Every year in early autumn, you can see Latvians gathering all around the countryside for a special collective working bee - the potato harvest. I have never really understood how it all gets coordinated - it's not written in the newspaper, or advertised on the radio, but somehow everyone knows that THIS is the weekend for potato picking. Farmers gather together scores of relatives and everyone goes out on the field to dig up the fields and fill up large sacks with starchy tuber goodness. Driving in the country on that particular weekend you see people toiling away, with lots of sacks on the side of the field. This has always mystified me, how everyone seems to agree on exactly the same day/s to do the work, and I have always felt a bit of envy because I have never had a chance to take part in this autumn tradition. Over the years I have hinted to my neighbour, who has never offered for us to take part in digging up her massive field. I don't know why, perhaps it is because each helper usually gets to take home a sack of potatoes?
So this year, my ambitious mum decided that we also needed a field of potatoes. She and Normunds, our trusty farmhand helper planted a modest field in springtime (around 50 rows, which is small for most locals), and we have watched the potato plants growing this summer, concerned for colorado beetles (which didn't appear), the weeds and lack of rain. When you consider the low commercial price of "Latvia's second bread", you may wonder why bother to plant your own field - but there's something about growing them yourself. I've always thought that home-grown potatoes taste better than store-bought ones, probably totally psychosomatic, or maybe because home-grown spuds are usually completely organic? Our ones this year certainly are - no pesticides or weed killers touched our field, that's for sure.
As the summer progressed and things got cooler, our thoughts turned to the potato harvest. Speaking to a few friends, I was alarmed around a month ago to hear that their parents in the east and north of Latvia had dug up their potatoes early this year, because of the rain, they were already rotting in the field. Other friends commented that the "word on the street" (at the market) was that potato prices were going to rise sharply at the end of winter, because this year's harvest was small, and of a bad quality. Almost everyone I met, including friends my age and younger, had some extra information on the state of potatoes, the future of the harvest, the dangers ahead, the importance of knowing when to dig... So I turned to our neighbour, a veteran potato grower, strode over to our place and looked at our field, the state of the stalks, dug up a spud, saw that the skin was still able to be rubbed off, and pronounced that they should stay in the ground a couple of weeks longer.
So we waited. I sat in Riga, watching the weather reports, watching the rain coming down, wondering how the spuds were going. And finally, we decided that this was the weekend. It wasn't raining and things had got a whole lot colder. I notified friends who invited us to social events that we were unavailable because we had to pick potatoes, and this was met with knowing nods and understanding comments. "oh, if you've got to dig the potatoes, then of course you can't make it". On the drive out to Kugures you could see the fields full of people with their sacks and pitchforks. We had struck it lucky and picked the right weekend!
Yesterday we started. The ground was rock hard, and getting the spade/pitchfork in under the clump to pull out the spuds was tough. Nevertheless the "buried treasure" aspect of digging overtook all of us, and motivated us onwards, and by the end of the day over half the field had been dug up. Even the boys stuck around for an hour or so, digging up their own plants and scrabbling in the dirt to find all of the spuds. We loaded the potatoes into a wheelbarrow, and spread them out in the shed to dry. All up we dug up around three wheelbarrows full, which will probably not last us all winter, but we all feel bloody proud anyway! In a couple of weeks, after they have dried, they will be put into the basement, in a cool place out of the light, ready to be eaten.
Now I'm feeling a little smug, because I've finally taken part in a potato picking expedition, and there's a bucket full of small and damaged spuds in the kitchen, waiting to be grated for potato pancakes. What more could you ask for?
And this is just a good post-potato-picking shot, taken by Mikus. Love the red apples!
At Kūgures on the weekend we made a menagerie of chestnut and acorn beasts. Lots of fun. 
We are into watching the amazing race at the moment, and this next one is from portrait photoshoot for the boys when they enter as a team. Art direction by Tiss... I wouldn't want to mess with the guy in blue!
Another early-autumn classic for Latvia is mushrooming. We don't do too much of it, because we are scared of picking the wrong mushrooms, although it is great fun to go into the forest with basket in hand, looking for funghii treasure in the undergrowth!! The pic below is a pan of chanterelles (the most basic mushrooms, and most edible, and unmistakeable!) which we picked a couple of weeks ago when visiting a friend in the country. 
