Harvesting Potatoes

I am not a farmer and at the same time I was not a city kid growing up. I was reared in the tiny villages near the small cities of up-state New York. the biggest club in some of my secondary schools was the 4H, so I have some awareness of the power and pleasure of a nurturing earth.

Growing up we had a garden patch or two around the various houses where I lived. I do remember as a child that my father was given some plants from an uncle and he planted them upside down. The family laughed at that for decades.

We had an asparagus patch and rows of Raspberry bushes and a small plowed patch behind the garage at one home, but nothing that was planted ever survived that I can remember; except the Raspberries and the asparagus stocks.

The other day I was with one of my sons outside of Boston. He’s an executive for a large chemical firm, but he and his wife also have a gentle and creative hold on flower gardens at their home and a rented farm plot for vegetables.

They grow all the usual stuff, but I had the experience of helping him harvest Russian fingerling potatoes, and a plethora of vegetables.

My son had me dig into the earth with my bare hands to gently scrape the small potatoes from the soft earth. A spiritual pleasure ensued. It was marvelous. Hands in the soil, mind in the process and my soul in the heavens. I loved it.