Dig It!

What seems to be to have been only a year or two ago, my friend Sharon and I took the kids for some early September potato digging at Great Country Farms.  Every year I say I'm going to go again, but something always comes up.  I woke up this morning with nothing to do with these boys on a foggy Sunday morning and it struck me that it must be potato time...and sure enough, this is the weekend. We hustled out of the house and headed to the farm.

It was super foggy on the drive out. Connor was actually apprehensive as we drove up and down Rt. 15 in and out of fog banks.

We got to the farm to find that it was fairly crowded already...and it was only 10am!  So, we figured we'd better do the fun stuff before even more people came.

The cow train ride is much longer than it used to be...and you can't really walk alongside. They were gone for a good 5-8 minutes and I was getting a bit nervous about how Palmer was doing. I was picturing him clawing his brother in the face and jumping overboard. But, none of that was the case. The pic above was near the end of the ride as they came back to the main area. Connor said that Palmer pretty much sat still and silent like this for the whole ride.

Then Connor hit the gem sluice and found some cool stones. However, it was at this point that Palmer took a face-plant into the mud and we had to return to the car for major cleanup.

After that, Connor got very sweaty on the jumping pillow.

After that we headed to the potato fields. I didn't get any pictures of the the tractor ride out there because managing both of them and three shovels was enough to make me sweaty, too.

Palmer wandered around with a trowel over the mounds and whined alot. I can understand it. He was probably wondering what the hell was going on. "Why does she have me out here in mud piles in the heat? What is this heavy metal thing in my hand? Okay...I see them digging. I'll try that. Okay, this sucks."

We dug up exactly ZERO potatoes. But we found a ton of them just strewn about. Some people had loads of them, but they were all folks with strong husbands who dug very deep, they said.

Here's Connor with two of them. And that picture really reminded me of something....so when I got home I dug through the photo archives and found...

Apparently, Connor likes to hold root crops above his head! And it was FIVE years ago...he was only three years-old. And the jumping pillow was just as great then.

And the cow train was pretty cool, too!

But best of all, look at Arianna and Connor on a tractor...one of the best pics ever!

Time does fly. Gather ye root crops while ye may!