In mid december every year the local farmers would close up shop and they wouldn’t return to the little white shack where they sold their goods until mid May of the following year. Crops just didn’t grow in the winter and the new crops for spring wouldn’t be mature until May. So, in early december i would make one final run to the little white shack on the side of the grocery store parking lot. I would stock up on potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions. The onions would keep for a few months in a cool dry place in the tiny house (the bottom shelf of the pantry was only about 3 inches high. you could just fit potatoes or onions or squash down there and they would keep quite a while without sprouting.). The potatoes and sweet potatoes were to go in the freezer. I could pull one out and thaw it whenever i needed throughout the rest of the winter. When i got home i already had so many things in the freezer…the frozen bananas, the compost pile scraps (to keep the ants out of them until the bag was full and ready to dump), the sumac harvest, the gluten free bread stuffs, and last year’s harvest of local barely dried beans. There wasn’t any room for the potatoes and sweet potatoes. The ice had to go in order to make room. I carried the ice into the yard and threw it. The larger piece shattered into little pieces. Cashew, who loved ice, began to vacuum them up excitedly. As far as she was concerned i might as well have just installed a ferris wheel and a couple roller coasters in the yard. She was having a blast rolling, bouncing, chasing, and chewing her ice pieces at her little self-made theme park outside under the laundry tree. The potatoes were in. I was glad she was happy and busy chewing something other than my things. We would get more ice for the freezer in the spring.