If it wasn’t for potatoes, I might not be here. My mother is 100% Irish, and my father was Irish, English, and the teeniest bit German. A few reasons why I can only dream of getting a tan.

The hardships caused by the potato famine of 1845-1852 led many Irish citizens to emigrate and come to America for hope of a better life. About a million lives were lost during the famine, and about a million people left Ireland during that time. It is estimated that a staggering 6 million people emigrated between 1841 and 1900, the time frame during which my great-great grandfather was born. Leaving for America had become the norm when he was growing up in rural County Clare.

Ireland’s climate makes the land greener than any green you can imagine, but it’s also rocky and boggy and cold and rainy, and doesn’t have the easiest climate and soils for growing food when compared to northern California’s.

After landing in New York and setting up there for awhile, my great-grandfather reportedly “headed West to seek his fortune”. Once in California, he met a lovely Irish-American lass from Truckee, CA, whom he married and had a small brood of four with. The rest is history, though that’s the really short, scandal- and tragedy-free version of my great-grandparents’ story.

The bottom line is that we’re Irish, we love Ireland, and we love potatoes. We really love potatoes. I’ve even traveled to County Clare with my cackling Irish aunties, where we enjoyed transcendent root vegetable soups in thatched-roof pubs, and felt compelled to sample “chips” (French fries) and “crisps” (potato chips) from East to West.

Here in Sacramento, we are blessed with a climate that grows nearly anything, including potatoes. It would be an insult to our ancestors and their troubles to forgo growing everything under this glorious sun, in these richly fertile soils. There’s a saying that “Potatoes planted by St. Patrick’s Day will mature by the 4th of July”... just in time for picnic season! If you’re a traditionalist like me, you’ll enjoy this link to Gimme Some Oven’s Best Potato Salad recipe.

NOTE: As of this writing (Feb 28), our potatoes are still in transit. Feel free to call us at 916-917-5787 to find out when they’ve landed at the nursery. We’re expecting them any day now.

We’re also expecting shamrock plants this week! And if you’re thinking potatoes and shamrocks and decorating for St. Patrick’s Day is a purely ugly American thing… you’d be wrong. My last trip to Ireland was in March of 2019, just before St. Patrick’s Day, and the same types of silly shamrock-festooned t-shirts and hats and decor was everywhere, just like here in America. Kitsch is universal!

And I wouldn’t be properly Irish if I didn’t include a poem about County Clare for you.

“Postscript”

By Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

So raise a socially distanced glass to Ireland on March 17th… when everyone gets to be at least a little bit Irish. Get in the spirit with some shamrocks… kiss your Irish podmate if you have one… and plant some potatoes!

~ Angela, Plant Foundry owner