Digging potatoes

After three days of muted light and soft drizzle last week sunshine and wind have returned. Incredibly, not even the full moon a couple of days ago has brought a hard frost – strange, when sometimes we fear for our crops in field and garden even at the time of the full moon in August. Tender plants like beans, cucumbers, and squash, of course, wilted in the light frosts of mid-September, but everything else, if it had been touched at all, has quite recovered. How much longer can this last?

It is early afternoon, and like the two preceding days I am digging potatoes. I am on my hands and knees in the soft, dry dirt, cool, but pleasantly so with the sun warm on my face and back. The plants have long ago wilted, the reddish-brown stalks, now leafless, just firm enough still for me to pull, which breaks open the slightly crusted surface. Most other gardeners would now use the garden fork to expose the yellow tubers, but I use my hands to carefully pry them out of their hiding place. I have not ever quite mastered the art of using the fork without spearing any potatoes, and I hate the sound of a tine entering the crisp, moist flesh. It feels like an act of barbarism. Only when I feel I have unearthed most of a plant’s chiIdren I push the fork in from the side to catch any escapees.

I used to hurry to get this work done, under time pressure as for so many others, trying to fit as much into a day as possible. Small children needed attention, my help was needed with field work, meals needed to be cooked, and snow and hard frost could be just around the corner.

This year I am taking my time. The harvest is finished, children are grown, have moved away from home or don’t need much attention anymore, meals for two or three are not much work, and snow and frost are no immediate threat.

It is good to do this slowly, to feel the crumbling earth under my knees, the smooth potato skin in my hands, almost free from dirt since the over-abundant rains of June and July gave way to almost perfect summer weather for August and September. The wind rustles the drying leaves of the corn behind me, from time to time a small yellow poplar leaf is slowly coasting down from one of the trees in the bush beside the garden, settling on the heap of potatoes I have just dug. Now and again the sound of a grasshopper’s clicking legs almost creates an illusion of summer, just like the distant quiet hum of a small plane. It is very peaceful work, and not a single car passes by on the road during this time.

Yet there are signs enough of fall, of the season drawing to a close. Once, a tiny frog, the smallest I have ever seen, not even an inch long, with tiny limbs, emerges from the ground, moving very slowly. What a rude awakening for the little fellow, probably quite settled in his hibernating quarters until I pulled up the potato plant. I see him push back into the loose dirt. This time he doesn’t have anything to fear from me.

A little bit further down the row I find more evidence of winter preparations: a handful of dried peas emerges together with the potatoes. I find no mouse nest; I probably destroyed the tunnel without knowing it was there, but surely this must have been a mouse’s cache. Like the squirrels who hurry back and forth between the big spruce trees on the lawn and the bush, often carrying small cones in their mouths, they need to make sure they won’t starve in the long hard months ahead.

I get up and stretch my back, surveying the row of golden potatoes waiting to be picked up later in the afternoon. Their gold matches the glow of the yellow poplars, is joined by the crimson of the dogwood, the pink blush of raspberry leaves and the first signs of bronze on the cherry trees that are still deep green for the most part. Only the little oak trees are standing totally bare, their brittle brown leaves spread like a dropped skirt around their trunks. 

Soon enough the bush will have shed its colour, but today I can still enjoy the different hues and, like grasshoppers and chickadees, the warmth of the autumn sun.