"Look at that storm-machine," said Irja in wonder.

"Where?" asked Helen. "Oh, you mean that. The tractor's just opening the furrows up. It brings the potatoes out of the ground. It would be too hard to dig potatoes by hand."

Indeed, the tractor left in its wake a fresh lane of earth with the potatoes nicely strewn on the surface. It looked like a parting on the head.

"Haven't you seen this before?" asked Helen.

"In fact I have. In our kindergarten they do this every Friday when they're looking for lost toys in the sand-box. One stroke with the rake and all the lost toys come out into the open."

"Is your sand-box as large as this field then?"

"Sure."

"You're kidding."

"Well, actually I am," Irja admitted with a sigh. They had so many interesting things here in the country while she seemed to have nothing to brag about.

Helen's mother took the schoolchildren to the patch where they had to pick potatoes. Each child was allotted a short stretch of the furrow. Only Helen, Irja and Kristjan were taken to Aunt Leida's furrow. They had to pick up all the potatoes, both the big and the small ones, and when the basket was full they were to empty it into a crate that was standing nearby. Kristjan's toy bucket had room for only one big potato and therefore he was constantly running back and forth between the furrow and the crate. Helen was picking potatoes snuffling through her nose, while the tip of Irja's tongue was peeping out of the corner of her mouth with zealous work. She was determined to work hard so that even the schoolchildren would notice her. But no sooner had they picked up all the potatoes from their furrow than the tractor returned unravelling the soil and strewing the bare land full of potatoes again.

"Such a careless man," Irja scolded the tractor driver. "We'd just finished clearing the mess up."

"What makes you so angry? The man's doing his job. This is the right way to dig potatoes," explained Helen.

"Potatoes have to be lifted one furrow after another or else the whole field will never get dug up," said Aunt Leida.

The tractor stopped and the tractor driver hopped down on the ground from his cabin. Irja hid herself behind Helen's mother. From there she timidly peeped at the tractor driver. But the man paid no attention to them. He inspected his 'storm-machine', cleaning it of potato stalks and kicking the earth with his heel.

"Let's take a closer look," said Irja and ran towards the tractor.

"A closer look at what?" asked Helen, following her.

"Wait for me!" Kristjan cried, stumbling at their heels.

The 'storm-machine' was very calm now that it had stopped working. Close by it looked like a big iron flower.

"I see. These fingers go round and turn the soil," said Irja. "What a clever machine."

The tractor driver gave the children a broad smile and climbed back into his cabin. By that time Kristjan had also reached the tractor and was about to give the machine a thorough check-up. He only managed to say 'Oh!' when the tractor, resuming its work, sprinkled him all over with soil. The boy's cry pierced the air, the tractor driver stopped the machine and jumped down on the ground again. He was not smiling any more.

"A field is no place for small children. Off with you!" said the tractor driver angrily. Kristjan's mother, too, got there at once, she grabbed her son, brushed the soil off his clothes, stroked and cuddled him. "Darling, are you sure you're all right?" she asked Kristjan.

"Do look after the kids, will you," said the tractor driver and went on with his work.

Fortunately Kristjan was not hurt, but the earth was all over him — in his mouth, eyes and even pockets. Aunt Leida scolded all the three of them. At last she said, "All's well that ends well. Let's go back to our furrow and try to be more careful."

"Did you see that?" Irja whispered to Helen. "That tractor driver seems to be more important than your mother."

"The field is his place of work, that's why," mumbled Helen.

They finished the next stretch of furrow even before the tractor had come into view again. Aunt Leida asked Irja, "How is your back doing?"

"It's all right," said Irja. "You know what, Aunt Leida, I've invented a potato-digging machine."

"It's been invented already," smiled Aunt Leida. "There's one at our state farm as well, only it wouldn't work in a pebbly field like this one here."

"Machines are dangerous," said Kristjan.

