Harvesting the Potato Crop. 193 



puts a good many potatoes into the barn in a day. At the barn I 

 hand them off as fast as two men can carry them a short distance 

 and empty. When all are emptied it takes but a minute or two to 

 put the boxes on the big wagon. Two men cannot unload to ad- 

 vantage. Three of us can slap off fifty bushels in almost no time. 

 There is no waiting one for another. I have to stir to keep the 

 two men going and they have no time to waste if they keep up to 

 me. There is much in system like this. I guess I will not tell 

 you how many bushels we have sometimes dug and put in the 

 barn in a day, as not one in ten who handles potatoes in the old 

 way would believe me. If drawing to the cellar I use the boxes 

 just the same. If piling out doors I would, too, thus making the 

 piles altogether in a dry corner somewhere, not scattering them all 

 about a field where the potatoes were dug. Those piles I told you 

 about loading from alone were built in this way, off from the 

 field, so I could put that into wheat. It would surprise you to 

 see how quickly I can dump a load of fifty bushels into a heap from 

 the back end of a wagon. If loading on the cars near by, frcm 

 the field, I would do the same way, going with two loads at once 

 and an extra man to help unload besides the drivers. To load a 

 car from the barn or cellar, however, I use two-bushel burlap 

 sacks, putting a bushel in a sack. Two men will toss them on 

 the wagon then as fast as I can load them, and they are easily un- 

 loaded, and less dead weight to draw than with boxes. Sacks are 

 altogether the best for car loading. One man can shovel up 100 

 bushels into sacks while two of us have gone to depot with two 

 loads. If the loads are weighed at the depot, as usual, it does 

 not matter whether just a bushel is got in or not. We do not tie 

 the sacks, of course ; just drop them with a little twist of the top. 

 I would just like to race with you using these sacks, while you 

 loaded a car by shoveling into baskets and emptying at each end. 

 You would learn how we reduce the cost of production .in that 

 line. 



But now I must get to picking up. Do you know why I have 

 kept putting it off? Because I don't like to do it. I had rather 

 ride the digger or load potatoes or anything else ; but it must be 

 done. But there is much chance for picking up to advantage as 

 well as loading a car. I dig every other row for a ways and then 

 go back and dig the alternate rows that are left. Two men should 

 always pick up together, each taking a row and lifting the box 

 along between them on the undug row or the picked up row. 

 They then have just one straight thing to do, and will pick more 

 in a day than where all the rows are dug and they pick all about 

 them, and often have potatoes in the way when they want to seta 

 box down. When picked, they leave the horses right on this 

 straight row. There is very little carrying. When I load up I 

 drive so the row of filled boxes are between the horses and under 

 the wagon. As the team moves slowly along they are set in with- 



