Diapers and Potatoes

Just before Easter weekend this year I found out that we won the lottery for a tiny community garden allotment. It was raining hard that whole weekend and when we hiked down to check it out the community garden was all puddles and mud.  Our wee plot was full of clumps of healthy chickweed, some rhubarb and one volunteer leek.  We were thrilled.  We were thrilled.

Hmmmm.  What to plant.  We are both travelling for work a lot this year, so it had to be something fairly low maintenance.  Brought back memories of the farm and the two years in a row we lost all our tomato plants to blight.  So did all our neighbours. Lost all the tomatoes that would have been canned or frozen to last us through the winter.  That saved us all lot of work labouring in steam over bubbling canners in the hot summer/ early fall but our November spaghetti sauce became a lot more expensive.

We decided on potatoes. We love them.  We eat a lot of them.  Love  the Sieglinde variety.  Buttery and sweet.  We did the Whole 30 thing a couple of years ago and rejoiced when the humble potato was back on the menu.

We prepped our plot on the drier days in April, chitted our seed spuds and planted them on a gorgeous sunny early afternoon last week.  We were the only ones in the garden at that time and most of our neighbouring plots were still untouched.  Some onion sets out but most of our community gardeners are wisely waiting until the beginning of May and the danger of the last frost has past before getting out their shovels and rakes.

We walked back to our apartment with dirt covered hands and knees.  All smug and satisfied.

But this brought back a memory of when my kids were babies and I lived in a neighbourhood where the large backyards of the houses on parallel streets faced each other, and we all had clotheslines.  Remember those?

I used cloth diapers for my kids.  I was the eldest of six siblings and learned how to change diapers when I was six.  And the only disposable diapers available to my parents at the time were babyScott.  It was made of two parts – plastic outer pants with a tab to hold the inner disposable paper liner.  The adverts at the time described the liner as, “layer upon fluffy layer of super absorbent filler”, but they felt more like the packing paper you buy in bulk at ULINE.  And the plastic cover became hard and brittle after a couple of washes.

These were discontinued in 1970 or 71 and Pampers and Huggies were well on their way to filling that niche with great comfort improvements but we were poor as at the time, subsistence living on giant bags of puffed wheat and skim milk powder.  Diapers of convenience were well out of reach.  Also, out on the farm, the garbage you made was your own to dispose.  Environmental concerns notwithstanding, it made more sense to rinse out cloth diapers and migrate poop out into the septic field rather than have paper diapers sit in the outdoor storage room being maggot fodder during the wait for the monthly truck trip to the dump.

So cloth diapers were what I knew.  And still all we could afford.  Had multiple kids in diapers so managing that that workload with younglings underfoot took planning.  On my best days I could transition the rinsed diapers from the hard wadded pail and out of the washing machine predawn and then out on the clothesline by sunup. Well before my neighbours got their skivvies out on theirs.

And then back inside to coffee.  All smug and satisfied.

When life gets hectic and I can’t keep track anymore of what has fallen between the cracks I’ll take these little wins where I have managed to complete something beginning to end timestamped ahead of the clock in my head.  Rather than taking up space as so much unfinished business in it.

But potatoes and diapers remind me of another thing.  I can’t bear being in the garden with gloves.  It makes me feel disconnected from the earth I am on and in.  Farming life is hard on hands being exposed to cold and grit, heaving lifting and constant washing.  Cloth diapers are hard on hands, too, being exposed to cold and heat and especially constant washing.

So my hands have always looked older than my face.  Though my face is rapidly catching up.  (My neck, however, has fast-tracked Yoda style.  All good.)