Potato harvest memories

[essex man]

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Many happy hours spent chatting over the grader. Not for a couple of years now though.

Oh that bagger is familiar

 

[essex man]

Got out of spuds in 2002, never regretted it!
Still grown here but collecting rent is a lot easier and more reliable

 

[fermec860]

I'm getting into this now...
The photographs reminiscent of Flanders mud in the other thread typify how I remember potato harvests if my teenage years, there is one particilar ironstone field on top of a hill, that is so dry that it struggles to grow grass now; but 30yrs ago we struggled to get 3ton trailers of spuds out of there behind a Ford 4600. When we did get out, there was not even a second thought for the mud that came out on the road and down through the village.
The biggest problem was the village old codgers wanting to stop you and scrounge a handful of "roasters" off the load, not to moan about the mess. We dont have ground at full capacity half as often now I dont think.
Our spuds then were tipped in a stone threshing barn, lined with Sisalkraft paper, 40t either side and another 20 in the middle, it was a rite of passage to be able to reverse a trailer in through the barn doors, and to get the tailgate onto the Record elevator hopper tight round the corner. Final levelling of the heap was achieved by rolling the potatoes down a wooden door, which you would have to hold up to the end of the elevator, to fill the inaccessible corners.
Straw bale chimney stacks would have to be set into the middle of the heap as the barn was filled, to allow condensation to wick away. Tecnazine granules would be liberally applied at filling, by hand (ungloved of course), to retard sprouting, you could even smell the blooming stuff when the oven door was opened on cooking jacket potatoes. MRLs were still presumably far in the future.
Scattering of straw on top of heap and face, to stop greening, but not enough to stop heap breathing.
Final covering would usually be one hurried day in November following an unexpected -8 frost, and entail a foot of shaken out straw, to be covered again with a sheet and then a layer of bales if a proper cold snap was forecast.

When we were hand picking into boxes it was only a couple of hours and you were away from the wet slop from before it rained but when we had a single row harvester it took all day trailer was worst

 

[Farfrae]

The only thing I recall besides the scary 'ladies' who used to hand pick behind a Peter Solari (I think I remember that correct) two row digger was when we moved onto a Whitstead harvester in the early 1970s. Having started at 7.30 am to grease up and get going at 9.00 am when the 'ladies' arrived I'd be left (being the boss's son) after 5.00 pm to finish up and then load 10 to 12 tons of potato bags onto a lorry by hand, on my own, in the evening. No way was the old man buying a forklift for that.

Sometimes they got sold to the Heinz factory who always sampled 4 bags per load to check that they met specification. As my cousin was a haulage contractor who delivered them he knew that they always sampled the same bags on the load - needless to say those bags were hand sorted to perfection; the clods were in the other bags.

So perhaps it's no surprise I left farming a few years later and never came back!

 

[David.]

The "Ladies" were something else, a chap who had been evacuated as a teenager, locally during The War was telling us one day that he was seconded to work alongside the women picking spuds, there ribaldry had his face glowing red all day. One day they started on at him in the morning, that they were in their words, "going to get his cock out at lunchtime", needless to say he made sure he was taken unwell, and back to the farm long before lunch. He said they kept up the pressure for the entire duration of harvest, but never actually carried out the threat.
Gramp was taken bad with the scours one year; of course, nobody else could be trusted to spin the potatoes out for the pickers, so he worked through it. Periodically, would retreat to the hedgbottom to make himself comfortable. One of the women had a catapult and started firing stones into the hedge, and actually succeeded in flushing him out, clutching his rump.
I suspect the job was more fun then than it is now.

 

[kermit]

Dad had a farm walk here sometime after planting. At the end of the rows, where the planter left a few seed on the surface, it could be seen all the seed were purple. (P. M. B dyed stock feed spuds)!

 

[Pilatus]

Never grown spuds, thanks for these great stories.
I did do a stint on a potatoe harvester grading table with some ladies, it was an entertaining time. It certainly improved my vocabulary !!

