This week on the farm, potato harvest was all we had on our minds! The weather has been a challenge during this year's harvest, from being too dry early in the season to 10 days of rain in late September, but hey, that’s farming. This week's goal is to get as many of the remaining potatoes out of the ground and back into the storage. Here’s how we do it!
Step 1: Prep fields for harvest -
Before a field of potatoes is harvested, the tops of the potato plants must be killed. This tells the potatoes to put all their energy into growing thicker skin instead of growing in size. We terminate the potatoes 2-5 weeks before harvest, depending on the variety. (Some varieties take longer for the skins to set.)
In a non-organic system, potatoes are terminated using a chemical desiccant. This is a very effective way to get the potato vines to die and leave the field ready for harvest. However, we must take a different approach to the 50% of our potato crop that is certified organic.
Once our organic potatoes have matured, we will run a flail shredder through the fields to mulch the vines into tiny pieces, killing the plants and sending them into full skin development mode. While we wait the 2-5 weeks before harvest, weeds tend to pop up now that the crop canopy is gone and sunlight reaches the soil. We often run the flail shredder or our weed burner ahead of the harvester again to help separate potatoes from other materials during harvest.
Step 2: Dig -
Once the fields are prepped and the conditions are right, we head out to the fields to bring in the spuds. We have a harvester that can dig two rows at a time. We chose this smaller machine because it matched well with the destoning system we use in the spring. To briefly explain the long process of planting, we make a bed of soil, use a destoning machine to pull the rocks from the bed and lay the stones into the tire tracks, and finally, we plant two rows of potatoes in the rock-free bed. Using this system, we can limit the damage caused by handling potatoes and rocks together.
Here’s how the harvester works…
First, the potatoes are dug out of the ground and transferred onto a slatted conveyor belt. This conveyor is the first separation method, removing all the loose dirt and small rocks. The remaining material continues up the belt and onto the main separation table.
This table has a series of counter-rotating shafts that grab onto vines, mud clumps, rocks, and other foreign materials and pull them down below and back into the field. From there, the potatoes go to another conveyor, where we have two people standing to remove all of the foreign material that the harvester missed. At this point, it is crucial to get all of the rocks that the destoner missed out of the potatoes because the next stop is the truck!
The potatoes ride up the conveyor and into the truck, which drives alongside the harvester. Once the truck is full, it returns to the shed, where it gets unloaded!
Step 3: Unload -
When the truck returns to the shed, we back it up to our ELIMINATOR… Dun, Dun, Dunn! Ok, maybe it's not that scary!
The potatoes unload from the truck and ride up yet another conveyor, which dumps onto a star separation table. The table allows any soil that may have passed the harvester to be removed from the potatoes. Then, the spuds get one final hand grade. Removing all of the material before the potatoes head into storage is important.
After the final grade, the small potatoes are removed. These potatoes are not desirable for making french fries and do not look nice in a package with bigger potatoes, so we remove them and pack them separately. Once sizing is complete, there are only two more conveyors before they reach the bins! We use an automatic bin filler, which uses sensors to fill each bin to its optimal level. After the bins are filled, they’re off to the cooler!
Step 4: Storage -
Most potatoes in the United States are stored in bulk, which means they are stored in one big pile. We choose to use the bin method for variety separation and quality.
The first reason is simple: we grow over ten varieties of potatoes on our farm. It is much easier to keep them separate in bins rather than piles.
Most importantly, though, we use bins to keep the quality of our potatoes high. With varying field conditions, potatoes in one area of the field may be more prone to rot. Rot will spread like a disease in storage if not properly addressed. Separating the potatoes into boxes can better control an outbreak of rot; we only lose 1,000 lbs of potatoes rather than the whole pile. This method takes a lot more time and money, but it is necessary for our operation, especially storing potatoes for nine months like we often do!
Each bin is labeled with the variety, field name, and date harvested. The organic potatoes are then put into a cooler at 38-40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the non-organic potatoes are put into a cooler kept at 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit.
Why do we store them at different temps?
Almost all of our non-organic potatoes are sold to vendors who make fresh-cut French fries! If the potato's temperature gets colder than 45 degrees Fahrenheit, it will turn dark brown when fried. YUCK!!
On the other hand, we keep our organic potatoes at a colder temperature because they keep much longer. Also, we do not use a sprout nipper, so the cold temperature helps to keep the potatoes from sprouting while in storage.
As a small farm, we choose the smaller, simpler equipment and storage techniques to give us the ability to produce many different types of specialty potatoes. The spuds we raise would not fare well with the large equipment used in other parts of the world. Many farmers use various techniques to bring in the crop for their unique situations. We plan to continue to adapt our harvest methods as new engineering technologies are discovered.
I hope you learned something about how we harvest potatoes today! If you have any questions, please email us at info@redhillharvest.com or call (570) 900-1566.
If you’d like to try some of these potatoes for yourself, here are some of my favorites!
Organic Purple Potatoes
Organic Red Potatoes
French Fry Potatoes
Baby Yellow Potatoes
