Thursday, October 9, 2008

Guess What Time It Is...

For anyone who has never lived in this part of Idaho, you may find this interesting. During this time of year, in Southeast Idaho, there is a buzz going on. All of the area school districts are taking a two-week break. And there’s a whole lot of dust in the air. Can you guess what is going on around here?

IT’S SPUD HARVEST!!!

My husband’s family owns a farm in Newdale. Though all of the children are grown and moved away, spud harvest is what brings the boys back together (usually – we miss you Marc and Shan). There’s a flurry of trucks going to and from the fields and the potato pit, tractors slowly go back and forth digging up each row of spuds, and workers doing their best to put the potatoes into storage - everyone hoping that all runs smoothly and that nothing breaks down. Once the potatoes are ready to be harvested, it seems like a race against time and the weather, to get all of the spuds out of the ground before anything freezes and ruins the crop.

It truly is amazing what happens during this time of year around here. So to help others have a better understanding, I took a few pictures and videos for you to get a small glimpse of what it’s like during Spud Harvest!

Here is the digger loading the truck full of potatoes with another truck waiting its' turn

This is the potato pit where all of the potatoes are stored


My mother-in-law, Kathy, riding the 4-wheeler with Austin

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to upload the video of the crossover. What the crossover does is it digs up four rows of potatoes and puts all of those potatoes into one row for the digger to pick up. The digger digs up two rows of potatoes and the row left by the crossover and puts the spuds into trucks. Take a look...

2 comments:

Nicole and Lurlyn said...

Cool post Hannah. I have actually wondered how they harvest them spuds. Thanks to them, I can enjoy my yummy baked potatoes!

Kasi said...

wow, two weeks? really?