Planting potatoes in a pandemic

There is a thing that happens when you are a writer and something really bad is happening (like, for instance, a global pandemic). People ask you if you’ve been writing. The answer is no. I haven’t written one word. I’ve been gardening and planting my fields and cleaning out chicken coops and tearing down walls in my house. Writing? Not so much.

It feels like if I am going to be a big W writer during a big P pandemic I need to write about it, which is the reason I’ve written nothing for months.

But then I was out planting potatoes with my niece Lila the other day……

In fact, I am out planting potatoes and she is wandering around wondering when I am going to be done so we can go play. 

I am wondering when did it get so hot out and how did the soil get so compacted and why didn’t I put straw around the border of the garden last fall to keep the goddamned grass from creeping in and where did that thistle come from? 

What I am trying to tell you is that I am not an easy going gardener and there are people who say they enjoy it and they are liars, I’m certain of it. 

Lila is attempting to lure me out of the garden with talk of turtles. She is telling me she saw turtles on a log in the slough. I know what log she is talking about and she knows how much I love turtles and how much I love watching them sun themselves and the sound they make as they slide into the water when they are startled and the sparkle of the sun on their shells if you are quiet enough and still enough to be present when they re-emerge after they have decided it is safe to return. 

I am attempting a no-till garden to improve my soil and supposedly it will make it so I’ll wake up one day and will love gardening but all I want to do right now is start my orange Kubota tractor, put the disc on it and drive it straight through the chain link fence and plow the whole thing up. Is that something gardeners say? I’m not a big G gardener so I’ll say what I want.

Lila is feeling the potato seeds and asking me what the white nubs are on the skin. I tell her they are the potato’s eyes and she looks at me startled and almost throws it to the ground and I wonder if she thinks the potatoes can see like we can. I hope that she does. 

I am feeling a light dusting of sheep and goat manure covering my body from hauling buckets up from the loafing shed to my garden in the skidsteer. When I fill the bucket up inevitably some of the dried and aged shit blows back in my face and sticks to my sunscreen and all one can do at that point is just let it happen because my dad took the door off the skidsteer when he bought it because it just gets in the way he said. 

Lila tells me I have dirt on my face. 

I tell her it’s manure.

Lila asks me what manure is. 

I ask her to look at it and give me her best guess. She leans down and sees the little goat and sheep pebbles, scrunches up her nose and says ewwwwww until she runs out of w’s and then runs out of the garden with my dogs bounding behind her. 

I watch them run through the field and pay as much attention as possible because I need to remember this exact moment because there is nothing better than right now.

A little later she bounds back into the garden with the dogs panting behind her and starts helping me plant the potatoes. Pretty soon she is as dirty as I am and her face is streaked with manure and sunscreen and sweat.   

When we are all done for the day we sit in lawn chairs on the basketball court and watch the sun go down over the river and she asks me if we are all going to be ok and I tell her what you tell kids, that of course we are all going to be ok and she nods, in that special way that Lila does when she is satisfied with my answer to her question. Then she asks what we should talk about.

I tell her we should talk about what we are grateful for and she tells me she is grateful that I make her get her hands dirty and that manure isn’t so bad after all and she loves having a farm. 

And my love for her spilled out all over that basketball court and I forgot about the pandemic and the heat and the weeds and the compacted soil and the falling down fences and all of the work I have to do on the place and all of the work we have to do in our world to teach our kids, (or more often than not, our kids teach us), that humility and courage and humor and love are what will save us not lies and anger and ego and hate. 

Then she asked me what I am grateful for and, of course, we all know what I said.