Did someone say Baked Potato? That’s right we have moved on to harvesting potatoes. And let me tell you, when harvesting potatoes there is a lot that goes into getting it from the ground to the table. Being part of this has given me a whole new perspective of how we get potatoes to the store and from there to your home.
Did you know that Idaho is the largest producer of potatoes. The potatoes are planted in early April, and six months later in mid September they are ready to harvest. But what you don’t know is what it takes to harvest these potatoes.
Here is some information that you probably didn’t know. Hell I didn’t.
When digging up the potatoes you actually can only dig them at certain temperatures. That`s right,you can’t dig them if it's to hot or to cold. If you do they will shatter from the inside. By shatter, I mean they will get veins inside and begin to rot. So when it comes time to dig up the potatoes you must pay attention to the temperature of the ground that they are in and what it is above ground. Also if you let one bad potato get into the cellar, you can ruin the entire lot.Crazy to think that one potato can cause that to happen.
So when you harvest you need 2 different machines. The one machine is called a crossover and there are two of those on the field. Then you have the Combine (boom) that picks up the potatoes and puts them into the truck.
Let's start with the crossover, it's digging, in this case, four rows of potatoes. Blades placed on the bottom go under the potato rows, lifting the potatoes out of the ground onto a series of chains. Then the potatoes are carried back and dumped on a cross chain.The cross chain than carries those four rows of potatoes, to a boom that sits next to the ground, dumping them between two potato rows. We have two of these going at the same time. So that’s about eight rows picked up.
Now to the Combine (boom), it is basically set up the same way as the crossovers and it's picking up the 8 rows the crossover picked up, plus an additional four rows. So basically 12 rows are being picked up and put into the back of the truck. To make sure that they don’t bruise the potatoes, the boom part of the combine goes into your truck after putting the side gate down so that it can lower the boom into the bed of the truck.
From there we take the potatoes to the cellar, which is this big metal building. That can store up to 5 million pounds of potatoes. They keep it at about 42 degrees Fahrenheit, by means of air conditioning to make sure they stay fresh. Potatoes can be stored their for nearly a year.
(with a full load of Potatoes)
Until next time...