"Oh no, my machine isn't. It's operated from a helicopter. The helicopter flies above the field and it has a powerful magnet on it. The magnet will draw all the potatoes towards it and the helicopter then takes the potatoes wherever needed."

"Wow!" said Helen with admiration.

"But how can the magnet draw the potatoes when there's no metal inside them?" asked Aunt Leida.

Irja was lost in thought. "All I've got to do is invent a special potato magnet. Or then a piece of iron must be inserted in every potato."

"You seem to have a few loose ends there. You must still make a few improvements in your invention. Meanwhile I'll go and see how the schoolchildren are doing."

While the girls were discussing the matter of the potato magnet, Kristjan suffered from great boredom. He scanned his surroundings to find something to do. At the bottom of a furrow he found a frog that was cold and seemed to be sad and lonely. When Kristjan put the frog into his sleeve to warm the animal up, it climbed into his bosom. The cold frog tickled the boy and he was soon giggling no less loudly than he had been crying just a few moments earlier. To get hold of the frog, his jacket, vest and shirt had to be taken off. When Aunt Leida had rescued the croaking animal and helped Kristjan to put his clothes on again, she said to the girls with a sigh, "Why don't you take Kristjan and just walk around the place. One never knows what he might do next."

"May we go to the end of the world?" asked Irja. "Where's that?" wondered Aunt Leida.

"Over there," Irja pointed her hand towards the horizon where the field and the sky met.

"Dear child, the Earth is round and therefore you could go round it forever without finding the end of it."

"I know that," said Irja. "But over there there's a round-looking place like the end of something, it's like in a ball, you know."

"All right, go to that round-looking place, but come back soon, will you," Aunt Leida told them.

At first Kristjan did not want to join the girls, but when Irja told him that he could make a great big globe jump in the round-looking place he agreed to go with them.

***

However, nothing came of the great big globe jump. Irja had imagined that behind the field there would be a great slope which was the round side of the Earth. But when they went on they did not see any slope — the field just stretched on and on, and on the left there was another field rimmed with fir-trees. In front of them there was a forest and a long whitish building crouching at its edge.

"I say, the Earth is round in a very big way," said Irja with disappointment.

"Irja, let's jump now," chirped Kristjan.

"Go ahead and jump," said Irja with no enthusiasm.

Kristjan jumped, fell on his belly and began to whimper. Helen and Irja helped the boy back on his feet and whisked the soil off his clothes.

"Oh, what a pest he is," complained Helen. "Stop whining, will you."

"Let's have a look at the witch's house," suggested Irja. Kristjan stopped crying and, struck with awe, looked at the girl.

"Where is that witch's house of yours?" asked Helen. "Look, over there," Irja motioned towards the white building.

"Phew," laughed Helen, "that's a pigsty."

"Even better," yelled Irja. "Race me to the pigsty."

When they reached the pigsty Kristjan was dog-tired. By way of consolation Irja said to him, "Listen, Kristjan, the piggies are calling you: 'Kristjan, where are you?' Let's go in and have a look." She tried to open the door but it was locked. OUTSIDERS NOT ADMITTED, she spelled out the text on the sign.

"So much for that," Helen grumbled.

"I say, Helen, we're outsiders only as long as we stay outside. As soon as we get in we stop being outsiders and can be admitted inside."

They knocked on the door. Apart from grunting there was no reply. They knocked once again, then they slapped against the door with their six palms.

Suddenly a woman's voice asked, "Who is it?"

"We won't be outsiders once you let us in," replied Helen.

A hasp clicked, the door opened and they saw a young woman in a blue overall smiling at them. The children said, "Hello."

"Hello, since you're not outsiders," said the woman. "Aunt Linda, may we come in?" asked Helen.

"I recognized you and Kristjan, but I don't think I've seen the girl who's with you."

"She's Irja. She's staying with us. Her mother went to Lithuania. She's a town girl," Helen reeled it all off in one breath.

