Grabbling Potatoes

[GoDawgs]

The Blind Pig and The Acorn blog is something in my inbox every morning. It's done by a lady up in the mountains of NC and is about life in Appalachia now and back then. This morning she talks about "grabbling" potatoes and explaining the origin of the phrase:

grab, grabble, gravel verb
To dig up with the hands, esp a potato early in the season, and smooth back the dirt around the plant to leave it intact.
1913 Kephart Our Sthn High 293-94 To “grabble ‘taters” is to pick from a hill of new potatoes a few of the best, then smooth back the soil without disturbing the immature ones. 1969 GSMNP-38:106 They’d plant a few rows of early potatoes to grabble out. 1977 Hamilton Mountain Memories 33 Papa’s big potato patch was outside the garden and we were not to “grabble” there, for he said it kept the plants from producing big potatoes. 1980 Brewer Hit’s Gettin’ In east Tennessee, a few people still “grabble” for new potatoes. A few others “grabble” for fish under rocks and stream banks. 1981 Brewer Wonderment 92 What Lucinda calls “grannying” is called “grabbling” in some quarters. 1990 Oliver Cooking Hazel Creek 13 Everyone looked forward to new potatoes which, as soon as they had matured sufficiently were “grabbled” out of the ground and then boiled in their jackets until tender; a gravy of flour & milk was then made in the water & the potatoes cooked & served in this. 1995 Montgomery Coll. Grab, Grabble = to grab a few potatoes without disturbing the plant (Cardwell).

~Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English

Then she gave a recipe for those little new potatoes, freshly "grabbled" that morning. I always look forward to cooking up the little potatoes that are always there when all of the potatoes are dug up! They're just special.

[Whwoz]

Here we refer to this practise as Bandicooting

[Uncle_Feist]

I always planted enough to pull the entire hill and founder.

[bower]

In Newfoundland you "firk a few potatoes". That is not with a fork, it's the 'grabbling' thing.
New potatoes are so good!

[JRinPA]

Never heard the term, we never grew potatoes here.

[Gardadore]

New term for me. I have done that but always afraid I will disturb the plant too much. Amazed at how well the remaining potatoes keep on growing for a later “grab”!