The potato beds were ready: composted, disced, and harrowed, thanks to our new team of horses, Willow and Fern, and to our old team of horses, Molly and Clyde, who accomplished the more precise bed- and furrow-making.
But where were the seed potatoes? We hadn’t gotten an email or a call about the delivery.
“Did you order the potatoes?” I asked my fellow farmer worriedly.
“Yes,” he answered. “I always do.”
“But I don’t see them on the order form.” I was checking the computer.
“I’ll find it,” my fellow replied confidently.
A few minutes later, he said, “I can’t find it either,” much less confidently.
“This is bad,” he went on. “I’ll order more, fast. I hope there’s some left.” Already my fellow was filling out a new order form. “Or maybe I should call them?”
“Wait, wait,” I said, trying to slow my speedy fellow down. “I’m going to call the farm where we pick them up first.”
Happily, there were three bags of seed potatoes waiting for us at Walker Farm in Vermont. It turned out Fedco, the seed company, had our email address wrong, and Walker Farm would only call if weeks went by and we hadn’t picked up our order.
We hurried over the next day, bringing our puppy along for our traditional picking-up-the-potatoes spring farmer date.
The puppy was amazed by: 1) the big red barn, full of many things with interesting smells, including the bags of potatoes;
2) the traffic, which was impressively loud and fast, especially the truck with jig brakes that thundered by;
3) the nice man who was so intent on checking our names off his list that he let out a surprised “Oh!” when he realized there was a puppy around his ankles. Then he offered to bring the farm’s puppy out to play;
4) the farm’s puppy, who was preceded by an adult Border Collie that came out of the farmhouse in its intense driven Border Collie way, which then stirred up the farm’s puppy, who barked and barked. Our puppy whimpered, and tucked behind our legs. But pretty soon everyone settled down for friendly dog greetings.
At home again, the puppy took a nap, and the farmers hustled out to the potato field. We got two 200-foot beds planted before lunch. Then the puppy had lunch, a walk, and a play session, followed by the brand-new treat of a chicken thing-a-ma-jig to chew on, which got us through two more beds. Then the puppy had another nap. Thank goodness puppies need a lot of sleep.
At about 5:30, we had just the last one of the six beds to go, and now I was whimpering, as my skimpy lunch of carrots and peanut butter had worn off long ago.
“We could get a snack,” suggested my fellow, “or even eat supper.”
“No, no, we can’t,” I said, “The puppy’s still asleep. We have to keep planting!”
We got the last bed in, in a burst of desperate energy. After our initial lack-of-seed-potatoes panic, I was more than pleased to have gotten them all planted in one day, a rare occurrence.
In fact, I was so pleased I said I was going to order a pizza.
“Yeah, right,” said my fellow, knowing the frugal nature of the Budget Committee (i.e., me). In a few minutes he asked, “Who were you talking to on the phone?”
“I was ordering the pizza. Ready in 15 minutes. Better hurry!”
“What, what?” my fellow said. “I can’t believe it!” He would have fallen right over, if he hadn’t already been on the floor resting his potato-planting back while the puppy, refreshed from his nap, crawled over him.
Thus our puppy had another fun experience, as we brought along his supper dish to the pizza shop. We all had a picnic on the grass, and watched the traffic go by. (No jig brakes, but three motorcycles.)
Also, since we were celebrating, we dropped a tiny bit of cheese in the puppy’s dish. The puppy was amazed.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, May 29 - June 4 , 2024