 

[fermec860]

The "Ladies" were something else, a chap who had been evacuated as a teenager, locally during The War was telling us one day that he was seconded to work alongside the women picking spuds, there ribaldry had his face glowing red all day. One day they started on at him in the morning, that they were in their words, "going to get his cock out at lunchtime", needless to say he made sure he was taken unwell, and back to the farm long before lunch. He said they kept up the pressure for the entire duration of harvest, but never actually carried out the threat.
Gramp was taken bad with the scours one year; of course, nobody else could be trusted to spin the potatoes out for the pickers, so he worked through it. Periodically, would retreat to the hedgbottom to make himself comfortable. One of the women had a catapult and started firing stones into the hedge, and actually succeeded in flushing him out, clutching his rump.
I suspect the job was more fun then than it is now.

Wasn't quite that bad they used to claim each other's full boxes so as an 11 or 12 year old I came up with different colours of small fert bags cut into strips and tied to there boxes used to have 2 week holiday form from school soon wised up it was a lot off responsibility keeping count off there full boxes because we used to start tipping them into trailers so we had enough boxes for the day

 

[Renaultman]

In the very late 60’s, early 70’s, Johnson’s came out with their 727 system, which consisted of 3 x 2 row hoovers, one rear discharge, one with a conveyor to the left, the other to the right, making a six row heap, which an elevator then lifted into trailers. The elevator was so long it had a steering axle at the back.

The biggest tractors we had then where Massey 175’s and we needed 4 tractors to run it all, before the army of tractors and trailers needed to keep it going.

It also did carrots and onions.


I can remember the first harvester’s we used were the Whitstead Super Duplex, then Grimme Gazelle and Commander’s. All single row trailed, the tractor driver would tie a bit if string to the stop knob, get off and get on the harvester to “keep the women under control”! Then when they got to the end of the row, he’d pull the string to stop the tractor getting in the dyke. Some was bagged on the harvester and some was bulk elevated into trailers to store, the riddle out into bags later.

The sheds when emptied were used with trays and strip lights to chit the seed before planting. If seed was short, we’d cut each one in half.

I was driving alongside a single row Whitstead in 1976, we would just get enough to fill the chip shop order before it rained again or something broke. I was driving t an MF135 with a 3t weeks or similar and getting wrong for not keeping up, I was bogged down to the axles. I was 13 in the November of that year. Character building or slave labour, who knows? I loved it though a d still happy to lead taties if called upon.

 

[fermec860]

I was driving alongside a single row Whitstead in 1976, we would just get enough to fill the chip shop order before it rained again or something broke. I was driving t an MF135 with a 3t weeks or similar and getting wrong for not keeping up, I was bogged down to the axles. I was 13 in the November of that year. Character building or slave labour, who knows? I loved it though a d still happy to lead taties if called upon.

Still hand picking then started in the sun and had some get heat stroke and finished in the mud

 

[David.]

Some of the women would bring a child in a pram to the field. It soon transpired that the baby sat higher in the pram on the way home, due to the potatoes secreted under the mattress.
Hard to imagine the grinding poverty of these village women in the years following The War today, working for Christmas money or kids shoes, and pinching a few spuds to help make ends meet, given half a chance.
Nowadays they do lattes after pilates, and pay 20 quid to have their nails done.

 

[Clive]

Think it’s nearly 20 yrs since I was involved in growing potatoes now

still wake up in cold sweats thinking about it !

there are warmer, dryer ways to spend money !

 

[David.]

I have to say cold winter weather doesn't concern me as much now, lying in bed worrying about frost getting into spuds..

