"What? Are they tom-ay-dos?" American friends arrive at our Indianapolis home and stand in puzzled amazement in front of the raised bed of two-foot-high potato plants that occupies the centre of our lawn. I gently correct them.
"Are you serious?" they often add with John McEnroe undertones.
I am growing accustomed to the reaction and shuffle slightly as, in an effort to justify things, I attempt to conjure up a disproportionate enthusiasm for the common spud.
"An Irishman's potato patch is his kingdom." I announce with all the self-justification of the eccentric.
"Wow! That's weird." They say. "Never seen them grown before. Always wondered what they looked like."
Their puzzlement is not surprising. People don't generally grow their own vegetables in Indiana. In fact, most of our vegetables travel, on average, between 1,500 and 2,000 miles to get here. In a country where low prices and the consumer are king, the major factor in all food production is cost.
Labour is cheap where the sun shines all year round as it does in the southern states, and that's where the food is pressure-grown and where the migrant workers go. Freshness has little currency as long as the vegetable looks well on the supermarket shelf. To this end the shopper runs the risk of being showered by the supermarket's freshness maintenance systems that periodically spray the vegetable display areas with a fine mist of water.
The welcome exception to this is the snowballing farmers' markets movement. At weekend all across the US, car parks and vacant "lots" are converted into colourful markets selling seasonal and fresh "produce" as well as organically reared chickens and meat, much like our own markets in Ireland.
However, in the midst of all this, the humble potato is experiencing a drift towards mono-varietal production. In a recent list of the most widely grown potato varieties grown in the United States, the Russet Burbank, or Idaho potato, accounts for almost 38 per cent of the entire production. It isn't surprising to discover that this particular type is characterised by long, slightly flattened, shallow-eyed tubers which are perfectly suited for use in the fast-food industry.
An indication of the Russet's kingpin is that its nearest rival, the Superior, accounts for only 7.9 per cent of production. The rest are grown in such insignificant quantities that they barely deserve a mention. It is therefore all the more surprising for our visitors to view the growing of potatoes in a semi-Irish household with a certain amount of hilarity as well as disbelief.
"Wherever you lay your potatoes is your home, I guess." Is another popular response.
I don't go into details with the Americans but, for your information, I'm growing Kerr's Pinks. Inspired by a nostalgia for seed types that I grew up with and which were developed in Scotland or Ireland, I sought out a variety that might even remind me of home. Watching them grow through their various stages is like looking at the garden in Sligo where I grew them for years.
Then they were simply that - the humble spud - but now, in addition to the promise of fresh and certifiably organic "produce", they are a little bit of home. Their pink-skinned, round tubers with fine-grained, white flesh and red eyes take me back and I feel that even here, almost 3,000 miles away, there's a sense of continuity.
In a moment of weakness I'm also prepared to admit that I send digital photos across the oceans of land and sea to my father, a mean potato grower and gardener himself. It gives us something extra to talk about. Buying seed is itself a long-winded procedure as there is rarely a selection at the garden centres. However, the Fedex delivery of the small seed potatoes in a burlap sack is an event in itself.
Meanwhile, growing accustomed as I am to the comments of friends, I'm worried that I'm beginning to bask in the potato's reflected glory as they sway their heads in the evening breeze. I'm beginning to lose track of the "humble" part of the experience. I can't ever recall actually showing anyone the many fine rows of potatoes I grew in Ireland, let alone stand, glass of wine in hand, giving mini-tours of this small patch in Indiana.
Acquaintances inquire about the well-being of my crop or ask if they are ready to be eaten yet. I foresee a grand potato-digging ceremony which would shame my ancestors and mortify my immediate family and, with even greater embarrassment, I can even hear my own voice tinged with an informed and lazy authority recount tales to these same Americans of how the Irish followed the potato harvest in order to survive.
Here, in the Indiana night air with the sound of the locusts and katydids cranking up the volume of their nocturnal cacophony, and amid the flickering lights of the fireflies, I think of a poem by Rupert Brooke, with slightly altered words and greatly altered sense: "That there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever Ireland."