The Potato Harvest

For those of you who may not know, PEI's biggest agricultural crop is potatoes. PEI is known as the Idaho of Canada. And have been enjoying watching the potato harvest from our window this year. Here is a quick crash course in potato harvesting.

Potatoes are planted and then hilled in the rows to try and prevent the potatoes from being exposed to the sun, which causes them to turn green.

As you can see, the hills are pretty tall.

Once the potatoes are ready for harvest, the plants are usually sprayed to "top kill" the plant that is above the ground. Then the first piece of equipment to come to the field is the windrower.
.

The windrower is the implement that actually "digs" the potatoes. It digs up several rows from the ground, send the majority of the plant part straight out the back while putting all of the potatoes in a nice windrow off to the side.

The windrower in the machine in front.

Then the potato digger comes and picks up the windrow. It does a bit more separating of plant parts from potatoes. There are also a few people who ride on the back to pick out rocks and things from the potatoes before they are loaded into the truck to go to the warehouse for storage.

Behind the windower you can see the digger.

The truck has to drive alongside the digger through the whole field. The harvest crew that we were watching had three trucks running.

A truck partly full of potatoes.

It was a lovely day to watch the potato harvest.

And I know for those of you who read this who actually are potato farmers, I probably left out some important details, but I hope that I was accurate it what I did say about the harvest.

Comments

A Perspective

I have already mentioned my "Word of the Day" screen saver that I have on my laptop that is hooked up to the projector in my room. I am learning that the words go in cycles a bit, so the same word will pop up in several classes during the day. Today's popular word was "entitlement." A fantastic word to share with teenagers who often think they are entitled to a whole lot of stuff. In fact, we as humans often think we are entitled to a whole lot of stuff when really we are fallen people who deserve nothing but death. We so often miss how wonderful and blessed our life really is and we get caught up on the little things. This video sort of puts that in perspective in a rather humorous way. I am by no means promoting this comedian, but if you take what he says to heart, it is so true. We live in an amazing world, created by an amazing God. We really should be happy with the blessing we have been given.

The Best Summer of Our Lives by Rachel Hauck

Twenty years ago, the summer of '77 was supposed to be the best summer of Summer Wilde's life. She and her best friends, Spring, Autumn, and Snow--the Four Seasons--had big plans. But those plans never had a chance. After a teenage prank gone awry, the Seasons found themselves on a bus to Tumbleweed, "Nowhere," Oklahoma, to spend eight weeks as camp counselors. All four of them arrived with hidden secrets and buried fears, and the events that unfolded in those two months forever altered their friendships, their lives, and their futures. Now, thirtysomething, Summer is at a crossroads. When her latest girl band leaves her in a motel outside Tulsa, she is forced to face the shadows of her past. Returning to the place where everything changed, she soon learns Tumbleweed is more than a town she never wanted to see again. It's a place for healing, for reconciling the past with the present, and for finally listening to love's voice. This was an enjoyable book to r...

Birthday Fun

It was my birthday on Saturday, so Wilbert asked me what I wanted to do. Since it was nice weather, I decided to have a picnic in the park. We opted for the easy picnic and picked up Subway and headed to the Elliot River Dream Park. It was a lovely day. After our lunch, Wilbert and Joash explored the park. They found musical instruments... played a bit of hide and seek... and tried out the slides. Joash did pretty good in the park, but he is still pretty timid and cautious over all. He never really dared to go down a slide by himself, but he was running around on his own by the end. After we were finished at the park, we stopped for dessert at Cows Ice Cream since we didn't get an ice cream cone we went earlier in the week. It was very tasty! In the evening, we had a bonfire and invited lots of people over. At 5 in the afternoon, we had a crazy thundershower pop up right over us and it rained like crazy. But by 7, the weather was great and once it got dark...

The Talens' Tales

Search This Blog