 

[essex man]

Our "ladies" got paid per 25kg bag, spuds spun out on ground for them.
They picked into baskets and tipped into bags.
Think I remember the good ones picking 100 bags a day.
Before I got big enough to lift the bags onto the trailer I would drive tractor for someone else to do so.
In my memory was always hot and sunny, but guess that's how memories are.
Grimme harvester with on boarder bagger came along and changed the world

 

[chaffcutter]

We started harvesters with a Gazelle, then a Commander, both with four women picking off stone and clod from the spuds. We were on a very stony field when we got a secondhand two row machine to try, can’t remember the model, but what I do remember is altering the settings of the roller and the pintle belt (hedgehog) with stone rattling onto the table, when suddenly everything went very quiet and the stone all disappeared as I hit the ‘sweet spot’.
What a difference that made, went up a couple of gears and not much for the women to do!

 

[bumkin]

The "Ladies" were something else, a chap who had been evacuated as a teenager, locally during The War was telling us one day that he was seconded to work alongside the women picking spuds, there ribaldry had his face glowing red all day. One day they started on at him in the morning, that they were in their words, "going to get his cock out at lunchtime", needless to say he made sure he was taken unwell, and back to the farm long before lunch. He said they kept up the pressure for the entire duration of harvest, but never actually carried out the threat.
Gramp was taken bad with the scours one year; of course, nobody else could be trusted to spin the potatoes out for the pickers, so he worked through it. Periodically, would retreat to the hedgbottom to make himself comfortable. One of the women had a catapult and started firing stones into the hedge, and actually succeeded in flushing him out, clutching his rump.
I suspect the job was more fun then than it is now.

one farmer told me the women were fighting in the field one day when he separated them he found out they were fighting over who's turn it was to go behind the hedge with the tractor driver at lunch time

 

[essex man]

We started harvesters with a Gazelle, then a Commander, both with four women picking off stone and clod from the spuds. We were on a very stony field when we got a secondhand two row machine to try, can’t remember the model, but what I do remember is altering the settings of the roller and the pintle belt (hedgehog) with stone rattling onto the table, when suddenly everything went very quiet and the stone all disappeared as I hit the ‘sweet spot’.
What a difference that made, went up a couple of gears and not much for the women to do!

Ahh the hedgehog! Yes! That was the commander?
Could get all our stones onto the side belt then you had picking on the few spuds that taken with stones

 

[Spud]

Think it’s nearly 20 yrs since I was involved in growing potatoes now

still wake up in cold sweats thinking about it !

there are warmer, dryer ways to spend money !

It's 15yrs since you packed up.
Time has moved on you know, machinery has improved no end since those days, far more so than for combinable crops.

 

[David.]

Having got fagged off with the problematical cage lifting wheel on the old Gazelle, during the slow but profitable harvest of 94, I bought a second hand Cavalier in 1995 for £2500, advertised in Farming News from Ramsey st Mary. It had a powered lifting elevator to take the crop from the lifting trace to the pintle belt separator above the picking table, and was a much better system. Got a chap with a low loader to take me to fetch it, and we had to do a fair bit of dismantling on farm, to get the transport width legal.
I used to enjoy jollies like that 25yrs ago, but I suspect that at 30, you do not see the potential pitfalls and problems the same as you do at 55.

 

[Exfarmer]

We used to dig with a Johnson single row, then two row, chain digger, and the b chains were always falling apart, or the slip clutches going. Hand picking by a big gang of women, who always seemed to be moaning that Dad was digging too fast. They also had a habit of filling their bags with all the best spuds every day. The worst bit was that before boxes like @fermec860 with the box tipper, we handled them off the field to the clamp in hessian bags onto a trailer which we kept moving along as we picked them up. No wonder we all had bad backs!

Bulk handling and a decent elevator into store was a revelation. Having lost a whole crop in the clamps due to blight and frost in 1965, Dad went to the bank to borrow enough to build an insulated store. He got the cash, but the old and wise manager said, ‘but you do know, young man, that everyone knows that potatoes will not keep stored inside’. !!

Perhaps he had leant money to the previous owner of my last farm. They had borrowed to build a state of the art store in that time. Filled it shut the door and a few weeks later the potatoes all ran out underneath. Not sure is itwasblight or the spuds has been rained on before storage.
i did go to a very large commercial store in the 90s where something similar had happened