A flight of sweet potatoes
Photos by Donna Campbell
My great-grandfather, John Madison Strickland, was a cotton farmer with 160 acres near Roswell, Georgia. The family story goes that John decided on a whim to vary his crops one season and planted a big section of sweet potatoes. It happened to be the year when the boll weevil first came marching across Georgia, destroying cotton crops and livelihoods, some time between 1915 and 1919, as best I can figure.
Selling sweet potatoes at the end of that year saved the farm and the rambling, Victorian house that John and his wife Clementine built, and which stands today at the corner of Crabapple Road and Strickland Road in Roswell. The Stricklands also helped some neighbors with their debts—farmers who had turned their cotton plants under that year without harvesting a stitch.
“Sweet Potato Johnny” immediately became my great-grandfather’s nickname around town. When he died in 1929 at the age of 62, Clemmie, eight years his junior, kept up the farm, plowing with a lantern at night to avoid the Georgia heat. My mother spent her childhood summers on that farm. Clemmie churned her own butter and made buttermilk, baked huge soda biscuits, and killed a chicken every Sunday morning by wringing its neck before church. She lived long. As a toddler, I met her, though I don’t remember it. Naturally, sweet potatoes have always been a staple on my family table this time of year
Sweet potatoes are good for your gut and are also a source of Vitamin A and beta-carotene--good for your eyes. To me, this healthy, fiber- and antioxidant-rich root vegetable at its best needs no culinary enhancements when baked—no butter, no extra sweetening.
In North Carolina, our farmers have led the nation in sweet potato production since 1971. It’s our official state vegetable. Kin to the morning glory vine, the sweet potato is not even in the same botanical family as “Irish” potatoes, which are members of the nightshade family and kin to tomatoes and eggplant.
The most common varieties of sweet potatoes found in our local grocery stores these days are the Beauregard (a Louisiana cultivar) and the Covington, developed in the this century by an NC State scientist who gave it his family name. The Covington made its debut in the region in 2006 and since 2012, I have secured them down east from Clough Farms in Columbia, NC, whenever I can make that trip. J.D. Clough (who studied at NC State) and his wife Karen Clough and their sons work together to produce excellent heat-cured Covingtons, along with several varieties and sizes of white and purple potatoes. (Dug sweet potatoes need to cure a while to achieve their best flavor.)
This weekend, however, Donna Campbell and I paid a visit to the Carrboro Farmers Market to examine their 2023 offerings. We found enough varieties to create a tasting flight of sweet potatoes for lunch. All our samples were baked at 400 degrees for an hour, oozing the seductive scent of carmelization throughout the house.
The first market vendor we visited was EcoFarm, run by Cindy Econopouly and John Soehner. They were offering pint crates of Flaming Beauties—a fingerling- sized sweet potato with a reddish cast. Cindy said they were “intensely orange and sweet.”
Next, we picked up a sample of O. Henry—a large, pale sweet potato which is a Beauregard mutation from Mississippi. T5-Farms grows this variety without any chemicals near the town of Liberty in Alamance County . The T5 folks told us that the O. Henry is never stringy but always smooth and creamier than its orange counterparts. It does best when roasted rather than baked, they added. I was drawn to it because of the name’s literary connection to Greensboro-born William Sydney Porter (pen name, O. Henry) whose short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” is still a seasonal favorite. This white beauty carried a very different taste from the orange varieties—exceptionally creamy, with a subtle sweet finish of maple syrup. It made me want to try this variety air fried.
Right next to the T5 tent at the market, we encountered Yeehaw Doughnuts of Saxapahaw, NC. Their “Sweet Potato Cake Donuts,” are fried on site and optionally topped with candy cane or chocolate glaze. Yes, ‘tis the season of indulgence, and the line for doughnuts and coffee wrapped around their little stand and back into the parking area. Yeehaw faithfully purchases its sweet potatoes from several vendors at the Carrboro Market. Though tempted, I wanted to save my palate for the potato taste test back home.
Across the way, our good friends at McAdams Farm were well stocked for the last market before Christmas. We picked up a North Georgia Candy Roaster, a squash bigger than a cricket bat that makes a fine pie, and we also snagged a couple of NC-122’s—a narrowish sweet potato in a deep red jacket that’s new to the market this year and reportedly stores very well. The 122 apparently refers to the number of days it takes for the plant to reach maturity.
Though the Carrboro market offers only organic produce grown within a 50-mile radius, I asked Howard McAdam if sweet potatoes are subject to any pests that some growers might be tempted to treat with chemicals.
“No,” he said, “our only problem is deer, who will eat the green tops of the plant before the root fully develops.” His sales person added that she had heard of humans who also eat the green tops of sweet potatoes, but she had yet to try them. As it turned out, the 122’s were Donna’s top pick in our potato flight. Their sweetness was intense, and she compared the flavor to popcorn—“or a grain-like flavor,” she said.
Our last variety came from Perrywinkle Farm—one of our favorite vendors who recently lost their namesake and founder, Mike Perry. Hundreds of Carrboro citizens attended his memorial service to show their appreciation for Mike’s deep botanical knowledge, his ever-ready help in choosing tomato plants each spring, and the signature flower he always had for sale in bunches—the dizzyingly fragrant Tuberose—which you could catch a whiff of before you made it through the crush of Saturday shoppers to their booth.
We bought a Bayou Belle from Perrywinkle--a garnet colored potato developed in Louisiana that grows big and plentiful like the Beauregard. It was a fine choice and useful to compare to the Covingtons in the pantry back home. Donna and I wanted to taste the two standards in comparison to the varieties new to us. The Bayou Belle inside was stringy looking compared to the other selections, demonstrating the heart healthy goodness of fiber in this vegetable, but without any weird mouthfeel.
Ultimately, I found the Flaming Beauty from EcoFarm to be the sweetest of the lot, but it was like splitting hairs to compare its sweetness to the new NC-122. Not to get ridiculously technical, but the 122 seemed to hold back its sweetness until it hit the back of my throat. The Flaming Beauty was pure candy and creamy at first bite.
We cut all the potatoes in half to compare their colors, and then scooped out the insides with spoons. Eaten this way, a sweet potato is kind of like a warm ice cream cone, but much more nutritionally virtuous and filling. We took sips of water between tastes and laughed at our serious sampling. We finished them all off in short order. They were small.
I’m sure that the flavor of sweet potatoes, like wine grapes, is partly dependent on terroir--the combination of minerals in the soil, the angle of sun, average temperatures during the growing season, and the quality and frequency of watering. But most importantly, a sweet potato is a relatively inexpensive source of excellent nutrition and a sweet taste that’s good for the body.
To my great grandfather, sweet potatoes were an unexpected salvation in hard times. And so it is now, at this troubled time in the world, let us praise all the farmers who keep us fed. I am grateful for their labor and perseverance and the gift of sweetness in every taste.
Roasted 12 sweet potatoes last night for church luncheon buffet..halved for small or thirds for large and toppings.. for creatives! I love them plain! Loved your history!
Firstly, I love hearing that your Carrboro Farmer's Market is still going...Lucky You! In the Northwest where I grew up, we thought true "sweet potatoes" were pale brown skinned with pale flesh and all others were yams. I need to do some research on that!