"All right, come in, all of you," said Aunt Linda. "I bet you, Irja, haven't been in a pigsty before."

"No, I haven't. Neither have I been in a hensty or a cowsty before," Irja said.

Aunt Linda laughed. "No wonder you've never been in a cowsty, there is no such thing on earth as a cowsty. The building where cows are kept is called the cattle-shed. But now let's have a look at the pigsty."

She took the children inside into a huge room that was divided into many smaller compartments with partitions. In some compartments there were lots of small piglets, in some there were a few pigs of medium size and several big pigs had the compartment all to themselves. The prettiest sight was the smallest pink piglets who were sucking milk at the teats of a big fat pig that was lying on the floor grunting quietly. Every once in a while the sow cast a look at her piglets to make sure they were sucking properly. She had large floppy ears and she kept tossing her head to get the ears off her eyes like people do to get the hair off their face.

"These are bacon pigs," said Aunt Linda.

"What about these dog-sized ones?" asked Irja.

"You mean these young pigs?" asked Aunt Linda. "These are bacon pigs as well."

"How can they be bacons when actually they're young pigs?" Irja was puzzled.

"Aren't you funny," laughed Helen. "Young pigs are bacons of medium size."

"A bacon pig is a pig whose meat is lean and has little fat," added the pig-tender.

"Shouldn't they be called leanons in that case?" suggested Irja.

"Piggy, dear little piggy," said Kristjan, trying to pat the snout of a big pig. "Grunt!" said the pig and snatched at the boy's hand with its teeth.

"Look out, the old boar can be nasty," warned Aunt Linda. "Poor boy, did he frighten you?"

To Irja she said, "The boar is the father pig."

"I already know that. I've read books about these things," Irja replied, a bit hurt. "I also happen to know that a sow is the mother pig, so there!"

In a corner of the room Irja noticed a big and strange balance. It had a dial and a pointer but no scales. "Has this balance split in two?" asked Helen.

Aunt Linda assured her that the balance was in good working order — this was what livestock scales usually looked like. The pointer showed the weight of the pigs that were let into the enclosure behind the wall. Through the window one could see how many pigs there were on the scales at any time. The pig-tender did not have time to get the animals on the balance and weigh them one by one. Once every month all the pigs of the pigsty were weighed and the gross weight was then divided by the number of the pigs.

"Why?" asked Helen. "Is it a game of pig school?"

"Oh no," Aunt Linda laughed. "Pigs are weighed to see if they have been eating properly and put on weight."

Then Aunt Linda took the children to the pigsty kitchen. There was a huge closed pot there but no range beneath it.

"It's heated by electricity," Aunt Linda said.

"I see," said Irja and added, "it smells a little better in here than in the pigs' room."

"The smell cannot be helped," said Aunt Linda. "The pigs have no chamber pots. That reminds me that I must go and muck out. Although it's mechanized, the work has to be done all the same."

"Aunt Linda, please let us help you," asked Irja.

At first Aunt Linda did not like the idea, saying that mucking out was not a job suitable for children, but then she gave in and said, "All right, you may give it a try if you want to."

Irja had imagined that somehow Aunt Linda would, with the help of electricity, get the piggies on chamber pots, but the whole thing was quite different. The pig-tender pushed a button on the wall and a strip of the floor that ran in front of the compartments began to move with a rumble. Earlier in the day Aunt Linda had shoved the manure out of the enclosures from under the gates and now she shovelled it on to the moving strip and this way the pigsty was cleaned quickly. The girls were given a spade between themselves and they took turns scraping the floor with it trying to push the manure on to the moving strip of the conveyer. The shovel was heavy in their hands and they could not work as quickly as Aunt Linda did.

"This is called a conveyer," said Helen pointing at the moving strip on the floor and then she warned her brother, "Kristjan, you mustn't step on it."

