Tonight we all worked together to harvest our four rows of potatoes before the weather turns. We are supposed to get rain most of this week and we needed to get them out of the ground before Winter. Daddy and the older kids worked hard shoveling the hills, while the littles and I pulled the potatoes to the side to let them dry a little bit before putting them into storage. As always, there was some complaining, but for the most part everyone happily chipped in and got their hands dirty. We then sorted them into buckets, keeping the smaller ones separate to use as seed next year, and the chopped ones to bring inside and use right away.
I was so grateful for Mike and the big kids who took the brunt of it. Watching everyone work together to complete something is one of my favorite things to see. It is moments like these that help build family unity and strengthen relationships. Watching kids work together who wouldn't normally work together, or seeing a bigger sibling guide and help a smaller one with patience does my heart good. With everyone's help, it didn't take us long!
We then transferred them into the extra crates we found to take to the cellar that our neighbor so graciously lends us space in. After transferring the potatoes into the cellar, we walked around Lloyd and Willa's property, admiring their garden and talking about the bears they've seen in their fifty years of living there. As Mike, Willa, Oliver and I rounded the corner of the shop, there was a black bear walking parallel to us on the other side! This particular bear has been sighted frequently in our little country neighborhood recently (which means the boys haven't been able to bike alone to friends), so it was exciting (and scary) to see it twelve feet away from us. Just the day before, it had broken into their shed and eaten the apples and produce they had put in their freezer for Winter. It must have been back for more.
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