Do you remember that fantastic potato harvest we had a couple of months ago? We had more potatoes than we would eat for the year. I was happy that we’d have plenty to use for seed next year as they’ve already acclimated to our little micro climate and it would be the third year I used my own potatoes for the majority of our potato patch (I do buy some new ones every year).

Saturday afternoon I was driving to a church meeting when I had the distinct impression to have my daughter check the temperature in our root cellar. We have a thermometer in the house that measures that temperature.

I was driving and almost where I was going, so I decided to wait to text her until I was at the Church, or, if I forgot, to just check the temperature myself when I got home, no big deal. I forgot to text my daughter when I arrived and forgot to check the temperature when I got home.

We haven’t had a super cold early winter, the temperatures have stayed mostly in the mid to high 20’s F at night, and the upper 30’s during the afternoon. It did dip down to around 12 degrees one morning. But overall, quite a mild start to our season.

Sunday it didn’t even cross my mind. Monday early evening I was thinking I needed more potatoes in the house which reminded me to check the temperature in the root cellar. 30 degrees!

I had looked at it about a week earlier and it was cooler than I thought it should be at 34 degrees, but still above freezing, so it was fine. 30 degrees though, is not fine. I grabbed my husband and said we needed to go check.

It was about 7:00 in the evening when we went out. As soon as we got down the stairs and rounded the corner toward the root cellar we could see the thick foam board that goes in the door was leaned way in, leaving a huge gap at the top into the root cellar.

We had had a pretty big wind storm the first part of November and I can only assume that it blew the foam board in then. Upon entering, it was warmer than outside, but still cold. We have a light in the root cellar that we put an incandescent light in to keep it warm if need be, but it was burned out.

We grabbed a box of potatoes, resealed the foam, and then went in search of a light bulb. My husband found one, we went back down, got the light bulb installed, made sure everything was functioning properly and then sealed it up, not knowing what else to do.

My husband cut open one of the potatoes from the crate we’d brought in and said it wasn’t frozen, but I decided to stick a thermometer into one. 29 degrees. At that point I assumed that all my hard work throughout the whole summer was lost to freezing and I was so mad at myself for not checking the root cellar earlier.

I researched my options that night and decided we needed to bring all the crates inside to assess the full extent of the situation. When my husband and son-in-law got home last night we brought them in and left them to warm up as they were still quite cold. The root cellar had warmed up to 40 degrees overnight with the light on, but the potatoes were a large mass of cold, so hadn’t finished warming up.

This morning I came down to some pretty big, nasty puddles under and around my potatoes and again, thought all was lost. But, based on my research, if the potatoes were still hard, they might not have frozen. So I have been going through each crate, one potato at a time, checking to see if they’re warm and still hard.

So far I have 7 crates of potatoes that I think are ok. I’ve tossed 4 crates of mushy potatoes, I was surprised how fast they went soft. I have 2 crates that I have separated out as they were still a bit cool and I couldn’t tell for sure if they were a bit squishy. They were in crates that had a lot of bad potatoes, so I may just keep them separate and use them for freeze dried potatoes if they aren’t totally squishy in a couple of hours.

I have 4 more crates to go through. I had stacked them pretty tight getting them in the house last night and I want them to finish warming up before I check them.

I am so sad about all the potatoes we’ve lost, but I am also so grateful that it wasn’t a total loss. I think the ones that were sitting at the back, stacked almost against the wall are the ones that didn’t freeze, the crates sitting at the front being the ones most susceptible.

My root cellar thermometer records the high and low, and keeps track of the lowest low and highest high until I clear it. The lowest low was 28 degrees. I feel exceptionally lucky since we did have colder temperatures than that overnight most nights.

As I was being discouraged I did have 2 different insights, tender mercies so to speak. First, this will be unforgettable and I probably will not make that mistake a second time. Second, I know how I grew these potatoes and how to finally, successfully grow a good crop of potatoes so I should be able to replicate that in the future for more great potato harvests.

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