This week we held our annual Arts & Smarts Sweet Potato Harvest. As always, a wonderful time was had by all!
Bill Hemminger was our fearless leader, directing a sizeable crew of shovel-wielding high school volunteers along with a team of younger kids who were ready to plunge their hands into the earth to discover the treasure hidden underground.
Some of the kids were eager to get their hands dirty, quickly jumping into action. Others were more hesitant, like the boy who spent the first ten minutes working to convince himself that his desire to help harvest sweet potatoes was greater than his fear of possible bugs hiding in the earth. Once decided, he jumped into action next to everyone else.
The group called out:
“I got one!”
“Here’s another!” and
“Check that spot again! I think I see something!”
as they sifted through the soil in the raised bed.
These conversations combined with:
“I found a roly poly!”
“I found two roly polies!”
“I found a centipede!” and
“What’s this? A grub? What’s a grub? It’s a cute little grub!”
Everything was an adventure. There was fun in simply getting to dig in the dirt.
The group was very thorough, completely turning over the soil in the bed more than once. Still, the next afternoon a second group went out to see if they could find any potatoes that the first group had missed. It was growing dark when the second group went out, so they had to work by the light of their cell phones. Yet, they found a few potatoes.
We brought our harvest indoors to cure for at least a week, and we plan to eat some of our sweet potatoes as part of our Thanksgiving or Christmas festivities in the Arts & Smarts Program.
