Harvest Pictures

I was amazed at how many people would stop on the side of the highway to take pictures and watch us harvest potatoes. Then it occurred to me that if you had never seen spuds harvested before, it would be pretty cool! So here is my interpretation of how it works:

The windrowers (or crossovers) dig in front of the digger (some call it a combine). This gives the digger and truck a place to drive. The windrower drops the potatoes it digs into the next row over so the digger will dig twice as many rows at one time. Our windrowers dig 4 rows at a time, and we had 2 of them; so one windrower would dig 4 rows of potatoes and drop them on one side, and the other would do the same on the other side so the digger could dig 12 rows at a time. You can fill a truck really fast digging 12 rows at a time!
The windrower at work!
When the windrowers have "opened up" the digger comes through and fills the truck. The trucks have little doors on the side that can fold down so the digger boom can be lowered inside the bed of the truck, lessening the bruising that can occur. When the trucks are filled, they return to the cellar and the next truck pulls under the digger. Each truck can hold around 32,000 pounds of potatoes. On a good day we could fill 50-60 trucks.

We have people all along the "line" that take out rocks and clods before they reach the pile in the cellar. There are pipes on the floor of the cellar which air blows through so that the temperature can be maintained until we take the potatoes out in the spring.

We are happy to have finished harvest before that crazy snow storm hit on Saturday! We feel it is a blessing that we had no injuries or other major problems. We hope all of our neighboring farmers and friends will have good luck as they finish up also.