Potatoes!!!! {Our Zero Waste Supply for the Year}

 On Saturday we went and gleaned a year's supply of potatoes. Mara did not get to go with us (poor girl!), because she had to work, but our friend Mei Toi, who is visiting from Hong Kong, went with us instead.

We had to first drive to a town that is an hour South West of us as that is where there is a big potato factory and acres and acres of potato fields. Our method for finding the field that is currently or recently harvested from is to go by the processing plant and find an empty potato truck leaving and follow it. It is rather fun! A truck came out just a minute or so after we pulled up. We then followed him for a couple of miles and there were the potato fields freshly harvested.

   We then go into an area that they have finished harvesting and a place that is out of their way and we pick up potatoes that their harvesters rejected because they were either to small or the wrong size. We also often find little piles of potatoes that missed going in the truck as they turned the corner at the end of the rows. Also there often are a few plants that miss getting dug at the end of rows due to the machines turning.

   It is always exciting to see what big and unusual potatoes we might find.

Within an hour and a half we had filled our trailer and we called it good for the day. What a blessing from God to be able to get all of those potatoes!

   I love the fact too that we can now avoid all those plastic bags that the potatoes generally come in. These potatoes were completely Zero Waste. I also carefully packed water bottles, iced coffee, lunch, snacks, cloth napkins and hand washing stuff for our outing so we didn't need to stop and buy anything.

   We plan on storing them in our root cellar which I am really hoping will store them well, Currently, however, they are laying out on the floor of our detached garage with all the windows blocked up to cure them first. I read about that here and the concept makes sense to me.

   Are you storing up food for the winter? Do you glean any foods? What grows well in your area? Do you know of any ways that you can get potatoes that is Zero Waste?