The Great Potato Harvest

Farmer Ted planted potatoes in his raised bed in the backyard a couple of months ago. After much consideration, he pronounced them ready to harvest! Ted says we can't use shovels because we could hurt the potatoes. I get the logic, but I don't really want to dig with my bare hands. Unfortunately, Harry is only interested in moving handfuls of dirt out of the raised bed and Emma wandered off to find her hula hoop. Great. Pregnant girl has to take one for the team and start digging.

I squat down and start rooting around, so to speak. Ted is pulling up potatoes (which Harry is puting in baskets along with dirt). I keep digging, but don't find anything. I can't see what I am touching, but determined to be a good sport, I keep digging. Success! I touch something that feels vaguely potato-ish... then my finger pushes through whatever it is and it frigging explodes. Some sort of warm goo is all over my hand, which is still trapped in the dirt. As I pull up my hand, the smell of rot is overwhelming. So now I'm covered in sticky, stinky goo and screaming while everyone else is laughing hysterically. I run in the house and scrub my hand over and over, but could still smell the funk.

So what was the stinky, sticky goo? Well, contrary to the images that popped into my head courtesy of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, we're thinking it was a very, very rotten potato. So much for me playing farmer! Ted told me I was a bad homesteader. No argument here!

Here's a slightly staged photo showing children who look cooperative...



I did manage to get over my alien pod explosion images enough to eat the mashed potatoes Ted made. Pretty tasty! There's now a basket full of dirty potatoes sitting on my dining room table...

I did use the shovel and pitchfork to look for any left over potatoes after the initial extraction. I had no idea you used your core to shovel- that was a little awkward since my core has gone into hiding. Still, that was exercise, right?!

That blue thing in the background of the picture? Why, it's our lovely pool! Here's some pictures of Emma and Harry in it when it's full. I think these capture their personalities fairly well.




Unfortunately, we didn't empty out the water for like... a week. Yeah, pretty slimy. Let's have a moment of silence for the pool. RIP, slimy blue pool.