While the world is awash in whiskey, green beer, and questionable leprechaun fashion choices, St. Patrick’s Day always brings two things to my mind—my sister and my grandpa’s legendary fried potatoes.
Now, full disclosure: I am absolutely terrible with dates. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays—you name it, I forget it. As a kid, I only managed to remember two dates: my own birthday (November 29, although my dad thought it was the 28th for years) and my sister’s birthday. Not because I’m a great sibling, but because it falls on St. Patrick’s Day. Shamrocks in store windows? Time to buy my sister a gift.
Shamrocks and Siblinghood: The Ultimate Birthday Reminder
Over the years, I’ve probably given her an excessive number of St. Patrick’s Day-themed presents. Shamrock socks? Check. Leprechaun scarves? You bet. But she’s never complained. These days, we’re not just sisters—we’re actually friends, which makes gift-giving much easier. But let’s be real—I still sneak in a St. Paddy’s Day-themed item or two, just for tradition’s sake.
This year’s gift? A carefully curated collection of pun-laden chicken shirts from Tractor Supply and Rural King (because Nevada, where she lives, tragically lacks a Rural King), which are doubling as padding for her main gift (which I won’t reveal here, since she hasn’t received it yet). She’s also getting some Drunken Duck Farm pun shirts and flannels from our new line that we’ll be releasing in the farm store this year. I may have gone slightly overboard. But when flannel shirts and farm puns are involved, can you really ever have too many? (Spoiler: No. No, you cannot.)
Enter: The Fried Potatoes
So where do the fried potatoes come in? Well, besides his impressive ability to burn a grilled cheese sandwich beyond recognition, my grandpa had exactly two culinary specialties: fried potatoes and hash browns. And let me tell you, no one made them better.
Growing up, my sister and I lived on a one-acre farm in the High Sierra Desert of Central West Nevada—the basin below Lake Tahoe, for those mentally mapping this out. My dad somehow crammed sheep, pigs, cows, and chickens onto that single acre, while my grandparents next door on another acre, grew vegetables. My grandpa was Irish, which meant one crop reigned supreme: potatoes.
With my mom in school and then later my parents’ divorce, my sister and I spent a lot of time with our grandparents. My grandpa was the kind of man who started his day before the sun, had his coffee and breakfast, checked his garden, worked maintenance at the town mall, and still managed to be home when we got off the bus (both Gen X kids, so we were very much the “stay outside until dinner” type). He’d then head straight back to the garden until my grandma called us all in.
And potatoes? Oh, so many potatoes. We had enough to feed the family, store in the root cellar, freeze for hash browns, sell from a roadside veggie stand, and still have plenty left over to donate to the local women’s shelter.
But here’s one of the biggest lessons I learned from my grandpa: I will never, under any circumstances, plant potatoes in the ground.
Eight years of digging up a half-acre of potatoes in Nevada’s high desert soil—a delightful mix of decomposed granite, gravel, and sandy loam—left me scarred for life. Midwesterners might think I’m exaggerating, but anyone from the West knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s basically like trying to unearth buried treasure from cement.
Fast forward to my farm in southwestern Ohio, and while the soil is different (hello, heavy clay), the rock situation remains. But even if my land were a potato-growing paradise, I still wouldn’t plant them in the ground. Childhood trauma is real, folks.
Instead, I use potato boxes (my favorite), grow bags (just don’t let the alpacas near them), straw bales, and the Ruth Stout method (which is fantastic—unless you forget to water it). I pre-sprout my potatoes by setting aside any that start to grow eyes, and if they get too enthusiastic, I toss them into a grow bag with my seed starts until it’s time to plant. This year, I saved so many sprouting potatoes that I won’t need to buy any seed potatoes at all.
I’ve been watching my soil temperatures like a hawk, and as soon as we hit 45°F (any day now!), those potatoes are going into their boxes. It’s shaping up to be a fantastic harvest.
So tonight, as I indulge in a plate of crispy, golden fried potatoes—my grandpa’s specialty—I’ll be thinking about my sister, my grandpa, and just how incredibly lucky I am to have had my grandpa’s influence in my life and to still have my sister to share these memories with.
Here’s to family, farms, and never, ever digging up potatoes again.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day from all of us at Drunken Duck Farm!
Interested in learning about growing root vegetables in your garden, balcony, or backyard? Join me this fall at the Small Farm and Food Fest at Carriage Hill MetroPark on Saturday, August 2, 2025, where I will be talking about Growing Root Crops and how to save them.
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