Pneumonia and Potatoes: Summer Week # 17 – 9/25/24

Pneumonia and Potatoes

I have been procrastinating writing this newsletter, because there isn’t much creativity happening for me. My mind is completely preoccupied with pneumonia and potatoes.

With all the back to school business, I sometimes forget that a part of it all is sickness. I’m sure MANY of you reading this have had some sort of virus roar through your house recently as kids all begin to mingle inside together once again. Our entire family has been sick – mostly brief fevers and/or coughs. We have all recovered, except for our middle daughter. She has been ill for 10 days now. Yesterday we took her in, suspicious that her cough had morphed into something worse. Indeed. Pneumonia. We are hopeful that antibiotics will start to help her feel better. But she is dangerously close to needing to be hospitalized, as her lungs are barely able to get her all the oxygen she needs. I keep coming in from the fields or office to check on her, hoping that she is feeling better. But still she is in and out of sleep, her body working harder than usual to breathe. I watch her stomach move differently as it tries to support her getting the air she needs. So disconcerting. So hard to wait for the drugs to kick in and help her.

The fields contain a similar source of singular focus for me. Potatoes. We’ve been working so hard to get them out, but the rain and cooler temps have stopped us abruptly. Last week’s potato party turned into a winter squash harvest party. Remember how I mentioned just a few weeks ago that it felt like we had all the time in the world to get our potatoes out, but that that would change?  The change is here. Cool days (lovely working temps!!!!) and even cooler nights mean that it’s taking a lot of time for the weekend’s 5.5 inches of rain to dry out of the soil. Wet soil means no potato digging. No sweet potato digging.

We are staying busy, working ahead on certain tasks… clipping garlic, topping onions, picking brussels sprouts for next week, but all I really want is for us to be able to get our potatoes out of the ground.

Pneumonia. Potatoes. Two different, yet similar holding patterns. I am waiting anxiously for nature to do its thing – for my daughter’s lungs to be cleared and for the water to drain from the soil.

And so we wait…