Sunday, September 22, 2013

Potato Harvest - A Maine/Childhood Post

This time of year always makes me think about Potato Harvest.

IF you are not from Aroostook County & your school did not take a 3 week break to harvest potatoes, then let this blog post be an introduction for you, but you must, must dig deeper, (especially if you are a Mainer), (especially, especially if you are from "the County" & you somehow missed out on this rite of passage or your parent/grandparent/great-grandparent did & you want to know more).

First of all,
my Great-Grandpa Smith was a farmer.
my Grandpa Sjoberg was a farmer.


my Great Uncle Glenn was a farmer.
etc...

Before my Gram, (daughter of Great-Grandpa Smith & wife of Grandpa Sjoberg! - in other words, daughter of a farmer & wife of a farmer), passed away I was able to collect some information from her about her experience with the Potato Harvest & I have tucked away some thoughts about how I would like to share that someday.

Living on a dead-end dirt road with 8 other homes, (5 of them containing relatives), farming in general was just a way of life.  Our home lot was carved out of a pasture, so cows getting out & getting in the yard, or the garden, was a fairly "normal" thing.  (I understand it still is!  Right, Mom?)  This is not to say I paid attention to the details of farm life.  I wish that I had!  But it was as commonplace to my existence as our beautiful view of Mt. Katahdin or the fact that my mom would be making a homemade meal for dinner.

Maybe families do everywhere, but we had potatoes for dinner nearly every night.  My Grampie, being a small time farmer, had a stand at the end of the driveway, by the Calais Road, selling 10 lb. bags of taters through the honor system, with a tin can to collect the money.  I loved it when Grampie and I sat on the floor of the shop, and he would let me operate the tool that would twist the metal ties to close the bags of potatoes.  Or sometimes I would stamp the bags.

(photo credit to my big bro- Marvin Foster)

So my first Potato Harvest memories are just a fuzzy realization that it was happening.  That Mom was working for Uncle Glenn on the harvester and that there were a lot of dirty clothes & that is about all I knew.  A little bit older & I remember going to my Grampie Sjoberg's farm.  Too young to really pick but I guess old enough to not be too much of a nuisance!

This is a pic of my Uncle Paul, my mom's older brother.

Then, when I was old enough to pick potatoes for my Grampie, (my best guess is that I was about 7), Grampie took it pretty easy on me!  He would stop the tractor and help me shake the potatoes out of my weeds, (I hated fields like that!)  He would throw me candy from the tractor.  I even used a tiny-sized potato basekt.  It was a pretty sweet deal.  I'm so thankful to have those memories.  My Grampie died when I was about 12 years old.  I don't have clear memories of how often I picked for Grampie or how many years.  

What I remember most about picking for Grampie was the lunch breaks.  Nearly every field had a woodsy place which was of course handy for when you had to use the bathroom!  These woodsy places might have old cattle bones and old bottles but most certainly would have a lot of rocks.  Grandkids like Marvin & I & probably our parents did it too, would help pick the never-ending supply of rocks in fields.  Farmers like Grampie would dump the rocks in these woodsy places, which were sometimes in the middle of fields, and eventually they got to be quite the rock piles.  At lunch time we would all go to these rock piles & break out coolers full of all kinds of treats that would not normally have been in our lunches.  And I would observe Wes Kenney & think about what a cool boy he was, not yet knowing his brother would become my math teacher!  

I should add how this whole "Potato Harvest" thing worked.  At least how it worked when I was a kid.  From my "kid perspective" which may not be entirely accurate!  We started school in August & we went to school for about 5 weeks.  Then, we had a 3 week Potato Harvest break!  Now even if you were a picker, it would have been very unusual in Southern Aroostook to actually pick for 3 weeks.  So any way that you look at it, it was a vacation.  It was common for families to plan vacations to Florida during this time.  Other kids were in school and it was the off-season.  My family did that one year.

Potato Harvest provided an avenue to make some $.  We weren't from Portland where neighbors would pay you $15 to mow their postage-stamp lawn!  Sometimes my Gram would pay Pansie & I a few dollars each to mow her lawn.  Sometimes my Grampie would pay Marvin & I a dollar to pick rocks.  But for the most part, for a little kid, this was the only way to make some money.  And even as a big kid, Potato Harvest meant extra cash & time with kids from other schools & certainly a potato fight or two.



If you were 15, (I think this is correct), or older, (including my mom & many other adults), you could work for.... hourly pay....  wow!  This usually meant working on a potato harvester, but it could also mean working in a potato house or being one of the "cute older guys" who drove the barrel truck.

I grew up right up the road from my Great Uncle Glenn.  I absolutely did work for hourly pay when I got older.  I'm guessing we made about $5/hour, which would have been above minimum wage.  A potato harvester digs up the rows of potatoes & if you are on it, it is your job to get the rocks & rotten potatoes & anything else that doesn't belong off so that only the potatoes ready for storage & sale go into the truck.  There are breakdowns.  At least there were for any farmer I ever worked for.  It was not as physically hard work as picking was & you got paid more.  

