Potatoes

I have been thinking about potatoes lately probably spurred by a cooking show.  These thoughts about potatoes are not about scalloped, mashed or fried but about planting them on Good Friday which is when the Almanac says is the day to plant potatoes.
The process began by going into the basement and bringing up all of last year's potatoes that had started to sprout.  They were then cut in pieces with each piece having at least two eyes(sprouts).  They were then left to dry out for a day or so.
Now we go to the garden and lay out the rows with two stakes and a long string.  Dad would dig small holes using his hoe and we would follow putting one piece of potato into each hole and covering it with dirt first making sure that the piece had the eyes facing up.  We would put in two rows of potatoes or about two hundred feet.  We liked potatoes.
Then came the hard part-waiting for them to sprout out of the ground.  Once they had sprouted, Dad started to build mounds of dirt around each plant so the baby potato plants would not have a difficult time growing.  And, of course the weeding.
Later, when the plants were about two feet tall, we would go out with a can of kerosene and pick the potato bugs off the plants and give them a bath in the kerosene.  I didn't mind this job then but now I don't think I would enjoy it as much as I did then.
After the plants had blossomed, Dad would go out with his pitchfork and (what he called) robbed some of the new potatoes.  They were so good.  Mom would boil them and melt butter on them. Yum.
In the fall, we would go out to dig up all of them using a pitchfork.  It was always amazing to see so many potatoes coming up with each thrust of the fork.  We did this when we hadn't had rain for several days so the potatoes wouldn't be too dirty.  We would brush them off and take them to the basement which was used a  root cellar.  Mom liked potatoes because she didn't have to can or freeze them like she did with all the other vegetables from Dad's half acre garden.