But the warning came too late. Kristjan had already stepped on the conveyer where at first he managed to remain standing but then fell on his bottom. Aunt Linda came to his rescue. She grabbed the boy and put him back on solid ground.

"Oh my," said Aunt Linda decidedly. "A pigsty is no place for children. How am I supposed to clean you up now? I've got a shower here but where could a child in wet trousers go on a cool autumn day like that. Oh my!"

"Never mind that," Irja tried to console her. "A child must be allowed to enjoy nature. My father always lets me walk in the puddles when it's raining and then he says to mother that a child mustn't be completely denied the fun of encounters with nature... "

Kristjan, however, did not seem to be enjoying the fun he could have derived from that particular encounter with nature. He was whining and demanded to be taken back to his mother.

"I wonder what your mother is going to say when she sees you," sighed Aunt Linda.

All that mother said was, "We'll discuss this at home." When they were returning from the field she asked the bus-driver to stop by their gate. She left her form in the care of the other teacher.

***

"Let's try to be good tomorrow so that mother wouldn't have to scold us," Helen said when they were crawling under their blankets in the evening.

"But she didn't scold us today either," said Irja. "All your mother said was, 'I thought you had more common sense, girls'."

"That was scolding."

"Was it? But she said it so quietly."

"My mother always scolds quietly," said Helen. "But in the new 'house there is a boy called Sass whose mother's voice can be heard at the grocery store when she scolds her son. Sass himself bawls a lot, too. How does your mother scold you?"

Irja sank in thought. How could he recall anything like that when mother was so far away and she missed her so much. It just was not a good time to discuss the way her mother used to scold her.

"My mother only scolds me when I've done something really bad. When I've scribbled something in some important book of hers or when I've left a chewed-up gum on the pillow. Or when I've unreeled all the thread off a spool to make a bird's nest of it. Then my mother gets angry with me and scolds me and then I grow sad. After a while she grows sad too and then I try to console her. And after that mother will smile and so shall I."

Irja sighed. She missed her mother. She would have liked to be with her. And to have her father with her too... And she wished that mother could come to her at least for the time of the bed-time story.

"My mother and I, we always take turns at telling each other bed-time stories. And when father happens to be at home he tells both of us about the distant countries he has been to. Doesn't your mother tell you bed-time stories?"

"Of course she does," said Helen, yawning. "But now that my grandmother is in hospital and mother has to do all the work around the house by herself she has no time to tell us fairy tales because she has to feed the animals, cook the food, do the cleaning, milk Molly and do the washing... "

"But these are all very interesting jobs."

Earlier in the evening Irja too had tried her hand at milking. She had squeezed and pulled at the pink dugs without managing to get one drop of milk out. In the end a thin jet of milk had escaped one of the dugs and hit her in the face. Molly had looked angrily at the young milkmaid and Aunt Leida had said, "That will do for the first time. Why don't you two go play with your dolls now."

How can the adults get tired of such interesting work? That was not like tidying up one's doll's house or eating porridge or drawing letters in a copybook.

"Hush, listen," whispered Helen suddenly sitting up in her bed. She listened to the sound of voices from the kitchen, then all of a sudden jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen, her bare feet thumping against the floor. Irja followed her. When she got there she saw Helen in her nightgown already sitting in the lap of an elderly woman who had a round face and grey hair.

"Granny's back," cheered Helen, embracing her grandmother.

"Come, come, don't be so hotheaded," grandmother grumbled good-humouredly. "You're crushing me."

"Irja, meet my mother-in-law," said Aunt Leida with a smile.

"And my grandmother," chirped Helen.

Irja held out her hand and said, "Hello, you don't look one bit like a mother-in-law."

The grown-ups laughed and then Irja noticed a tall man with a beard standing by the stove who was lifting fried potatoes onto his plate from the frying pan.

"This is our father," Aunt Leida introduced him to Irja. "He has seen you but I don't think you have seen him."

"Why not? Can you make yourself invisible?" asked Irja.

