This week our farm work included gathering potatoes.  I had remembered to tuck the buckets in the car (for the sand pile by the barn), and M had her own bucket to fill with the potatoes she found in the turned earth.

I had many thoughts as we rummaged in the top 8 inches of soil for the red fingerlings I'm going to roast tomorrow...  I thought of Laura Ingalls' dislike of the dry, cold earth on her fingers (sorry, I can't remember which book).  I thought of how much work goes into harvesting potatoes, and how little I pay for them int he store.  I thought about the richness of the soil in which I was digging, and how it shows in the taste of the food I eat from the farm.

Later that afternoon, M took the salad spinner bowl from the kitchen and was playing in the living room... I watched for a minutes and realized she was playing "gathering potatoes."  The duplo blocks were the potatoes, which she dug out of the bin to collect in the salad spinner.  When full, the bowl was emptied into the big bucket that holds the gears.  Unfortunately, when I was cooking and contemplating the game, she emptied all the toy buckets into the playpen (it was the truck): gears, duplos, tinker toys, baby block, and dominoes. So tomorrow we'll be "harvesting" the "vegetables" in the playpen to return them to their homes.  Maybe while the real potatoes roast with a little olive oil and rosemary...

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