Oimohori time - sweet potato digging

1 little 2 little 3 sweet potatoes

4 little 5 little 6 sweet potatoes

7 little 8 little 9 sweet potatoes

10 sweet potatoes or more!

It was a great day out with everyone today. We had the perfect weather; the perfect timing; beautiful families; delicious food and an abundance of sweet potatoes. This will probably be the one and only time that we have so many sweet potatoes during the year and we are looking forward to a variety of recipes from everyone so that we can eat them in many different ways. Our teachers would like our mums and helpers to please email them the recipes and we will make a book of sweet potato recipes for everyone in the school.

We missed our friends and their families who were not able to join us today and we look forward to sharing our experience with them next week as well as showing them all of the sweet potatoes that we dug out of the ground. We noticed that they vary in size and shape and some of them come attached to a single point and are joined together like a family. We also saw that some of the roots are really large and dangle like snakes from the outside of the sweet potatoes.

We had two buses that took us to Chiba Kita on the highway and we all rested peacefully along the way. We had plenty to eat and many of us spent time chatting, drinking and snacking along the way which is always what happens when people go on long journeys. We arrived at the shop area and went to the bathroom before heading to the actual plot that had been allocated to us.

There were sooooo many sweet potatoes this year and they were much larger than last year. Some of us dug with our bare hands; some of us wore gloves; some of us used shovels and we all pulled and pulled and pulled.

Our bags were groaning with sweet potatoes when we got on the bus. We washed our hands and scrubbed the dirt off as much as possible. The bus took us a roundabout way back to the area alongside the river and we had a wonderful picnic together with our mums, dads, helpers, friends, teachers and families. Some of us even had time to run around alongside the river and enjoy being surrounded by nature…..grass, trees, plants, water, bushes etc. and of course a beautiful sunny warm day.

Our trip back to school saw some of us falling asleep, some of us still eating and many of us chatting about so many different things.

Thanks for a wonderful day out and we wish you all a great weekend.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Ayaka, Nanako, Sabine, Goh, Liezl and Christine.