"You can almost say that," said Helen's father, grinning. "Father's the head of a department," Helen explained proudly. "He's got so much to do."

"My father often goes away on missions," Irja played her trump. Nobody could beat that, and grandmother said, "All right, let me go on with my story about the hospital. The most important doctor asked me, when he first saw me, if I had eaten mushrooms the day before. He said that lots of Satan's mushrooms had been found in the neighbourhood lately... "

"Do these Satan's mushrooms have horns too?" asked Helen.

"Children, go back to your beds now," ordered Helen's father. Helen's mother lifted her off grandmother's lap and led the girls to the bedroom.

"Now that Granny's back you do have time to tell us a bed-time story, don't you?" asked Helen.

"We won't catch any sleep if you don't," said Irja.

"All right," Aunt Leida gave in. "What shall I tell you about? Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella or Snow White?"

"Just tell us something," said Helen.

Irja closed her eyes and prepared to listen to a fairy tale, but yellow potato balls against the mellow soil of the field kept coming back to her.

"Aunt Leida, could you tell us a story about a potato?" she asked.

"What potato?"

Irja thought for a while, then said, "I think its name is Tate."

Aunt Leida smiled, "I say, Tate is a nice name for a potato. All right. Let this be a story about Tate the Potato. Once upon a time in the wide world there lived a baby potato whose name was Tate."

"In the wide world?" Irja wondered. "Didn't it live in a field?"

Aunt Leida smiled, "A potato field is just one part of the world, isn't it?"

"Then you should' have said, 'Once upon a time there lived a beautiful baby potato named Tate. It lived in the world field'," suggested Irja.

"Why don't you tell us the story yourself?"

"No, no, I promise to be as silent as a potato," said Irja, and Helen pleaded, "Mother, please go on. Please!"

"Well... Tate the Potato lived with his large pink family in the long and straight abodes of furrows in the Saare field. Already as a child Tate wanted two things more than anything else in the world... "

"A doll's pram?" Irja made a guess.

"Oh no," smiled Aunt Leida. "The first big wish Tate had was to jump off a lorry. His mother had told him about the wonderful experience she had had when still a quite young potato girl — the rare pleasure of jumping off a lorry. The lorry she had travelled on had suddenly tipped and she, the young Potatilla, had made a fine roll together with the other potatoes: turn-turn-pop! over the edge of the potato bin. 'I must say that I'm a potato with quite a few nice memories to cherish in my old days,' Potatilla had sighed, stroking her children with her root fibrillae. 'There's only one important thing I've failed to experience in my life — the Kitchen. I hope you, my dear children, will have better luck. If you eat properly then I daresay some of you will succeed in life and even end up as mashed potatoes. And if some of you get into the fat in the frying-pan and have the opportunity of mixing with salt and onions — well, then I can sit back and consider that my life has not been wasted.'

The second big wish Tate had was, of course, to become a fried potato. People may find it queer, but then you must bear in mind that not one of them has been a potato, not even as a child. But when it's your lot to be born a potato, then the thoughts you have will be the thoughts of a potato. And so day after day little Tate kept thinking about these two secret wishes he had and he always ate his meals properly. Then autumn came, the potato furrows were turned and the potatoes were lifted and graded into three heaps: seed potatoes, potatoes for food, and potatoes for feed. The seed potatoes were mostly small but nicely round and healthy. Among the feed potatoes there were also many small ones, but there were also big potatoes that had been broken into half and otherwise damaged. By September Tate had grown into a handsome big smooth potato youth and without any hesitation he was chosen for food.

'Hurray!' cheered Tate, when he was tipped from the crate into the lorry back. 'That's life, brothers!'

'Don't halloo before you're out of the wood,' a yellow-faced potato with a big nose, who was known as Nosey, grumbled sceptically. 'You never know what's going on in people's minds.'

