Daddy Takes Us to the Garden Part 20

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Mr. Blake had planted two kinds of potatoes, early and late, and it was the vines of the early ones that had dried up. Later on the others would dry, and then it would be time to dig their tubers to put down cellar for the long Winter.

"First you pull up the vine," said Daddy Blake, and he tore one from the earth, many of the potatoes clinging to it. These he picked off and put in the basket. Then, with a potato hook, which is something like a spading fork, only with the p.r.o.ngs curved downward like a rake, Daddy Blake began sc.r.a.ping away the dirt from the side of the hill of potatoes.

"When a farmer has a big field of potatoes," said the children's father, "he may use a machine potato-digger. This is drawn by horses, who walk between the rows, drawing the machine right over where the potato vines are growing. The machine has iron p.r.o.ngs which dig under the dirt like giant fingers, turning out the potatoes which are tossed between the rows of dirt so men, who follow, may pick them up. But we'll dig ours by hand.

And in digging potatoes you must be careful not to stick your fork, spade or whatever you use, into the potato tubers, and so cutting them."

"Why can't we do that?" asked Hal.

"Because a potato that is cut, pierced or bruised badly will not keep as well as one that is sound and good. It rots more quickly, and one rotten potato in a bin of good ones will cause many others to spoil, just as one rotten apple in a barrel of sound ones will spoil a great many. So be careful when you dig your potatoes."

Hal and Mab watched Daddy Blake, and then he let them pull a vine and dig in the hill after the brown tubers. Out they came tumbling and rolling, as if glad to get into the light and sunshine. For they had been down under the dark earth ever since the eyes were planted in the Spring, growing from tiny potatoes Into large ones.

When Mab dug up her hill of potatoes, after she had picked up all there were in it, her father saw her carefully looking among the clods of brown soil.

"What have you lost, Mab?" he asked.

"I was looking for the eye pieces you planted when you made your potato garden," she answered.

"Oh, they have turned into these many potatoes," laughed Mr. Blake. "That is the magical trick Mother Nature does for us. We plant a piece of potato, with 'eyes' in it, or we plant a seed, and up springs a plant on the roots of which are more potatoes, or, if it is a bean, it turns into a vine with many more beans on it. And the seed--that is the eye potato or the bean--disappears completely, just as a magician on the stage pretends to make your handkerchief disappear and change into a lemon. Mother Nature is very wonderful."

Hal and Mab thought so too.

The Summer was pa.s.sing away. The days that had been long and full of sunshine until late in the evening were getting shorter. No longer was it light at five o'clock in the morning, and the golden ball did not stay up until after seven at night.

"The days are getting shorter and the nights longer," said Daddy Blake.

"That means Winter is not far off, though we still have Autumn or Fall before us. And that will bring us the harvest days. We will soon begin to harvest, or bring in our crops."

"And then will we know who gets the prize?" asked Hal.

"Yes," his father answered. "I'll have to award the ten dollar gold prize then, but it will be some little time yet. Things are not all done growing, though they have done their best. From now on we will not have to worry so much about weeds, bugs and worms."

"Do they die, too, like the potato vines?" asked Mab.

"Yes, though many weeds will not be killed until a hard frost nips them.

But the garden plants have gotten their full growth, and are not babies any more, so the weeds can not do them so much harm. Most of the bugs and worms, too, have died or been eaten by the birds. The birds are the gardener's best friend, for they eat many worms and bugs that could not be killed in any other way. So the more insect-eating birds you have around your garden the better. Even though the robins may take a few cherries they don't get paid half enough that way for the good work they do."

"How am I going to harvest my beans?" asked Mab. "There aren't many more green ones left to boil, for Mother canned a lot of them."

"What are left of your beans we will save dried, to make into baked beans this Winter," said her father.

"And what about my corn?" Hal wanted to know.

"Well, your mother canned some of that," answered his father, "that is the sweet kind. The yellow ears I will show you how to save for the chickens this winter, and there is another kind--well, I'll tell you about that a little later," and he smiled at the children.

"Oh, have I got three kinds of corn?" asked Hal, clapping his hands in delight.

"We'll see when we come to harvest it," said Daddy Blake.

"Maybe I'll win the prize with that!" exclaimed the little boy. "Come on, Mab! Let's go in and look at the ten dollar gold piece. I hope I win it!"

"I hope you do, too, Hal," said his sister. "But I'd like it myself, and I've got a awful lot of beans. My vines are covered with them--I mean dried ones, in pods like peas."

"I wish we could both have the prize," said Hal. "But if I win I'll give you half, Mab."

"So will I to you!" exclaimed the little girl.

As they ran toward the house they saw a farmer, from whom their mother often bought things, standing on the porch. In his hand he held what looked to be a big whip. There was a long wooden handle and fast to it was a shorter stick of wood.

"There's the flail I told Mr. Blake I'd bring him," said the farmer to Aunt Lolly, who had come to the door when he rang the bell.

"A flail," she repeated. "What is it for?"

"Well, I think Mr. Blake wants to whip some beans with it," and the farmer laughed, while Hal and Mab looked at him curiously.

CHAPTER XII

PUMPKIN PIE

"Oh, Hal!" murmured Mab, as she looked at the queer sticks the farmer had brought. "It does seem like a whip! I wonder if Daddy is going to whip Roly-Poly for getting in the mole trap?"

"Of course not!" laughed Hal. "Daddy never whips Roly anyhow, except sometimes to tap him on the nose with his finger when our poodle does something a little bad. Daddy would never use this big wooden whip, anyhow."

"The farmer-man said he was bringing it to Daddy to whip my beans," went on Mab. "I wonder what he means?"

Just then Daddy Blake himself came on the front stoop.

"Ah, so you have brought the flail?" he asked the farmer.

"Yes, and your little boy and girl here were afraid it was to use on their pet dog!" laughed the farmer, "I guess they never saw a flail before."

"I hardly think they did," said Mr. Blake. "But next year I intend to take them to a farm where they will learn many more things than I could teach them from just a garden."

"Daddy, but what is a flail?" asked Mab.

"A flail," said Mr. Blake, "is what the farmers used to use before threshing machines were invented. And I had Mr. Henderson bring this one from his farm to thresh out your beans, Mab, as we haven't enough to need a machine, even if we could get one."

"What does thresh mean?" asked Hal.

"It means to beat, or pound out," his father explained. "You see wheat, oats, barley, rye and other grains, when they grow on the stalks in the field, are shut up in a sort of envelope, or husk, just as a letter is sealed in an envelope. To get out the letter we have to tear or break the envelope. To get at the good part of grain--the part that is good to eat--we have to break the outer husk. It is the same way with peas or beans.

"When they are green we break the pods by hand and get out the peas or beans, but when they are dried it is easier to put a pile of pods on a wooden floor and beat them with a stick. This breaks the envelopes, or pods and the dried peas or beans rattle out. They fall to the bottom, and when the husks and vines are lifted off, and the dirt sifted out, there are our beans or peas, ready to eat after being cooked.

"The stick with which the beating is done is called a flail. One part is the handle, and the other part, which is fastened to the handle by a leather string, is called a swingle, or swiple, because it swings through the air, and beats down on the bean or pea pods.