075: When Scholars Become Potato Farmers
We did not even study agriculture, I tell myself as I stretch the rope down along one of the three patches we cleared yesterday. It is at the edge of the garden, about four and a half square metres per patch. We have enough potatoes for twice that and more.
"My great-grandmother taught me this," mum says. She pins the rope down at the top edge of the patch, and I place it at the bottom edge, so that it is parallel with the long edges. Picking up the hoe we used to sift out stones, she turns it and uses the rounded end of the handle to draw a line along the rope in the soil. "It's to make the line straight," she explains.
I do not doubt it.
We move the line some thirty or forty centimetres, then huddle around the box of potatoes like hens around a feeding bowl. Or scholars around their research topics, I think, recalling instances in libraries and workshops that wouldn't have looked too dissimilar.
The potatoes are a shade of brown that is almost grey, with fuzzy purple shoots that would have made any current fashion designer proud. The tips fade into white and yellow.
"We plant them like this." Mum takes two potatoes and puts them in the soil.
"Shoots up." I point to where her shoots are buried deep in the soil. "And dad always said they should be his foot-length apart, and then a little more." I do not remember exactly what potatoes dad and I used to plant when I was little, but I distinctly remember asking how far apart they should be. Back then I had to use two of my own foot-lengths to measure one of his.
We fit nine potatoes down the line, then make another three lines. We still have too many potatoes left to waste, so we fill all three patches with them.
By the end, we look at the lines we planted. They do not look too bad.
"We still have a lot left." Mum peers into the box, and she is right. There are maybe some twenty or thirty potatoes in there. "And what about the radish and spinach?" She holds up two packages of seeds.
I sigh. We forgot to make space for the seeds.
Written by: Katrine H. (@katrinehjulstad on Instagram)
"My great-grandmother taught me this," mum says. She pins the rope down at the top edge of the patch, and I place it at the bottom edge, so that it is parallel with the long edges. Picking up the hoe we used to sift out stones, she turns it and uses the rounded end of the handle to draw a line along the rope in the soil. "It's to make the line straight," she explains.
I do not doubt it.
We move the line some thirty or forty centimetres, then huddle around the box of potatoes like hens around a feeding bowl. Or scholars around their research topics, I think, recalling instances in libraries and workshops that wouldn't have looked too dissimilar.
The potatoes are a shade of brown that is almost grey, with fuzzy purple shoots that would have made any current fashion designer proud. The tips fade into white and yellow.
"We plant them like this." Mum takes two potatoes and puts them in the soil.
"Shoots up." I point to where her shoots are buried deep in the soil. "And dad always said they should be his foot-length apart, and then a little more." I do not remember exactly what potatoes dad and I used to plant when I was little, but I distinctly remember asking how far apart they should be. Back then I had to use two of my own foot-lengths to measure one of his.
We fit nine potatoes down the line, then make another three lines. We still have too many potatoes left to waste, so we fill all three patches with them.
By the end, we look at the lines we planted. They do not look too bad.
"We still have a lot left." Mum peers into the box, and she is right. There are maybe some twenty or thirty potatoes in there. "And what about the radish and spinach?" She holds up two packages of seeds.
I sigh. We forgot to make space for the seeds.
Written by: Katrine H. (@katrinehjulstad on Instagram)
Comments
Post a Comment