An inside look at yam farming during NC Yam Festival Week

TABOR CITY, NC (WWAY) — The North Carolina Yam Festival is underway in Tabor City, paying tribute to a crop that is big business in the Cape Fear.

The Yam Festival began in 1946 as a way to celebrate one of the area’s biggest cash crops and the hard work behind growing and harvesting them.

“Everything is done by hand with sweet potatoes,” says farmer Hunter McPherson. “They’re even harvested by hand.”

McPherson used to grow 150 to 200 acres until costs went up. He now grows around 15 acres, yielding roughly 200 pounds of sweet potatoes every season to sell locally.

“We usually sell roughly about a hundred boxes a week in Tabor City at local restaurants and produce stands,” he says, adding that he operates on the honor system, where people are trusted to pick up sweet potatoes and leave their money in exchange.

McPherson says growing sweet potatoes is different from his other crops, including corn, beans and greens.

“You’ll bed them in the spring, cover them up with dirt, they’ll grow plants and you’ll cut them,” McPherson says about sweet potatoes, “and when you cut them, you set those slips out in the beds and they’ll grow from there.”

McPherson adds that the other crops he grows can be tended by farming machines.

The Yam Festival continues on Saturday, Oct. 28, with a parade through Tabor City beginning at 10 a.m.