Potato Harvest

         Since the subject harvesting potatoes is important enough for artists like Breton, Pissarro and Millet to create paintings around the event I guess I can share some stories about my experiences yesterday.  I harvested most of my potatoes from one 12 by 15 foot bed I had.

          Now, to begin with it has to be understood that my vegetable gardening is a personal style not written about as standard method of gardening.  I allow my chickens to walk though this bed, stop and scratch this area at will and occasionally uproot a potato.  Of course, I have been eating these gems that have been exposed in the last couple months as a matter of course.

           In the morning, I used the shovel for a while, then sat on a small stool with a hand trowel.  I pulled the plants and weeds making one pile for them and another pile of the potatoes.   I was joined by Autumn, one of my chickens.  She quickly discovered the newly exposed earth meant it was easy to see worms.  Autumn was my companion for most of an hour and rapidly sensed my repeated patterns of movement.  She would occasionally do a few energetic two step moves but mostly she let me do the hard work.  As I progressed across the bed,  I started to look for worms as much as potatoes, that is called bonding with a chicken!

           The surprising thought about digging potatoes is how the grocery store bags all the same size so neatly.  Potatoes come in sizes ranging from the size of a grape to grapefruit.  What happens to the odd size potatoes in the commercial world?  I knew in the morning how I was going to fix those grape size tubers. By noon I had two piles of mostly red potatoes and a few whites.

            Later in the afternoon, John joined in the fun as we both sat near a wash tub in the middle of the yard. I placed a cloth of screen near us so as scrubbed  the dirty off we could make new piles according to size.  I encouraged John to only do the really big potatoes.  All during this time, John is questioning when will this job be ended and I answered him by asking what was on his schedule later.  Those little grape potatoes were of special interest to me as I reached into the wash tub of dirty water.  As the pile of the screen grew I felt I had done this job many times before or at less it was implanted in my Irish veins.

              Last night for dinner we had tiny potatoes with sea salt, rosemary and olive oil.  Those little gems made John smile with pride.