Beech Tree News Network

We raised a bumper crop of sweet potatoes this year.  We set out a row that was almost 120 feet long.  Garey babied the plants around all summer.  Sabria and I helped set them out and stretch netting over them to keep the deer and rabbits out, but Garey did the rest.  He hoed them and pulled dirt up the berm around the plants.  He kept them fertilized and would even raise the net to pull weeds that had reared their ugly heads in the center of the row.  He also put rat poison on the parameters in order to take care of the voles.
    For those of you who aren’t familiar with voles, they are rodents in the mouse family.  They’re bigger than mice and a lot harrier—they even have hair on their tails.  The reason I know so much about voles is because Garey has declared war on the little varmints.  Voles burrow under sweet potato rows and wreak havoc on the biggest and nicest potatoes.  If I were a vole and found a 120 foot-long row of potatoes, I wouldn’t mess around with the little ones either.
    If you happen to be scrolling through the website on voles, and look at the section on natural enemies, you’ll find a picture of Garey Hughes, right after the pictures of owls, hawks and falcons and before the mention of coyotes, foxes and snakes.  As he was pulling the potato plow through the row this weekend he, unearthed one of the varmints.  He jumped off the tractor and squashed it with his big boot before I could turn away—it was disgusting—then he grieved over all the large potatoes the voles had chewed through.
    To put this into perspective, we probably gathered a five-gallon bucket of vole-bitten potatoes, compared to ten buckets of potatoes in near-perfect condition.  This matters little to Garey.  He takes the voles’ attack on his crop as a personal affront to be dealt with accordingly.  I see a case of Tom Cat rat poison in our future. 
    When Garey looks at that bucket of half-eaten sweet potatoes, he sees potatoes taken away from his family and friends.  That is really what Garey is all about.  He is a farmer at heart, and his crops are his offering.  He let Sabria sell a few potatoes from the back of his pickup one Saturday in order to teach her about work and reward.  He did the same for our daughters with a watermelon crop.  But most of what Garey raises, that we don’t use ourselves, he gives to our family and friends.
    When I was in Texas that two years with Nikki, Garey and his friends, Rick and Chuck, would get together for meals.  The other guys would give Garey the assignment of fixing sweet potatoes in the oven with butter and sugar.  Chuck started calling Garey “Sweet Tater.”  He even put the name next to Garey’s number in his cell phone.  To this day, when Gary calls Chuck, Chuck answers the phone, “Whaddaya doin, Sweet Tater!”  Every fall, Garey hand delivers a bag of sweet potatoes to his friend.
    One of the things I am most thankful for is that my daughters have a father who has always worked hard and who has been kind and generous to others.  My granddaughter has the same privilege. 
It is a legacy that can’t be bought.  It is a legacy that has to be earned.  It is the legacy of Sweet Tater.