They were harvested in July and since then, they have been waiting for their development. Some 200 kilos of different varieties of beautiful potatoes were ready on Thursday to be degreladas, a simple, time-consuming manual job that the farmers of Icod El Alto, in Los Realejos, consider essential before planting to guarantee good results.
It is about removing the germination or sprout, a task that Anatolio Luis Domínguez, Francisco González, whom his colleagues call ‘Kiko’, and Elías Pérez Domínguez perform automatically and with the only help of a pair of gloves.
The three belong to the Asociación de Cosecheros La Papa Bonita, an agricultural cooperative that has been promoting, cultivating and caring for the old potatoes of the Canary Islands for more than a decade. Its headquarters is located in the aforementioned realejero nucleus. They met there at five and 20 minutes later they had already started. It didn’t take much, just arrange the chairs and take out, with the help of a wheelbarrow, the boxes of potatoes perfectly stored in a chamber and ordered by variety and size. Half an hour later Antonio Hernández joined.
“In the old days it was a job that was done at night, when returning from work,” says Kiko. Now, when they have a gap. They all have other occupations and therefore, they must find the moment and enjoy doing it.
“Today we are going to spend a couple of good hours here and we will continue tomorrow,” says Elías who, anticipating what awaits him, gets up to smoke a cigarette and take a look at the street.
Previously, the potatoes were separated with a calibrator, washed, allowed to dry and those that were good and those that were not were selected. The turnip greens are removed manually, some are easier than others but when they are small the task is more complicated. The time depends on the variety or if it has more than one germination, generally in white and lilac tones.
There are several theories about grelage: the one that maintains that it is only necessary to remove the large shoots; another that indicates that if it is done, regardless of the size, the potato comes out stronger; and, on the contrary, there are those who affirm that they already have it and therefore, it is not necessary to remove it. Antonio’s, based on his experience, confirms that if it is removed, the seed grows faster and also does so evenly, while the greladas come out at the wrong time.
They are sitting in a circle, with the box of potatoes in the middle, moving their fingers quickly, glancing at each other from time to time. They joke, they laugh and they talk, they talk a lot. Especially on this occasion, since they had not seen each other for a long time due to the pandemic, which also forced the association’s sales to be paralyzed.
COVID-19 and all that it entails -vaccines, numbers of infected and known people- is, obviously, the focus of the conversation. “But we also talk about who has died in the town and all that,” jokes Kiko. A very frequent theme in bars, wine, beer or coffee involved.
“It is that the association was born in a bar”, confirms Anatolio. They always met in one to talk about the Guatemalan moth (Tecia solanivora), a plague that, year after year, affects this traditional crop of the islands that is especially rooted in the midlands of the realejero nucleus, until one day he proposed to constitute an association to stop chatting in bars and find a solution.
This supposed a before and after for the old potatoes of the Canary Islands. In the first place, because it has valued this denomination of origin with informative and cultural initiatives. Also in terms of marketing, since they have many collaborators who sell their crops and the association acts as a regulator in the process, preventing it from being sold below the cost of production.
But above all things, its members have endeavored to rescue and maintain 12 of the 29 varieties of a product considered exquisite in Canarian gastronomy and of great heritage value, whose first planting dates back four centuries.
The “trick” to maintain a crop that has 400 years of history is to change its height, that is, rotate it with other products of the land, such as cereals and legumes.
That is why it is so important to maintain the rituals that have made them last until now. “The old men are real wise men, they knew potatoes and their tricks,” says Kiko, who, like Antonio, works exclusively in agriculture.
Anatolio and Elías “have sucked it up since they were kids”, but they work part-time because they share another profession: they are actors from the company Medio Almud Teatro. Its name also alludes to the field as it was an ancient unit of measurement for grains. The second, in addition, is an employee of the Post Office.
Both starred in La tragicomedy la papa antigua de Canaria, a work written by the playwright, writer and journalist Cirilo Leal in which the adventures with this product, brought from America, are narrated.
As they recount these details of their lives, they barely look up from the potato in their hand. In less than 20 minutes they broke down about 22 kilos.
Once this process is finished, the starting process begins, which many farmers make coincide with the day of sowing. The important thing, all four agree, is to use a smooth knife, it doesn’t help if it has teeth. It should be washed from time to time, between cuts, and used only for potatoes, other foods are not worth it, because they have verified that in that case the potato rots. As for the cut, “it should be done by matching the eyes that the potato has on both sides,” Anatolio points out.
According to older people, the split potato gives more seed and this aspect, after the consequences that the pandemic left on sales, is important.
At the end, they cover them up until planting day, which began yesterday in Icod El Alto, but that is another part of the field festival.