After a short ride the lorry stopped and the back began to tip. Rumbling, the potatoes rolled out. 'Heyday!' cheered Tate and gave Nosey a friendly pat on the back. 'What did I tell you,' he said triumphantly.

'Mph,' muttered Nosey under his nose. 'The ride was all right,' he had to agree.

The potatoes were heaped by a basement window and through that window the farmer shovelled them straight into the potato bin. When he was almost finished his wife, wearing an apron and with a basket in her hand, came to the basement. 'I'll take some potatoes for supper,' she said. 'That's what they're here for,' replied the farmer and helped his wife to fill the basket. 'Wonderful potato this year. See, one of them looks as if it had a nose in its head.'

It is a nose, you blockhead!' cried Nosey, sniffing indignantly. Unfortunately people cannot hear what potatoes say. Therefore the farmer's wife, when peeling the potatoes, did not hear the stark naked Tate giggle and sputter in the clean water in the bowl: 'Wow! Now I'm in the state of nature. Not one strip of peel to cover me. And you, Nosey, look much nicer with those birthmarks removed from your nose.'

'Never mind that,' whispered the embarrassed Nosey. 'I wonder what comes next.'

Now the farmer's wife sliced the potatoes, put some fat in the frying pan and slipped the potato slices into the hot fat. 'Oh, what heavenly delight!' sizzled the potato slices. 'What a dazzling-sizzling experience!'

'Hi!' a whitish flake greeted Tate. 'My name's Oscar the Onion, and this one here is Gregory the Salt Grain.'

'Nice to meet you, so nice to meet you,' said the inhabitants of the frying pan to one another. 'Aren't we mixing just perfectly?'

The delicious aroma of fried potatoes filled the kitchen — a smell that makes anyone's mouth water. You must admit that it is the smell of fried potatoes that makes a kitchen a kitchen.

Then the children too came into the kitchen and asked their mother,

'What smells so good? What's for the dinner? Delicious odour, season's winner! With empty stomachs heads will reel... ' 'There's fried potatoes for the meal,' said mother by the stove so hot. This brought loud cheers from the lot. 'Bravo! Bravo! Hurray! Hurray!' were cheering Kati, Mats and Kay. 'Please give me some potatoes, Mamma,' with plate in hand was begging Anna. 'Yum-yum, yum-yum,' made little Lynn whom mother-in-law had just brought in. 'Hold on, for there's enough for all. Finish your plate and have some more.' What more could anybody ask for than crisp, delicious fried potatoes with salt and onions well mixed through. And so Tate's dream had now come true.

Good night."

***

The next morning arrived with a cold, heavy rain. The children 'had to stay indoors for the whole day and try to find some occupation. At first the girls played with the dolls but then Kristjan came pattering in and upset all the make-believe soups. All mixed up on the floor there were beetroot soup consisting of red pieces of paper, semolina soup made of pink crepe paper and the fruit jelly made of water tinted with water colours. It was not so hard to clean up the mess but the charm of the game was gone. Then they began to draw with crayons. Hardly had they finished four houses and two elephants 'when Kristjan stuck a pencil in his mouth and yelled, "Kristjan is an elephant!" Carried away by enthusiasm, the boy began to romp like a little elephant, but then he fell and the tip of the pencil pricked his gum. The girls were frightened when they saw blood seep from the wound and Kristjan's yelling could be heard in the cattle-shed where grandmother was milking Molly. The first thing grandmother did was to mix some lilac potassium permanganate powder in water and then she taught Kristjan to rinse his mouth with it. After that she scolded the girls for not having looked after the child properly. When grandmother said that Kristjan could not eat for a while, the little imp started to yell again, "I'm hungry! Want to eat!"

Helen and Irja sat on the window ledge watching the rain pouring down outside and felt sorry for themselves.

"Why must the rain fall on everything? Why couldn't it just fall on the garden, fields and mushrooms?" asked Irja.

Continued in Part 3...