194 Our Farming. 



out much work. If two rows of potatoes will not make a load 

 (one row of boxes), why drive between two rows of boxes and load 

 them both at once. When potatoes are cheap, we sort right on the 

 ground, only picking up what will sell, and leaving the small 

 ones for fertilizer. They are worth six cents a bushel for this 

 purpose, and it would not pay me to have them picked up to feed 

 or sell, as a rule. I have tried all ways. But remember, there 

 are not many of them. One-eye pieces seldom give many little 

 tubers. I cannot give a man $1.50 per day to pick them up 

 when so few and scattering, and come out whole some years. 

 But when potatoes are a dollar a bushel it is different, or even 

 seventy-five cents. Then most of the small ones can be sold for 

 forty or fifty cents, which is margin enough above manure value 

 to pay for labor and give a compensating profit. Such years we 

 pick up all but the very smallest at once and store together, and 

 sort in the barn as we have time. 



We use no screen to run them over when putting in the barn 

 or cellar. The digger shakes all earth off. They are clean as 

 though sandpapered, one customer said. The little ones are not 

 picked up, so there is no need of screening. There is a sorter 

 made now by the Hoover digger people that will take out 

 the little ones nicely, as they are shoveled in and run through. 

 But I cannot use it in the fall ; the potatoes are bruised too much. 

 In the spring it works all right and will take out the small ones 

 as fast as a man can shovel them in, while another turns a crank. 

 One thing this sorter will do nicely: When the sprouts are just 

 starting in the spring, say, half an inch to an inch long, it will 

 take them about all off many times faster than the same men could 

 do it by hand. It will not do this as well after they get much 

 longer, as they are then tougher. 



Did you notice that we pick as fast as we dig ? Not dig a 

 great lot ahead to lie scorching in the sun. Of course, the soil 

 might be too wet for this, but in any ordinary weather we pick 

 right up close to the digging, and put into the barn as fast as 

 possible. Two or three days' exposure in sun will ruin any 

 potato for eating. Two or tnree hours will injure it. Letting 

 them lie to dry is all bosh, unless they are muddy. Just the ordi- 

 nary soil moisture on them will not injure them, if stored at once. 

 When you pit potatoes, do not the ones that are on the damp 

 earth all winter keep the best ? If some get pretty warm in the 

 middle of the day, we set those boxes in the barn and do not 

 empty till they get cool in the morning. The rest of the day 

 they go right into the pile in bulk as dug, but carefully. They 

 are not bruised, and are generally cool. Don't they heat ? Why, 

 they will average warmer than the temperature in the basement 

 or cellar, of course, when dug in hot weather, and when we let 

 in the cooler night air, the moisture in this warm air that rises 

 up will condense when it strikes the cooler air above, and wet the 



