Much to discover about North Carolina's 'dirty candy'
My job for Ohio State University Extension has taken me on some pretty unique adventures. Last week I attended my first in-person national conference for the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. It was hosted in Raleigh, North Carolina, home of North Carolina State University.
I always appreciate and enjoy the tours these national conferences organize to allow us to see the innovative work of the farmers and business owners in their communities. Ten years ago, I saw peanut and cotton fields for the first time in my life near Charleston, South Carolina. This time, our tour group learned all about sweetpotatoes.
No, that is not a misspelling. Sweetpotato is one word according to the North Carolina Sweetpotato Commission. And another clarification – sweetpotatoes and yams are not the same root vegetable. Yams have dry, starchy flesh and a dark bark-like skin. In the U.S., the majority of sweetpotatoes are either rose to purple colored skin with orange, white or purple flesh. Botanically speaking, sweetpotatoes are Ipomoea batatas and yams are Dioscorea sp.
More than 65% of the sweetpotatoes in the US are produced in North Carolina. Almost all sweetpotatoes sold in grocery stores east of the Mississippi originated in North Carolina. They have remained the top-producing state each year since 1971. The soil type and climate conditions are ideal there for sweetpotato production.
We toured Kornegy Family Farms and Produce in Johnson County, North Carolina, about halfway between Raleigh and the coast. Our amazing tour guide was Kim (Kornegy) LaQuire, a fourth-generation farmer. She farms more than 5,000 acres with her father, mother and brother. They grow three kinds of produce - watermelon, sweetpotatoes and butternut squash. They also grow tobacco, soybeans, cotton and have a swine finishing operation.
She told us that she is a farmer “who sits behind a desk.” I love that. She explained that there are things her brother does with production that she can not do. And there are things she does with financial management that her brother cannot do. That mixture of humility and confidence, and undeniable faith in the Lord’s provision, is what makes this such a successful operation.
Sweetpotato harvest was just beginning during our visit. It is fairly labor intensive. There is equipment to dig the sweetpotatoes out of the soil, but they must be gathered by hand and put into large crates for storage. Chances are we won’t see the sweetpotatoes for several months. Sweetpotatoes are cured after harvest and then can be stored for an entire year in huge climate-controlled storage buildings.
We also were able to view the washing, sorting and packing process. The ideal sweetpotato can be held easily in your hand. But any gardener knows that produce is anything but consistent. So, the smaller and larger sweetpotatoes will find their way into cans, fries or even tater tots.
Though locally they are called “dirt candy,” sweetpotatoes have about the same total carbohydrate count as a medium white potato, about 25 grams. Nutritionally speaking, sweetpotatoes are an excellent source of vitamin A and good source of fiber. If you leave that precious skin on, one medium sweetpotato contains more than100 percent of the recommended daily amount of vitamin A and 4 grams of fiber.
The NC Sweetpotato Commission has a wide variety of delicious sweet and savory recipes at ncsweetpotatoes.com/recipes . I’m looking forward to trying Curried Sweetpotato Apple Soup, Mini Sweetpotato Chicken Flat Bread Pizza and Sweetpotato Cranberry Cookies.
Today I’ll leave you with this quote from Charles Spurgeon: “Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.”
Emily Marrison is an OSU Extension Family & Consumer Sciences Educator and may be reached at 740-622-2265.
This article originally appeared on Coshocton Tribune: Much to discover about North Carolina's 'dirty candy'
