Taters and Tots

Last week, University of Idaho had a field trip for the graduate students and their families. 

A majority of the Engineering PhD candidates are from foreign countries, 

so it's really fun for them to see a real-life United States of America Potato Farm.

And it's not just fun for them. 

It's fun for us too. 

The kid's especially love to learn about these kinds of things. 

We watched them unload the trucks from the field, onto a conveyor belt...

The conveyor belt kinda shakes off as much dirt as it can.

I found a big clump of dirt, 

oh wait, that's Mitchell...

Colette found a whopper of a potato that she brought home.

She is being held by Debbie Caudle. 

She organized the field trip and her husband works the potato farm.

This is the potato cellar.

It was HUGE. 

The picture doesn't quite do it justice.

We were allowed to grab a few taters to take home.

I mean when you need a mechanical arm to dump the potatoes all the way to the top...

you're in a big cellar.

Down the conveyor belt we go...

Employees actually sit and try to grab as many clumps of dirt as they can.

It was fun... for a few minutes.

We also drove to the plowed fields and gleaned the left over potatoes on the ground.

They are the perfect little ones that taste oh.so.good.

Plus its biblical... gleaning off the fields. 

So we came home and had fries for dinner.

From the monster potato Colette found.

She would rather have named it and kept it in her room until it sprouted eyes,

but she was happy eating it too.

It's much easier to love anywhere you live, 

when you see the beauty and productivity of it.

Sure Idaho isn't top of the list for most people to want to visit.

But I do appreciate so much the nature of farming 

and what it brings to all our dinner tables.

It was very rewarding to teach my children to have gratitude 

in the understanding that everything we have, 

somebody had to work for.