I Don't Know

But I am willing to learn

A person I respect will periodically post interesting observations on social media that get my attention and will sometimes draw me into conversation. If you have any interaction in social media, you probably recognize how rare it is to have truly thoughtful discussions on any of those platforms. Nonetheless, it has happened and I wish it could happen more often - and not just in social media.

The most recent observations have centered on the concept of “mansplaining,” or people, regardless of gender identity, holding forth with their opinions as if what they are saying is incontrovertible, even though they have little to know qualifications on the subject. For example, there appear to be a number of people who have miraculously, with no personal experience and a lack of accurate information, become experts as to the reasons and solutions for the wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Yet, these folks are so certain that they know the answers that they will shout down individuals who are professional firefighters or who have lived through the actual event.

That’s just one example. And it is not a new thing to humanity. But it sure does seem to be more commonly accepted than it used to be.

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Part of the 2012 potato harvest at GFF

I wasn’t there, but you’re wrong

I have told this story before, but it bears repeating. So, if you’ve heard it, feel free to complete my sentences for me. But, do it quietly so the others who haven’t heard it can enjoy it too.

After we harvest potatoes at the Genuine Faux Farm, we do not scrub them clean. We do knock off as much dirt as we can, but there is typically some light dirt on the tubers. As always, there are exceptions. We have been forced to pull potatoes out of mud in wet years and there really isn’t much choice but to clean them in that case.

However, we will ideally harvest when the soil is dry - which usually results in reasonably clean potatoes without any additional processing. In order to promote long-term storage, we will not scrub the tubers clean, instead we let the skins cure and store the potatoes in a cool, dry place. And, because we never know for certain what the intentions of our customers are (eat them now or store them for a few months), we do not scrub them clean before a sale either. They are presentable, but certainly not spotless.

This is not a “new” thing. I distinctly remember the mesh bags of potatoes my family would buy from the grocery store when I was growing up. They would often sit in a corner of our basement, waiting for the time we would use them. It was usually me who was sent to get potatoes from the bag (or to get the whole bag) and I took note that there was always a fine residue of dirt under the bag.

Yep, we imported a little Idaho soil with our Idaho potatoes. And, no, it didn’t bother us because we were going to wash and peel them before we cooked them. Not a big deal.

It’s only natural that potatoes have some dirt on them because potato tubers grow underground. I know this because I have grown potatoes for some time as a professional grower. A typical process is to prepare a row, plant the tubers into the soil at 4-6 inches in depth and once the plants reach a certain height, hill the potatoes with additional dirt or mulch. The basic idea is to keep the tubers covered so they don’t green, which makes them taste bad at best and become to toxic at worst.

I am aware that there is a method to grow potatoes on top of the soil. But to do that, you have to have a significant amount of straw mulch to cover them. Given the scale of our farm, we raised too many row feet of potatoes for that to work. But even then, the tubers are in contact with the soil.

And so (returning to my story) there we were, trying to sell produce at a farmers’ market. We had a wide range of veggies and we were pretty well known by that time. In general, people were pleased with what we offered and we rarely received complaints. But, that doesn’t mean there weren’t difficult encounters.

One fine morning, an individual was gingerly touching our potatoes and then gazing at their own fingers with a disgusted look. They exaggeratedly rubbed their thumb against their first two fingers and then repeated the whole process multiple times. Since they were not eliciting the desired response from us, they exclaimed in a loud voice, “These are disgusting! They are sooooo dirty!”

As a vendor, I had choices to make about how I would respond. But, I have to admit that it felt like the choices were limited if I wanted to avoid making a scene and maybe losing sales. So, I decided to attempt to defuse the situation and try to explain our reasoning for the condition of our potatoes. I also made the assumption that this person was working with some basic potato knowledge.

“Well, we do not scrub the potatoes because we want you to be able to have the choice to store them for longer periods of time. If we scrub them completely clean, they will not store very long.”

The next words out of their mouth told me I had entered the conversation with a bad assumption.

“What?!? That shouldn’t matter. They never should have gotten dirty in the first place! Why did you let them get dirt on them?”

