Harvesting technology: Part 2
When we left off last time we had gotten to the two-row mechanical potato harvester. The first of these machines were tractor drawn, mechanical separation harvesters.
To do the work they were supposed to do, required from three to six people on the machine to pick out rocks and dirt from the potato side of the table and potatoes from the rock belt.
The rock belt is the belt that rocks were discarded on for transfer into a bin on the side of the machine. When this “rock trap” was full, the operator could hydraulically open a door or trap on the bottom to dump the rocks in a small pile to be picked up later by a mechanical rock picker.
In the 1960s, someone had an idea to mount a huge fan and housing on the machine and route the conveyor or lags through the bottom of the housing and use the vacuum created by the fan to lift the potatoes and deposit them on the lags of the table so the workers could pick out any rocks that may have been there as well. Again, this machine required from three to six people to do the manual work of sorting the crop from the trash.
With this machine, it was discovered that the farmer could use a wind-rower which is a mechanical potato digger with a set of lags that crossed the rear of the machine and instead of dropping the potatoes on the ground to be picked, it deposited the spuds between the two rows that the harvester would dig next.
From the two-row “air-vac” harvester, the four-row “air-vac” harvester evolved. The first of these machines was a bit labor intensive due to the fact that it was now picking up anywhere from eight to 16 rows of potatoes in one pass. These machines can load a 220-barrel capacity truck in less than 10 minutes.
The newest of these machines require one person, the operator, as they have been refined to the point that very little trash comes from the field to the storage and require no one to do any separation or sorting on the machine.
I watch these huge leviathan machines work and remember the time I used to “get right up and around now and give that farmer a good day’s work!” Thank you Wayne Knight.
I see the crops being harvested and smell the freshly dug earth and sit back and Remember When …
Next time i will share some of my Harvest time memories! Ya’ll be careful out there, ya hear?
Guy Woodworth of Presque Isle is a 1973 graduate of Presque Isle High School and a four-year Navy veteran. He and his wife Theresa have two grown sons and five grandchildren. He may be contacted at lightning117_1999@yahoo.com.
