sibling and I passed on it. We had more than enough of it at home, along with all the other ranch work done by hand.

First with a team, then followed up with dad’s brand new 1948 8-N Fordson tractor with “state-of-the-art” two-bottom, hydraulic-lift, three-point hitch plow and turned sod over on several small bottoms ranging half an acre clear on up to four or five of sandy-loam bottom-land soils on one side to the other of Wanagan Creeks meandering gorge. He planted the White Warbla, then went over to the more productive and “meaty” Red Pontiac.

We kids would take turns driving the “Fordie” as dad would hand wrestle a “V” plow digger, then we’d all grab a five-gallon bucket and knee crawl down the fresh turned rows plucking potatoes out of the soft dirt. Gunny sacks were placed along the rows to dump your full pail only to drop down and fill it up again.

The next day our dad would hand sews the sacks shut, hand load them onto his pickup and “street corner” sell them at five bucks for a 100-pound sack. He’d hit towns from Glendive, Mont., down old U.S. 10 clear to Belfield, N.D.

The next day we’d throw out a few more rows and do it all over again. “Green back fives” were a rather rare delicacy back then as a lot of things were still done by barter and exchange, anyway it was for struggling ranchers down in the badlands.

When JoAnn and I “hitched double harness” and moved home to go in partnership with my parents, Dad sort of semi-retired from a lifetime of hard labor, but he and JoAnn always raised a huge garden of sweet corn, potatoes and all other species used in culinary arts. Dad would always “hoe his way” across the garden in the early morning, to beat the heat, and then have his coffee at our trailer home. JoAnn saved us thousands of dollars canning and freezing massive amounts of domestic produce as well as wild fruits, as both our mothers had done for a lifetime.

The mule deer and raccoons were pretty proud of the corn delicacy and raised havoc. Jack, our energetic Border Collie, always posted night guard and was busy as “a cat on a hot tin roof.” In our slumber, we could tell by the pitch of his bark of what sort of varmint he was confronted with. When he’d tell us he needed help with a ferocious battle with a raccoon, one of us would jump up and run out to help with a flashlight and pistol. He got tore up a few times, but never quit. For a reward the next day, we’d husk him a fresh ear of corn and he would “paw roll” it and chew it off the cob. He even got so he could pick his own, rip the husks off and eat.

Since our son Lusk and family moved home to ranch with us, he has constructed two garden plots with seven-foot high, mesh-wire fences for security. He has also inherited a “green thumb.”

We still plant a few red, white and blues, to show our American spirit and patriotism. The Blue Victor is more of a novelty potato for conversation mostly. It’s a deep purple-blue hide and meat, but quite lacks in production. When prepared as mashed potatoes it has a gray, dirty appearance, causing guests to pass it on to whoever is seated beside them, but boiled it turns the water a beautiful, sparkling bluish green. When baked it holds a very pleasant, rich, deep purple. If you slice one raw out of the garden it bleeds “Dodger Blue.”

I’m a “Dodger fan” from clear back to the Brooklyn days; maybe that’s why I’m partial to them.

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Editor’s note: We hope you find this Dr. Rosmann column from 2015 useful.

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