Tate a Tate

We now belong to a potato marketing co operative called Nene Potatoes which sells all of our potatoes. The group is very good at pulling together the grower members' experiences to improve the group's overall performance.   I think that we have learnt more about growing potatoes in the last couple of years than we did in the 20 before that.  While I am occasionally cynical about co operatives in general, the structure and effectiveness of Nene are excellent and I feel pleased and proud to be a part of it.

Tomorrow we are all getting together for a "wash up" of samples from this years crops.  There will be over 200 samples on display and we should be able to get a very clear picture of this season's quality and how our individual samples compare to it.  This will allow us to make a realistic assessment about which fields will suit which customer prior to harvest.

I had a trip around all of our potato crops to dig the samples myself.  I'm not sure what the protocol is for other growers; I left the odd small or green tuber out of the sample but otherwise was honest about what I found.  It will be interesting to see how our quality compares with the other members' crops.

My mate Julian was also digging his samples.  We decided that it was pointless for us both to drive our samples in individually (it was about 15 miles away) because we were both very busy yesterday.  Jules called in and we tossed a coin.  He lost.  I was at least gracious enough to help to ship my bags into his truck.  Result.