A turn on a potato harvester in Cambridgeshire!

This happened over 15 years ago. I still have the bruises.

 

Secretly I had always fancied having a go on a potato harvester. After all, how hard could it be?  Rosemary, my wife and potato harvesting regular, invited me on behalf of our neighbour and farmer Ernie. They were so short of volunteers and for one particular day and I jumped at the chance. I was much younger then. Hale and healthy and ready to show those old ladies, who work on the land, just how a vigorous male could tackle the job.

 

"Now the Ron don't forget, you wear two pairs of good fitting gloves, not too tight the inner gloves are liners."

"Yes, yes dear," I replied,  immediately dumping the information in my mental waste bin.

"Oh and keep warm, plenty of clothes because we don't stop. You can take layers off, if it gets warm."

"Yes ok," I winged dismissively.

"Make sure you find your Wellingtons!"

"If I can find them," I drawled having not the slightest intention of looking for them.

 

The next morning I paraded at 7am sharp with my wife and two frail looking very elderly ladies. They greeted me with broad friendly smiles, curious about this young man who they were meeting for the first time.

 

"Cakewalk," I thought feeling sorry for Bet and Audrey.  (Who would soon be ran ragged and amazed my manly display of rapid, aggressive potato sorting.)  I wore one pair of rubber gloves, a trifle too small, trainers, a jumper and jeans. My wife did mention that I was asking for trouble but so what!  Do women really know about the tough, agile, bodies of the male gender?  The morning was mellow, misty, almost damp, the Earth smelt good. I was raring to go!

 

For the more urban reader I need to explain what happens inside the specially designed potato harvester trailer. It is towed up and down fields by a tractor. Potatoes, potato tops, clods, stones and rubbish are thrown pell-mell onto a central conveyor belt from a scoop.  From this tangled mass four people, who stand opposite each other in pairs, remove all the soil and rubbish.  Also removed are the green, damaged, gnawed, holed and the under or over sized potatoes.  By the time all four persons have finished attacking the heap on the belt sound, standard sized potatoes should be trundled out the other side into an accompanying tractor-drawn trailer, that moved parallel down the ridges.

 

The rubbish, so removed by hand, is fed down waste slots that are positioned by the side of each person.  It’s is all very simple! Remove the waste and faulty potatoes and drop the waste debris back onto the field through the slots.

 

The tractor lurched forward dragging the harvester towards the potato rows that were ridged in lines of military precision.  I noticed at once that my extra height and weight made me susceptible to the rolling movements of the machine.  I was bounced from various metal rails and fittings.  As I absorbed my initial bruising the elderly, frailer ladies weaved lightly in harmony with the machine.  Their slight frames spared them the buffeting that I was exposed to. They smiled in a friendly way as I winced and smarted.

 

At last the metal scoop dug into the earth.  Heaps of soil, potato tops and potatoes spewed onto the central conveyor belt.  I attacked the moraine in a frenzy of energy.

 

"Keep to your own part of the belt Ron!" This rapid order from Bet startled me.

"You are in our way.  Work the area in front of you only, pick up what we miss!" The old ladies were policing the area of the belt closest to the scoop. Somewhat stung by this reprimand I confined my frantic scrabbling to the area in front of me. The humiliation was made worse by the hilarious grin shooting over my wife's face.

 

"I'll teach her," I thought and tore into the work with a ferocity that I was sure had never before been witnessed on a Cambridgeshire potato harvester!

I think it was the strange spots of cold that chilled my right hip, my feet and the right shoulder blade that caused the initial slow down in my heroic, hectic efforts.

This was strange as other parts of me were hot especially my hands. These were trapped in rubber and had become slimy inside with perspiration.  Their tightness created hands like claws. These failed to fasten tight on the objects that I tried to pick up.  My claws would, therefore, rather than picking up clods and removing them,  smash them into pieces actually increasing the work load.  Rosemary swiftly scooped out the extra mess I was making while I tried to find harder objects to remove.  Objects that would be retained in my claws.

 

The chilly patches turned numbness and my hands became wetter and wetter.  How I longed for more clothes, bigger gloves and absorbent glove liners inside.

The contents of my enfeebled hands had missed the disposal slots so often a pile of clods, stones and twisting potato tops had trapped my freezing feet.  (Oh how I longed for my wellingtons and thick socks.)  I was pinioned, unable to move. I was therefore unable to resist the lurching movement of the trailer by adjusting my feet.  Like a scarecrow stuck on a pole, I was thrashed too and fro.  Impaled on pipes and rapped by rails. Goodness was this Hell?

 

Every moment my gloom, acute discomfort, and pathetic potato sorting efforts were witnessed by three women, who actually seemed to be revelling in my agony.

 

"Wheelie Row!" Came a warning shout from Audrey. I soon found out what this warning meant, The machine was about to scoop out a row of potatoes that was compacted by regular processions of tractor wheels. This happens over the life of the potato plants as the same furrows are driven down by tractor wheels to spray, ridge and tend the potato crop.

 

The Wheelie Row horror rendered me speechless and virtually motionless. Soil, like concrete, poured into the machine. The potatoes were encased in mud like cement. They had to be ripped out from their hard clay shells by hand.

 

By this time I was almost up to my waist in field debris and was horrified at the appalling sight of the new challenge before me.  My female assistants, dextrous and nimble extracted potatoes from their clay coffins, twirled away sinewy potato tops all in the same movement.

 

By this time I was reduced to working with one hand. Exhaustion plus the repetitive pain inflicted by potatoes and debris bouncing on my poorly protected right hand had reduced me to such a sad state. The other three employees worked on tirelessly, happily gossiping as they toiled.

 

"Docky Time," came the shout and to my intense relief all the rolling machines came to a halt.  Docky time means food time in the Cambridgeshire dialect. Out jumped the three ladies to guzzle tea and rolls. I remained buried to the waist in mud clods, frozen stiff and miserable. I began extricating myself from my home made swamp.

 

"Do you think your Ron is enjoying it?" said Ernie the farmer. "I don't think so," said my sniggering wife. Oh how they all chuckled in glee at the city boy's misfortune. I staggered down the iron steps and onto the ground.  I lay down, prone, on the edge of a grassy ditch.  My hands were cramping; my head spinning.  My wife poured me tea from a flask and handed it to me.  I received it gratefully, as would a weak starving child.

 

One need not go through the hateful afternoon of similar events.  More wretched, miserable hours continued!  More hateful Wheelie Rows with more gloating chuckles from the ladies!

 

Needless to say Ernie sent no more invitations for me to serve on his potato harvester. Every night for the next week I dreamt of potatoes, like primed hand grenades, bouncing down a conveyor belt towards me.

 

They say I was the talk of the local village for weeks.  My own wife being my biggest critic!  I just had to accept it but with the following rationale. Women have always been more manually dextrous and supple than men.  Old age, I now realised, was an advantage to potato harvesting folk and at that moment I was just too young! Perhaps I would give it another try when I was sixty five.

Author's Note

Never disrespect farm wives!

Reviews

[Detective Watts]

Fancies, Trifle, Urban reader, a story about potato farming. Your the only place you can get this kind of stuff. While everyone else is fighting over the joy that comes from writing the best vampire story, you invented your own kind and cornered the market.

[Cherrie Palmer]

Ron, you are a hoot this is great!