Tonight, Kelly started her flower arranging class. I came home from work a little early and found a list of tasks for me to complete. One of them was “dig sweet potatoes.”
Sometimes, as a part-time farmer, I find it difficult to keep track of our crops. Pair that with my “big picture” strengths (read: needs help with details), and there are some entertaining moments. Tonight, my inner dialogue went something like this:
“Okay, ‘dig sweet potatoes.’ Where are the sweet potatoes? Am I going to have enough daylight to do that? I don’t even know where they are. Maybe I should… no, I can’t call Kelly. Probably shouldn’t text her either. By the time she has a break, it will be too late. Crap.”
I headed outside, picked up a couple of harvest totes and the potato fork and went in search of the sweet potatoes. In our first beds, I knew we had regular potatoes. Maybe they were in the last rows. I looked, and all I saw were potatoes. Next bed? Nope. Heck, this is our first year growing sweet potatoes. I’m not 100% sure what they look like.
After a few minutes of walking the rows, I found several rows of a prolific vine. Sure enough, there were my sweet potatoes. Whew. After about 20 minutes of digging, I headed back to the house to get dinner for the boys.
During dinner, it became apparent that they had energy to burn. They were the biggest goofs! Instead of letting it bother me, I decided to harness their enthusiasm and put it to good use. “Boys,” I declared, “after dinner, you’re coming with me.”
It was a genius move, I tell you. Between the four of us, we cleaned a row of sweet potatoes for this week’s CSA pickup, and we did it just before dark. Plus, now I know where the sweet potatoes are.
Boys with 2.73lb sweet potato
-Brian
