Harvest

I first started picking spuds when I was in the first grade. We went to the potato fields with a potato basket and burlap sacks. I was a lucky girl to have my best friend come and pick as my partner. My dad was so patient to have us because we giggled and played more than worked, but we were pickers in training. We were paid 7 cents a sack and so we didn't cost any thing, but didn't make much either. This is Laurel and I when we were a bit older and more serious.

By the time we were in the 8th grade, we had graduated to a picking belt with hooks on each side of the back to carry the sacks and a board hanging in front to hook a sack on while we bent over and picked the spuds, throwing them in our sacks. When the sack was full, about 100#, we would stand it up and start a new sack. We would go up and down the rows bend over picking spuds and pulling the sack between our legs. We got paid 8 cents a sack and we always tried to get at least 100 sacks a day. The first day we would be so stiff that we could hardly move, go home, take a hot bath and then wake up ready to go the next day, not stiff at all. This would go on for two weeks. It really was a high light in my youth.

I learned to work hard, to enjoy work, I learned about other cultures as we worked along side the migrant workers, who were much betters workers than we were on our best day! I learned charity as my mother was so kind to the families who traveled from state to state living in the most abject conditions just to eek out a living. She would make sure the families living in an old run down shack pn the farm next to us would have blankets, coats, and any clothing we could spare. She would invite them into our home, although the children were the only ones who would come in. They smelled of camp fire because that was the only way they had to cook. My girl friend and I thought those young Mexican men were the handsomest ever!

My parents hated to have the migrant workers speaks Spanish. My father would forbid it around him. But out in the fields they would go at it all day long. Laurel and I would drive them crazy because we would speak Obb language! It was hilarious to see how they reacted, the more they spoke Spanish the more we would speak Obb. Obb is when you say "obb" for every vowel in a word. Come would be Cobbme. Halloween would be Hobbllobbowobben. We were good at it and very fast.

I LOVE the smell of fresh potato dirt, I loved going into our cellar seeing potatoes piled high to the ceiling. I love a good baked potato. I am a heretic in Washington because I have maintained these many years that Idaho Potatoes taste better! Too bad I have an intolerance for potatoes, or I would eat them every day.

This second photo is a dear neighbor who was wearing a potato picking belt as I described. Harvest was a great social time, with friends and neighbors. When I was 15 I would get crushes on the handsome, hard working, strong 16 & 17 year old boys. I loved working on our farm better than any of the other farms we would go to. Mom was the best!!!! She would provide life savers and gum to keep us hydrated! It was the only time of year I remember mom buying candy bars. We always had a milk can full of ice cold water with a common tin cup tied to it some where in the field. At the end of the day we could count on having a huge baked potato with mounds of butter hot out of the oven! They were never wrapped in tinfoil, thus they were so flaky and yummy.

This is threshing when I was a little girl. There I am with my sibblings in the bottom center of the stack when I was a little girl. It was fun to to be there, but it looks dangerous to me now.

This is my father as a young man with is antique tracker. He always had the same smile on his face. Have you noticed those great mountains in the back ground of all these photos? I really miss the mountains!