Right up the road from my house was Uncle Glenn's potato house.  There were various holes in the floor that went to the basement for storage.  When it was empty Marvin & I liked to ride our bikes in it.  That is until a neighbor called my mom & told her how dangerous it was for us to be in there, we might fall down a hole!  (Clearly, clearly... not one of the "relative" neighbors!)  One year I remember desperately longing for a pink denim jean jacket.  I wanted to earn enough money to purchase it.  It was common to take a bi-annual trip to the big city of Bangor, Maine, (the other time would of course be during tournament week), to the big & daunting Bangor Mall for some shopping.  This particular year Glenn was filling the potato house, but also bagging up 50 lb. bags to sell.  I worked at the end of the conveyor belt bagging the 50 lb. bags & earned the $35 I needed to make my much-anticipated purchase!  

It wasn't without its hazards, as you may imagine.  Marvin got his foot caught in the machinery once and Joel did too.  In a non-harvest related accident, but an accident that took place during Potato Harvest, my 5 year old brother, Nathan, was riding in the back of the pick-up, (no seat belt laws 'til I was in 6th grade), coming home from Grampie's house & oh-so dirty from the potato field, and due to a freakish accident had the tip of his ear cut off.  

Now, if you were not old enough to make hourly pay or were not able to get a position doing so, you had the opportunity to PICK.  And I do believe that was the best experience of all!  In this case, a tractor pulls a digger which digs up 2 rows of potatoes at a time.  Unearths them, basically. 


Your job is to pick those potatoes!

I worked for Kenny Wilson.  Again, I'm not sure how many years, but at least a few.  I am curious if the farmers had to turn down pickers, because it is certainly true that if all the school children had wanted to pick, there would not have been enough spaces for them.  Some pickers came with parents and I probably felt the most sorry for them.  Potato picking was hard work and parents helped, but most likely they were also there to make sure that their child worked super hard.  However, let's admit it, I would do the same if I was that parent & my kids had the wonderful opportunity to pick.



Every picker got a packet of tickets with a unique number of them.  The farmer, or rather- usually the farmer's wife, wrote down the name & number so that they would know who to pay for each number.

During my time picking for the Wilsons, we earned $0.50 a barrel.  I wish I had a detail-oriented memory & could dredge up all kinds of details, such as how many barrels I could usually pick in a day.  But I can't.  I know that Wendy & Kerri Ivey usually took the prize for the most, by a long shot!  I'm guessing with my very fuzzy, vague memory on this subject, that I probably picked about 25 barrels a day.  

Every picker had a basket to use.  And now I have one of my own & I treasure it.


Some potato picking days were rained out & some were downright cold & some were sunny.  Some brought Uncle David & Aunt Susie with hot chocolate & all brought long johns & "old clothes" and boots & getting undressed on the porch because we were not going to wear those dirty clothes inside!  The potato field was a great leveler & allowed for excellent interaction between the so-totally-separate worlds of Hodgdon students & Houlton students!!

So the basic idea is that you arrive at the farm & are directed to the field.  You have toilet paper & thermoses of water & extra sweatshirts & a cooler of food that you may or may not have to share with your sibling who may or may not want to pick next to you and this may or may not be a pain come break time.  These items serve as excellent markers because sometime there aren't enough sticks or they get lost or don't show up well.

Potatoes are planted in nice long rows and your job is to estimate how long to make your section.  This is tricky & may vary depending on the field.  If you pick too long of a section, you are going to get behind.  And eventually you will get more behind.  And when breaks & lunch time comes around, you really can't stop picking because you are behind and need to catch up.  

Of course Rod didn't like to stop for breaks and would usually dig right on through breaks & lunch, much to the dismay of the pickers.

You don't want to make your section too short because you might get in trouble & after all, you are there to make some money & you aren't going to make any money if you aren't picking!  So, your section is marked with sticks or stuff and you now have your area to pick.  When the digger goes by you start at your marker & go to the other, filling up your basket.  It's best to pick standing up and bending over, but everyone gets tired and will end up on their knees for at least some of the time.  It certainly helps when those "cute older boys" stop and help!!  

When your basket is full you dump it into a barrel that you have put on your section.  Any kid worth their Aroostook County-stock knows how to go get a barrel, lift it up over their head & carry it over the rows to where you want to put it!  There are 2 shapes of barrels, I prefer the rounded ones, and I now have one of Grampie's on my porch.  However, it is imperative  that you make sure your barrel is in the correct row.  The barrel truck, (is that what it is called?) needs to be able to drive down the already-picked field & use it's big claw to pick up the barrels.  It can't do that if barrels are in every row, so your barrel must go every other.  


Once your barrel is full, (and again, this takes considerable work), you tag it with your ticket!  You have earned fifty cents!!  On to the next one...

Diggers break down & potato fights are instigated.  Relationships are strengthened & a strong work ethic is produced.  


I desperately wish there was a way to re-create this experience for my kids.  The culture & the hard, hard work.  This is why we take them on 22 mile hikes of the AT & why we help Micah trap muskrats.  The closest I can come up with is raking blueberries.  Now, to be clear, this out of shape Mommy has never raked blueberries!  But.  It is on my list & I have every intention of camping out, all nasty, and as a family raking blueberries together.  See, I would have been one of "those moms."  

Picking potatoes & the Potato Harvest are among my most cherished childhood memories.  I feel so, so lucky & blessed that this is my heritage.  

No comments:

Post a Comment