"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 prongs 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 passing 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.