harvesting potatoes is hard

[lauradi7dw]

The Lexington Interfaith Garden is exactly what it says - someone with an enormous back yard and barn/shed has donated the space (and her gardening expertise), and folks from the various congregations donate the labor, for produce that is distributed at the food pantry. I had never volunteered before, but yesterday I went and was assigned the task of digging up potatoes. I don't know how machines do it on large farms, but the by-hand way is to dig underneath at an angle with a potato fork (which is like a pitchfork, but smaller), move big quantities of dirt (awkward, because it's a fork), and once you locate a clump of potatoes, dig them by hand. Other people were extolling the pleasure of finding hidden treasure and so forth, but my main internal response was about what hard work it is. I thought of the infomercial for the Insanity Workout, where one of the virtues is the pool of sweat you leave behind. I was definitely sweating enough that it was dripping off my face as I leaned over. My head song at the time was "Good-bye Mrs Durkin," specifically the Debbie McClatchy version, but that's not available on Youtube. I've picked the Pogues variant. Apparently the change from Muirsheen to Mrs was something the Irish Rovers did when they recorded it.
The chorus is what's relevant
"So goodbye, Muirsheen Durkin, I'm sick and tired of working,
No more I'll dig the praties, no longer I'll be poor.
For as sure as me name is Carney
I'll be off to California, where instead of digging praties
I'll be digging lumps of gold."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrQbEaurkyQ
Digging potatoes was hard, but I know enough about the various gold rushes that I don't have
any thoughts of comparative ease there.