This is a testament that I CAN be taken aback. I was prepared for all sorts of responses - just not this one. So, I tried to keep it light-hearted, still making the assumption that they must know the basics about potatoes… surely they must.

“Well, we spent a lot of time digging them out of the ground, where they grow,” I said with what I hoped was a smile that invited them to see the humor of the situation and move on. But, they were not to be deterred.

“You are lying! Potatoes do not grow in the ground! I will never buy from you again. I can’t believe people patronize you.”

It’s at this point in conversations like this where I get tempted to look for hidden cameras. But, there were none. This person was truly angry and actually thought they knew better than I about how potatoes grew. Even when other customers tried to confirm my statement, this person would not back down.

“It’s just stupid that you would get your vegetables dirty on purpose!”

Yep, it is a shame that we rely on something so awful as soil that is full of life. But it is a bigger shame that I still feel bad about this conversation even to this day. I know I wasn’t wrong. I’m guessing from the looks of the people that were around us that they were in agreement with me too. But it still frustrates and worries me that people can be so willing to embrace the idea that they are infallible while those with real knowledge are completely incorrect.

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Late season potato digging 2012

Modeling “I don’t know”

I want to make it clear that I fully understand where some of this comes from. Very few of us ever wants to appear like we are clueless or don’t know the facts (or truth) of a matter. In general, human beings are supremely uncomfortable with NOT knowing. I get that because I also don’t like to appear as if I don’t know… regardless of the subject.

My personal solution is to stay silent. And, since I am usually not the most talkative person in a group, people have no clue if I’m being silent because I don’t know or because I… don’t talk.

Unfortunately, it appears a common solution for many people is to seize on a solution or explanation - one that usually blames someone else for the issue - and hammer that issue home without regard for truth, knowledge or experience. Clearly, I purposely spent time applying dirt to my potatoes prior to market so I could drive away customers. The explanation couldn’t possibly be that potatoes do NOT grow on trees.

This is one of the reasons I have been so interested in honing my teaching and communication skills. I really do hope to be able to help others to learn - and learn well. If only to avoid having dirty potato conspiracy theories spread throughout the Cedar Valley.

One of the teaching and presenting skills - and I call it a skill because it requires practice - that I try to use is modeling “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” As a teacher and/or presenter, I am typically asked to talk because I am recognized as having some expertise in a given subject. But, expertise in a subject doesn’t mean I know everything - nor will I ever know everything about any given area of knowledge. Instead, I am acutely aware of what I do and do NOT know. I am also quite certain that the best answers are usually the most complex answers in nearly every subject. So, if I hope to be an effective educator I should not just share information, I should also model the ability to recognize the quality of what I know.

The good news is it only hurt to admit publicly that I didn’t know something about my area(s) of expertise the first few hundred times. And, yes, I am exaggerating. A little. But, I will admit that I still don’t take great joy in admitting when I don’t know.

Yet I do it anyway.

I do it because I value integrity.

I do it because I know the limits of my knowledge. But I also know that, by admitting the boundaries of what I know, I open myself up for the opportunity to learn - which creates a learning opportunity for those around me.

Then we can push the boundaries of our knowledge further out. Never perfect, but always (hopefully) better.

And I do it in hopes that if I do it, you will too. Then maybe fewer of us will insist on professing our clueless solutions to problems for which we have no qualifications to evaluate and solve. And maybe we’ll be less likely to accept ridiculous claims by people who are more interested in being loud and bullying than they are in learning how things work and considering real, useful, complex solutions.

Maybe if we spend more time learning, we’ll also figure out how to have more empathy for people who are suffering - even when they don’t live next door. People like those who lost homes in the LA area due to the recent fires. Individuals who are still trying to figure out how to recover in Appalachia after Huricane Helene. Or those who still are recovering from the destruction by a tornado in Greenfield, Iowa. And the people who have had to deal with more than one round of catastrophic flooding in Vermont in both 2011 and 2024.

And if we have more empathy, maybe we can support those who have the knowledge to build new solutions - if there are any to be had.

Personally, I don’t know exactly how we address problems like floods, hurricanes, wildfires and… mansplaining. I have some ideas about it, but I am not sure that they will work.

And I am certainly willing to learn in hopes that I can be part of the solution.