Muddy

An average, rainy Thursday, with yoga and household jobs - among them, making J's birthday cake, ready to decorate tomorrow. Chocolate, of course. Meanwhile, P continues to lift potatoes, slithering in the mud whatever the weather. It's horribly heavy work, so he can't manage many hours a day, and it's slow going, but it needs to be done. Some days his labour yields relatively few potatoes, but this was a good day. Of course this should have been completed in the autumn, but first there was blight, so we cut the tops off the plants, burned them, and left the tubers in the ground to allow the infection to subside before harvesting. This method often saves much of the crop, if the tubers were already reasonably well grown and the tops removed quickly before the rot could travel down the stems to the tubers. Then it rained and rained. Then P needed "minor" but painful surgery on his feet which stopped him from digging for a few weeks (and although I'm willing in principle, my time is already accounted for several times over). Then it rained some more... and more... until in the end he decided he would simply have to wallow his way through the mud if it was ever to be done. Some of the potatoes are slug damaged, but a surprising proportion are good, especially these blight resistant Sarpo Mira ones.