Monday was a bright sunny day; time to harvest the potatoes. Poppop had a hand potato plow that he had pulled with a tractor in his garden for years. We had rigged up a well-fitting and strong harness for Brutus from braided baler twine. Because of last week’s rain, the ground was not hard and dry, nor was it too muddy, making it easy for Brutus to pull the plow. It was harder for the plow’s operator to hold the plow in the ground and for Brutus’s leader to keep him in the right row. It got better as it went and in no time at all, every row was dug and potatoes were laying on top the ground all over the patch. Now the real work began. Pick them into baskets. With 30 pickers on the job, it sounded easy enough, but we also needed to sift through the loosened dirt to make sure we wouldn’t leave any behind. Additionally, we had to sort out any potatoes cut or scraped by the plow or Brutus’s hooves. We put them in separate baskets, to use first, as the damage would cause them to spoil sooner. And if one ended up in a basket of good potatoes, it rotting could spread to the others in the basket. We picked the better potatoes into plastic milk cartons that we had.
Joe said, “Any wooden baskets or crates in the ground cellar are liable to mold and deteriorate if left in the damp cellar too long. The plastic will last forever and won’t cause the potatoes to rot.”
While we were picking potatoes we had visitors. A young mother came down the road carrying a baby girl and two small boys clinging to her legs. They were a bit dirty and grubby, looked on the skinny side and immediately grabbed the attention of the motherly types in our crew. Jean introduced herself, “Hello, my name’s Jean.”
“Mine’s Diana,” was the answer. “This here’s my boys Will and Harry and my daughter, Tammy.”
“Glad to meet you,” Jean replied, “you hungry?”
“Not at the moment. Your neighbors up the road, you know, Butch and Clare, were kind enough to feed us a good meal. But we have no food. Clare was sure you’d have some work for us down here, so as we could earn some.”
By now, Mom had turned a bucket upside down for Diana, and then said, “You sure look tired. Set a spell. If you don’t mind, I’ll hold Tammy for you. She‘s sure cute. The boys can help with the potatoes. Bet they’ll love playing in the dirt. Don’t worry; we got soap and hot water. You can all have a relaxing bath tonight.”
“And then,” Jean said, “We’ll have a place for you to stay and maybe some chores for you tomorrow. But tell us, if you want, where are you from?”
“Chesterton,” Diana answered.
“Chesterton?” Sandy responded, “that must be sixty miles from here. You walk all the way?”
“Yes, it was easy at first. Been dragging the last couple days, though.”
“This your whole family?” Lois asked.
“No, I have a husband, but I haven’t seen him since Labor Day.”
“Labor Day! That was five weeks ago. What happened to him?” inquired Jean.
“Lord only knows. You see, things were going pretty well just after the electric went off. My husband had stockpiled bottled water, dried milk for the children, plus other food. Every day he’d venture out to keep us supplied, but the pickins were getting slimmer and slimmer. He finally decided to travel up to your area, where there was farming to find food and work. He said he had relatives up here somewhere. I begged him not to go. He said he’d be back for us as soon as he found a place. After two weeks, he hadn’t returned. We were almost out of water and I just couldn’t wait any longer. I had to find him, don’t you see? I had to find him,” she sobbed.
“Now, now,” Sandy consoled her as she wrapped her arms around her. “Things will be all right. You have food and water here and a nice place to sleep.”
“You say he has relatives around here?” Mom asked. “After supper we’ll talk with my husband, and the other men. They seem to know everyone around here. If you can think of a couple names, we might be able to help.”
Will and Harry had a good time playing in the dirt and potatoes. They still had some energy. Unlike their mother, who had lay down in the lawn, next to the garden on a pile of jackets and sweaters we had taken off when the day had gotten warmer. She was napping while Mom was doing what she does best, playing mom with Diana’s baby daughter. That poor woman was exhausted. She awoke as we were loading the last potatoes onto the wagon we had hitched up to Brutus. When we got to the ground cellar, it was time for the milking crew to head for the barn. The supper crew headed for the butcher house with the newly arrived family, leaving the rest of us to unload the wagon. While we were working Dad and Mom were talking about Diana’s predicament.
“I know you meant well,” Dad told her. “And you absolutely said nothing wrong. The woman does need to have hope, but you know it might be pretty tough to find her husband.”
“I know,” Mom answered. “I know he could be a hundred miles from here. I suppose he could also be dead, but I sure hope not. You will talk to her, won’t you?”
“Sure,” Dad responded, “it’s the least we can do.”
When the potatoes were all piled in the cellar I said to Poppop, “Your crop yielded well. That’s quite a pile of potatoes. How many meals do you think they’ll make?”
“Don’t rightly know,” he replied. “But we aren’t planning to eat many of them.”
“We aren’t?” I said.
“No, the only way I know to get a crop next year is to plant as many of these potatoes next spring as we can. Potatoes don’t grow from seed, remember?”
“Yes, I do remember,” I replied. “I recall how last spring we cut the whole potato into five or six segments before we planted each piece in the ground. You know if every stalk yields five or six potatoes, like I just noticed from picking them, just from 1/5 or 1/6 of a seed potato, that means they yield 25 to 36 times the amount you plant.”
“In great years, 40 fold,” Poppop replied. “You know you calculated that pretty well. Some of that Stump math ability must be in that brain of yours somewhere.” You know he was right. Could I possibly be my father’s daughter and turn out like him one day?
“Let’s test it,” Poppop offered. “There are about 20 bushel of potatoes here. Next year I think we could easy get 120 in here, plus the early ones we would dig and eat in August and September. Let’s say another 20 bushel. How many bushels of this pile should we save to grow 140 bushel next year?”
Now I knew were Dad got it. “At what yield?” I asked him. “We should stay conservative.” I couldn’t believe I just said that.
“Good question,” Poppop responded, “conservatively, then, let’s say 25 fold.”
“Good answer,” I quipped, “doesn’t come out even though. Roughly six bushel. We can eat about two thirds of these and still have enough left to plant.”
“Wonderful,” Poppop replied, “we’ll be able to eat a good portion of these then.”
Potatoes and apples weren’t the only foods we had to eat. By now the garden had been exhausted of beans and tomatoes. All that was left in it were a few cabbages, pumpkins and a huge patch of turnips. In previous years, pumpkins were grown primarily for decorating, although Dad would cook a few for pies, usually using the neck variety as opposed to the round jack-o-lanterns. This year they were all saved for cooking no matter what variety they were. Dad liked cooked pumpkin a lot more than I did, but thank goodness we had butter. Made the pumpkin almost tolerable. Brown sugar would have made it better, but we couldn’t waste it on pumpkin. Some of the adults used a bit of honey on it and Dad would put a little blackstrap molasses on his. Of course he offered us some, but I liked his molasses less than I liked pumpkin. I did like the seeds when roasted, but it was only a treat we had two times. Other than the few seeds we roasted, all the seeds from every pumpkin were dried and stored as seed for next year’s crop. For another treat Mom made some pumpkin custard a couple times later in winter when a few eggs had accumulated. Why not, we had an ample supply of milk. She sweetened it lightly enough with blackstrap that it actually tasted pretty good.
Poppop had smelled the collapse coming and beings turnips are usually planted around August 1st, it allowed him time to plant at least ten times as many as he normally would have. After two weeks of turnips or pumpkin every day, I couldn’t believe how much I missed beets and beans.
To be continued…………..Mort
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