The Potato Harvest Is Finally In

Yesterday I decided to make a push to finally dig up all the potatoes (by hand) and get them into storage.  The weather has been extremely cold for this time of year and I didn't want to chance them freezing.  I  was fairly hard work as the potatoes were deep and we have heavy clay soil. By the end I was tired out and ready to sit by the fire and warm up.

A pretty good haul (at least 75 pounds) considering that we didn't fertilize them at all and I don't think our soil is especially good there. Also it was just two short rows of  free potatoes gone to sprout that we got from the local hudderite  community last winter.   I'm starting amending the soil right now so that next year our garden will do better.

Harvesting potatoes.... and antique bottles?

I had harvested some of our great potatoes that I planted this spring yesterday and the kids begged if they could continue digging for "treasures".  I said fine since I had other chores to do and nothing keeps kids busy than digging in the dirt.  Soon they had a sizable pit in the garden and started coming across pieces of broken china and old mason jar pieces.  We live in a house that is about 110 years old so this most likely came from quite awhile ago.  Well Husband got interested and started digging too and pulled up a fully intact ink well and and interesting medicine bottle.  Both very old looking.

They cleaned up amazing and shiny and now we all like to dig a little deeper in the garden than necessary!