A weekly letter from a small island

Dear reader,

This week the potatoes came in, and the wind is getting up, so the timing was good.^{Note 11}1 Potatoes: a root crop dug in autumn and kept whole through the winter in the dark. I dug the last row on Monday, in a fine rain, with a fork and a basket, and by evening the whole crop was spread on the kitchen floor to dry. A potato put away wet is a potato that will not last until spring, and I have learned that the hard way.

I keep them in a cold cellar under the house, in wooden boxes with a layer of dry straw between each layer of potatoes.^{Note 22}2 Cellar: a cold, dark room under the house, kept just above freezing. I go through them every week. Any soft one goes in the pot that night, and anything with a green skin goes to the hens. One bad potato will spoil a box in a month, and it is a small job to find it.

The stove has been lit every day since the middle of October, and it changes how I cook.^{Note 33}3 Stove: a small iron wood stove that heats the room and cooks on its top. A pot sits at the back from breakfast on, and the potatoes go in at four, whole, with their skins on and a little salt. By six the kitchen smells of earth and wood smoke. It is the simplest dinner I know, and I would not trade it for anything fancier.

If you have a small cold place and a few boxes, try keeping a few potatoes through the winter and see how long they last. Next week I will write about the storm tides, which come over the low path faster than you would expect.