A BOUNTIFUL HARVEST

Sweet potatoes family's fare

Wynne clan’s bread ’n’ butter is feasters’ tasty side

Alberto Morales Martinez, an employee at Matthews Sweet Potato Farm near Wynne, weighs part of the harvest in early November. The work is especially brisk right before Thanksgiving.
Alberto Morales Martinez, an employee at Matthews Sweet Potato Farm near Wynne, weighs part of the harvest in early November. The work is especially brisk right before Thanksgiving.

WYNNE -- Many Americans have a once-a-year encounter with sweet potatoes, sampling them every year at Thanksgiving, after the turkey is carved, but before partaking of the pumpkin pie.

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A container of Beauregard sweet potatoes waits to be properly cured at Matthews Sweet Potato Farm before heading to market. Beauregard is one of the most popular varieties. The label marks not only the variety but also the field where they were harvested.

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B.B. Matthews

The Matthews clan, on the other hand, spends time with the orange-toned tubers 365 days a year.

Members of this family have been growing sweet potatoes on a ridge top 10 miles northwest of Wynne for more than a century. And in 2014, most of the state's sweet potatoes were planted, harvested and processed by someone named Matthews, or someone in the family's employ.

Today, the farm equipment at Matthews Sweet Potato Farm is likely silent and, if all goes as planned, the family soon will be enjoying sweet potato delicacies prepared by the matriarch, Nedra Matthews.

"There's going to be sweet potato pies, there's going to be candied sweet potatoes, and if I have time, there's going to be a sweet potato cake," she said.

On Thanksgiving Day, the family will be thankful for a crop that has helped it grow and flourish.

The family expects to sell more than 23.6 million pounds of sweet potatoes this year. Most of that the family planted, grew and harvested on 1,400 acres.

Fifty-four years ago, when she married William Browne Matthews Sr. and joined a sweet-potato-growing family, it was a lot smaller operation. "Probably 5, maybe 10 acres," she said.

Today, the farm has modern high-tech equipment and as many as 100 employees. The potatoes are pampered in a climate-controlled building that ensures they don't get too warm or too cold, and that the air isn't too dry or too humid.

Early on, the farm was strictly a family operation, and the farming practices were literally hands-on.

"When I first came, it was done by hand. We got down on our knees and crawled," she said.

Every day was long, and every Matthews was expected to pitch in to help.

"Me and my sister-in-law would work in town. We'd come home, and we'd wash potatoes that night until maybe 9 o'clock," Nedra Matthews recalled.

Her mother-in-law Alice Matthews usually made everyone dinner, and one menu item never changed, according to Nedra's son, William "B.B." Browne Matthews Jr.

"She cooked sweet potatoes every day. Every day," the 48-year-old farmer recalled.

Over the past half-century, the farm has grown and modernized, and the younger generations have increasingly taken the lead.

After working together for decades, William Matthews Sr. and his brother David parted ways in 2007.

William and B.B. stayed on the original homestead, where sweet potatoes have been grown since 1885. David's son, Terris, started Matthews Ridgeview Farms, based in Wynne, a fast-growing enterprise that is now bigger than the original family farm. Today, it claims the title of Arkansas' largest grower of sweet potatoes. (People at the farm last week and this week said Terris Matthews was unavailable for comment.)

At both Matthews farms, sweet potatoes must be "cured" -- stored indoors for a time, under ideal conditions.

"To keep a good texture, you've got to have a certain amount of humidity. You've got to have a certain amount of heat. You've got to have so much dryness at times, and sometimes you've got to have the moisture," Nedra Matthews said.

These days computers and an out-of-state expert monitor those conditions. "We've got a technology, a man down in Mississippi, Texas or somewhere. He watched our screens, and if he sees a problem, he calls us," she said.

Over the years, B.B. Matthews has learned what hazards to avoid when preparing sweet potatoes for market.

"If they're cured improperly, they're not going to be as sweet. ... If you heat them too long, you'll make them pithy and spongy," he said.

November is a busy time for sweet potato farmers -- and not just in Arkansas.

Nearly one-third of all U.S. sweet potatoes are bought, cooked and eaten during the last two months of the year. But demand is highest on the fourth Thursday in November.

Sweet potato farmers work long hours in the weeks leading up to the holiday.

On a Wednesday afternoon earlier this month, dozens of Matthews Sweet Potato Farm employees were busy cleaning, weighing, packaging and shipping 40-pound boxes. They had been hard at work since 6 a.m.

Elsewhere, laborers were harvesting potatoes that remained in the fields.

The work would continue long after sunset, according to B.B. Matthews.

In the packing area, many of the workers were laborers from Mexico who had obtained H-2A visas, allowing them to temporarily and legally do agricultural work in the United States.

Matthews said the foreigners on the farm are a blessing. "They're the hardest-working, honest people you're ever going to meet. They're all God-fearing people, most of them," he said.

They're doing work that has been done in and around the Delta since before Arkansas became a state.

And farming experts say sweet potatoes have long been a Southern staple.

As one writer put it in 1832, "the Irish potato flourishes well in the northern, and the sweet potato in the southern part" of the country.

Today, 82 percent of the American crop is grown in Southern states. Most of the rest comes from California.

In 2014, Arkansas farmers planted 4,000 acres in sweet potatoes, and the yield was 78 million pounds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nationally, the vegetable was grown on 137,000 acres that yielded almost 3 billion pounds. About half of the country's sweet potatoes came from North Carolina.

Sweet potato consumption in the U.S. peaked in the 1920s, according to a paper by E.A. Estes, a professor emeritus at North Carolina State University.

At that time, the average American was eating nearly 30 pounds of sweet potatoes per year. By 2000, annual per-capita sweet potato consumption had dropped to 4.2 pounds.

It has rebounded since then, reaching 7.5 pounds per capita in 2014, according to the USDA's Economic Research Service. That's nearly an 80 percent increase.

But those numbers may get even better as more Americans learn about the crop's nutritional benefits, Nedra Matthews believes.

"Sweet potatoes are the No. 1 vegetable, they have found out, because it is so rich, it has so many minerals and vitamins, and a lot of other things," she said.

"People don't realize how healthy they are," B.B. Matthews said.

While many Americans may be unfamiliar with sweet potato nutritional data, B.B. Matthews makes sure that his 18-year-old son is aware of the health benefits.

The farmer plans to pass the reins eventually to Garrett, currently a senior at Wynne High School.

But that won't happen, B.B. and Nedra say, until after the teen finishes college.

Nedra would like to see him go to a school with top-notch sweet-potato experts. Louisiana State University and Mississippi State University are mentioned.

But Garrett, the treasurer in his Future Farmers of America chapter, has his eye on Arkansas State University.

Once he's through college, he plans to return and raise sweet potatoes. He says he likes the idea of being a farmer, and he figures that the country would shut down without agriculture.

As far as sweet potatoes are concerned, he sees good times ahead.

"I think there's a big demand for them out there. A lot of people eat sweet potatoes nowadays," he said.

But it's hard to find any sweet potatoes that are as good as the ones his family grows, he said, adding: "I've never had one better."

Metro on 11/26/2015

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