This is my entry to the #monomad challenge by @monochromes.
These are pictures I took from a yam far I visited during planting season earlier this year.
Centuries ago, yams used to be the most important crop in Nigeria and most of West Africa. Because the ability of yams to feed a population was overwhelming. Yams were big and heavy, one could harvest hundreds of them if your farm was big enough and the best part was one can store them and they'll last all through the year.
It usually didn't matter what was going on, a famine, drought, war or whatever. As long as you had hundreds of yams in storage your family was going to make it.
So many Nigerian and West African tribes even had festivals to celebrate yams, that's how important yams were. There are also many myths woven to explain how yams came about and it's always about gods/deities giving it to the tribes to help them with a superior crop so they never go hungry again.
This is what storage looks like:
These are what yams look like, these are the ones called Water yams and Coco yams:
The End.
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Great post✅ Farming has been a great source of living and income. Also people that farm doesn’t go hungry because they produce what they feed on
Yam is my favorite food especially when it’s prepared by my mum😃 the way she cooks it with vegetables is so yummy.
You're right, shawthy, farming has always been the way. And if you're a yam farmer it's even better because yam is satisfying as fuck!
What are all those piles for? I don't understand how the yams are grown. Are the piles left over from harvesting? Your photos make them look faintly erotic, which doesn't surprise me.
Hahahah! Faintly erotic? I kinda see how, but it wasn't my intentions at all.
The way they're grown is, the head of the yams are buried inside those piles, the leaves and all sprout and grow out while the yam itself never comes out but grows to full size inside the soil.
Have you ever eaten yams?
Ah! So these hills have just been planted.
I think so. Lots of veggies called yams are sold in the US supermarkets, but I've been told they are really sweet potatoes, and that yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing.
Yeah.
I can imagine,they must have been passing something else off as yams. This is what a yam is supposed to look like:
The other yams in my pictures are "water yams" and "Cocoyams".
This was an interesting read, the pictures are amazing too, yam crops are very essential in all families across Nigeria and it can be prepared in different ways
Every family cherish it
That's right. It's historical significance is even more crazy if you know about it 🌚
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