Potato rows and onion rows

(& returning to mask-optional school)

It was a busy week around here.

On Tuesday, Richard and I went to a reading by at UNC (Lorrie Moore, who read this excellent story)—their English department’s first large gathering in two years. Yesterday Bea and I went to a shiitake mushroom growing workshop in Pittsboro while Harriet and Richard went to a birthday party. Bea and I ended the day planting potatoes and onions with a fellow CSA members at In Good Heart Farm, our beloved organic farmers and educators in Pittsboro. Today we have plans to play badminton and share a potluck with friends in Raleigh. All outdoor things, with the exception of the reading, where we wore masks, but it did feel different, at least for us—less wary, more social. At different points, I overheard people saying that they had more plans this week than they’d had in six months.

The planting, in particular, felt really good—around twenty-five or thirty people, of all ages (including babies), working a single row at a time. The work went fast, and will yield hundreds of pounds of organic produce that we’ll enjoy in our CSA shares later this year. The first crops we planted were three different varieties of potatoes. For each row, there were three trays of potatoes, mostly sliced in half, dotted with small tender sprouts. Someone grabbed each tray, then we fanned out across the row, setting the potatoes cut-side down (sprout-side up) every foot, which was marked by a long measuring tape. Each single planting will produce eight or ten potatoes. This part was so easy and tidy, and Ben told us we’d gotten the rows planted in record time.

The onions, up the hill, were more difficult. Bea doesn’t like the smell or taste of onions, but she also doesn’t like wearing gardening gloves, so she said she wasn’t sure about this one. The seedlings, separated from flats of rich black soil, needed to be planted more carefully, set into holes in a long tarp and covered up just barely, so that the tops of the onion bulbs can pop out of the earth when the onions mature. There were a couple of challenges: the tarp (which keeps the onions warm and reduces weeds and pests), had necessarily small holes that you had to work inside. The soil around here also has a lot of clay content, so it digs up in clumps. And the onions themselves were so small, with hundreds of fine, thready roots that needed to be tucked into the soil and covered. Plus, there were toddlers*! Ready to pull up the tempting onion tops.

“Ugh!” Bea said, frustrated by her first couple of plantings. "This is harder!”

I agreed, as did a few other people around us. Our plantings looked nothing like the neatly tucked-in seedling Ben modeled for us. They leaned to the side, or toppled all the way over. Their roots were fanned out around the soil, exposed to the sun and air. But slowly, we got the hang of it. Bea went down the row to work, and returned, a while later, with a few methods that she shared with me—“Like this,” she said, scooping out a handful of soil, setting it to the side, and smoothing the roots before setting the plant in the hole. She then sprinkled the dirt over the plants and patted it lightly. “See?”

This row was done so quickly that we planted another, and when it was all done we washed up and made our way to a potluck. Bea had her second cupcake of the day (!), and some black beans she couldn’t stop raving about.

Tomorrow, at Bea’s school and mine, mask mandates end. I still think it’s too early, but Bea’s wonderful teacher has talked with the children about respecting people’s choices, which is what we’ve talked about at home too.

Our plan is to continue being as careful as we’re able, and to keep seeking advice from people we trust. We have two nurses in our inner circle—my sister-in-law, and a good friend just down the road. They have two different metrics that they’ve applied to when their kids can stop wearing masks indoors. My sister-in-law plans to let our nephew stop masking when positivity rates drop below 5% (we’re at 9%—click here to search for your area). My friend says she’s looking to what Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools have decided (still masking indoors). Both sound like solid plans to me. (Note that the “better” private schools around here still seem to be masking indoors, as is Harriet’s school, which is connected to a charter.)

I wish we were, like the potato planters, all headed down the same row with the same measuring tape in front of us. But I think we’re in more of an onion-planting phase, each finding our own way.

Yesterday afternoon, as we headed down to the handwashing station, I looked behind us and saw one of the farmers kneeling in the dirt, re-tucking a few onions. “I hope those weren’t mine,” I said to a friend. “Yeah,” she said. “This part was harder!”

This may be a hard week for kids, especially those who are choosing (or have been told) to wear a mask in a class of kids who are mostly not. But Bea says there are also kids in her class who want to be vaccinated, and whose parents are uncertain. That’s an even tougher position.

I wish this life-saving choice weren’t politicized. I wish that these vaccines were required in public schools, like the vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, and hepatitis B. But that’s not where we are.

I’m encouraging Bea to keep talking about the vaccine, and how it’s the best way to stay safe and protect others from Covid-19—it’s not something I’m hearing on our messages from her school (a STEM school!) or her district, though they have (in the past) shared links for how to get vaccinated if you choose.

I know that the readers of the FTT are vaccinated, but I also think we can continue to be good spreaders of this message, which has worked on vaccine-hesitant people we know and love. Vaccines are safe. They protect us. I’m so glad to have gotten mine. It barely even hurt.

Whether you’re working an onion row or a potato row, we hope you’re all having a great weekend, getting outside, and feeling ready for the week ahead. Next week we’re planning to start a new animal-family-of-the-month! We also have a cool foraged recipe for you.

Here is a joke from Bea:

Q. What’s an English teacher’s favorite breakfast?

A. Synonym toast!

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*it should be noted that the toddlers at this planting party were actually very excellent and helpful. Also, In Good Heart Farm sells their produce at the Pittsboro and Fearrington farmer’s markets. They have a great farm stand—and you can also follow them on Instagram.