Bud the Spud from the Bright Red Mud

It's potato season here on the sandbar! Yukon golds, bakers, russets, white and plain old "table" potatoes are being harvested from Tignish to Souris which means we've been on the lookout for the farmer that works the field behind us because, this year, instead of a field of rag weed, they planted potatoes.

We watched and we waited. And we waited and watched. It poured rain almost every day for three weeks which put a bit of a damper on the whole pull potatoes out of the field thing. I guess it's hard to move those big machines on a field of mud.

But this week it finally happened. I came home from the gym Saturday morning to the sight of a harvester, a big potato truck and what looks like an earth-mover roaming about our back field. Potatoes being root vegetables grow underground, so first they have to dig up the top of the plants. Despite standing at the window and watching for what seemed like hours, I still couldn't figure out how the potatoes got from the ground through the harvester and into the truck because at no point did the truck ever approach the harvester. And yet, when it finished up yesterday, there was a big truck full of spuds pulling out of the field. So, beats me.

The crew worked two whole days and long into the night on Saturday. It reminded me of the Carol Ship Parade at Christmas in Vancouver, this ginormous machines, lit up and beeping their way around the pitch-black field, pulling potatoes. If only we had music to accompany them, it might have looked like a ballet of sorts.

One of the weirdest things in this whole harvesting of potatoes though? The weirdest thing was the sight of seagulls and shore birds that were dogging the harvester like they do deep-sea fishing boats at sea. With every yard the harvester moved, the birds swooped and soared, landing on the freshly dug field, foraging for food. I don't know about you, but it kinda makes sense to me that a seagull would tail a deep-sea fishing boat hoping to catch some bait or even a fish...but to tail a potato harvester? Really? Is there not enough fish in the sea for you? Is the sea too far away? I mean, we can see it from the front porch, why can't you birds? Why scavenge in a newly harvested potato field?

I don't know. But in an effort to keep our grocery bill in line, I'm going to take a bag and make like a seagull and go forage a few potatoes my own self!