This weekend Mark and Nate S. and I went out to Duan's family's farm to help his parents pick sweet potatoes. It's always amazes me how many people there are everywhere in China, even in the country. The farms are just small plots of land, one next to another all throughout the countryside. So different than massive Manitoba farms! Everything is done by hand. Duan's parents have a beautiful plot of land in a little valley. They have several gardens on different layers cut out of the hillside as well as some rice fields in the lowest part of their land. They keep most of their produce for themselves and their animals for the year. We spent the afternoon, digging, pulling and hauling baskets of sweet potatoes (or "Hong Shu" in Chinese!). It was neat to think that people have probably been farming that land in the same way for thousands of years! For supper, among many other colourful and tasty dishes, we had some of the sweet potatoes we picked. They were an unusual variety which were very bright purple. They even dyed the rice purple. They were such a deep shade of indigo that it was hard to believe it was naturally occurring. It was a fun and delicious day.
Lisa
Way to go, guys! Looks like they put Mark's back to good work. I love sweet potatoes. We are actually at my mom's this week for Thanksgiving. And last night we had beef tenderloin steaks (marinated in our new pressurized marinating machine) and mashed sweet potatoes! It was delicious. At Thanksgiving we will have traditionally prepared (candied) sweet potatoes! Yummmmm. So keep those potatoes coming!
ReplyDeleteMMM, that sounds like a delicious meal John! I think I just drooled! Yeah, we had a lot of fun picking Sweet Potatoes. And yes my back definitely got a good work out. Turns out those things aren't light...Although the 60 year old Chinese farmers seemed to think they were light. Kind of put me to shame actually.
ReplyDeleteMark how heavy are those baskets and were they hard to balance?
ReplyDeleteDad