Potato Harvest in Ririe Idaho

I worked Spud Harvest for a good friend, Brigham, this past week.  I only worked four days but I still worked about 40+ hours.  I will have to give a play by play of each day to explain my experience.

Monday Brigham put me in my spud truck (see picture below) and took me out to the field to learn how to load the truck alongside the tractor with the 'loader'.  You have to be a certain distance from the tractor and you follow alongside at the same speed as the tractor and there are two lights, red and green, if the green light comes on you speed up until it goes off then you keep pace again.  Same thing with the red but you slow down.  I'm sure you understand.  So Brigham made the mistake of telling me to stop driving so I did! and then the potatoes came flowing over the top of my truck!  Well, I learned quickly how to follow alongside the tractor and not stop until I'm loaded.  Later that day I was driving behind another spud truck waiting for my turn beside the tractor, the trucks ahead of me stopped so I did also.  I pulled out my air brake and then jumped out to see what was going on.  I was outside about 3-4 minutes and then hopped back in.  I pushed my air brake off and an alarm went off.  I tried a bunch of different things but to no avail.  Exasperated I called Brigham.  He said he'd be out as soon as possible to help me.  While I was waiting I walked to the tractor that Brigham's dad was driving and told him my situation, he was like I think your air just needs to build pressure.  So we walked back to my truck to check it out and sure enough the alarm was off and my truck was fine.  Just then Brigham pulled up.... Oh No!  So I had to apologize but lucky for me Brigham brought his dad's dinner with him.  Brigham was a great sport in helping me figure out what to do and not getting frustrated.  We broke down the first two days for at least an hour or so each time and I never saw him loose his temper.

My Spud Truck #99

Tuesday went pretty well.  At the end of the night I took another driver, Ben's, truck home to the shop.  He had a really old truck, a 92, it was so old I had to pull the choke out to kill it.  I pulled up beside the shop and turned the truck off and pulled out the choke.  Well.... the choke kept coming... and the truck didn't turn off!  I kept trying by pushing the choke and and pulling it out and it didn't solve the problem. The truck just kept running!  I tried calling Brigham and he ignored me, so I txt him and told him what happened and he still didn't answer.  So Gary, another driver, showed up and I told him my situation.  He couldn't kill the truck either, I swore to everyone that I did not break the truck!  Finally Jeff, Brigham's cousin, came over and opened the hood and manually pulled the choke to kill the truck.  I finally could go home still swearing I didn't break the truck and I told Ben, I broke your truck!  And he responds... "Hey I didn't break your truck!"

Sunset shot from inside my cab at the review mirror.

Wednesday was great and so was Thursday.  We ended early on Thursday, like 7pm because Brigham's grandpa passed away.  It was a blessing though because he was really ill and in a lot of pain so everyone was just waiting for him to be sent on.  It was such a great blessing though to go and work for Brigham.  He was a great boss and super fun to be around working.  I also felt like I drew back on my roots of farm/ranch work from my childhood.  It renewed my admiration for farmers and all the work they do. 

Idaho sunset across the already harvested wheat field

The cellar all full of potatoes