a good day to dig up buried treasure
Mon 2014-10-06 23:03:35 (in context)
Today was all about potatoes. I love harvesting potatoes. You dig in the dirt, and you pull up treasure. Well, first you need someone on shovel duty, to stick a shovel under each potato plant and lift it up, hopefully without slicing a potato open. (The farm worker on shovel duty today seemed to be having a splendid time.) But then you get to scrabble about by hand, and I think that's the fun part. It's especially satisfying when you think you've gotten 'em all, but you scrabble around with your digging stick (you do have a digging stick, right?) just to make sure, and up pops another big beauty.
If I remember correctly, we pulled up six different varieties of potato today, in three different colors: Red Dale, Red Pontiac, Chieftain; Cal White, King Harry; and Purple Viking.
Last year I had a potato plant that I started early in the season. I basically just stuck an old, sprouting potato under the ground to see if it would grow. Then I forgot about it until late in the fall when I started turning the soil in the big containers in order to work in some compost, and my spade sliced right into a Yukon Gold. Buried treasure! Agricultural alchemy! One rotting potato goes in, an armful of gorgeous new potatoes comes out! Instant transmutation: just add water. And soil. And time. (OK, well, not exactly instant.)
The potatoes took up most of the morning. When we were done, the harvest weighed in at about 400 pounds (or so I overheard), and we still had another half hour or so to go before lunch was ready. So we also harvested calendula. It smells nice, it has a pleasing bright orange color, it's good for burns and other skin ailments, and its stem is sticky as a honey comb on a pine tree coated in molasses and rolled in tar. We weren't a quarter of the way done before I was obliged to throw each blossom into the bucket with force--I couldn't just drop them anymore, because they stuck to my fingers. I had to wash my hands four or five times before they were fit for dining with.
And then I came home and did All Of The Things. Oh, so many things got done. Yay! A successful Monday!
I hope your week is off to an equally cheerful start. (If not, try adding potatoes. It can't hurt.)