This column appears in the September 2017 issue of Potato Grower.
Gosh, I love fall in the country. Summer’s dog days may still be dragging on when this magazine hits your mailbox, but rest assured, fall is on its way. The days are getting shorter, and the nights are starting to get colder. In most potato-growing regions, harvest is just around the corner. Whether we’re active participants or mere observers, we should all be grinning and rubbing our hands in anticipation. Autumn is a wonderful time of the year, a time to make everyone feel alive. I love it.
I love that the highway is clogged with caravans of ten-wheelers loaded down with precious agricultural cargo and piloted by gear-grinding prepubescents and in-no-hurry geriatrics, reliably providing me with an excuse for being late everywhere I go.
I love that in some blessed parts of the universe, school is still let out so students can (in theory, at least) help out with the harvest. Even though fewer kids work the harvest every year, this remains a noble acknowledgment of the work that still drives the economies and cultures of countless rural communities. It also makes for a delightful dilemma for teenagers attempting to build their first résumés. Is “clod picker” an official-enough-sounding job title?
I love wondering at the science and math that went into the creation of the enormous machines charged with handling tons and tons of potatoes with precise, almost tender, delicacy. These miracles of engineering ensure that a beautiful crop remains beautiful all the way to the actual food stage.
I love the voices that for months have been raised in prayers for moisture and are now just as earnestly and faithfully asking God to hold back the autumn rains and snows just another few days. I love that far more often than not, God grants those requests.
I love the secret sign language everyone working harvest seems to know and understand: a quick two-fingered wave from the guy in the digger to the guy in the truck; an almost imperceptible nod from one truck driver to another; a thumbs-up from the farm manager on the ground in answer to a tractor operator’s questioning look as he points vaguely to the northwest. Just about everyone has a radio, but they’re often rendered all but unnecessary, which is awesome.
I love the bustling little cities that pop up around potato cellars and beet piles and transloading stations, where full-size pickups are the smallest things on the “road.” Miraculously, the unwritten and ever-changing traffic laws that govern these temporary metropolises are always strictly heeded, thanks in large part to the aforementioned sign language in which everyone seems to be fluent.
I love seeing just how quickly sparkling clean, empty potato cellar fills up thousands upon thousands of new tuberous tenants, still warm from the soil that has incubated them through the summer. And I love standing on top of the pile in the cellar and realizing the sheer amount of potatoes pouring in.
I love that a harvest moon is a real thing. Dust from the hubbub out in the fields may fill your teeth with grit and wreak havoc on your contact lenses, but it makes for some breathtaking moonrises and sunsets. A full moon rising over the hills is gorgeous enough when it’s pale yellow in June; a blood red or pumpkin orange in September makes you stop what you’re doing and watch as it climbs up into the sky.
I love the palpable excitement that courses through everyone during harvest, whether they’re involved with a farm or not. The feeling permeates the every building in every little farm town, from the coffee shop to the post office to the school to the gas station. Everyone can feel harvest.
I love that, even in the most difficult, penny-pinching years, there is a genuine, well-earned sense of accomplishment when harvest is all over. There are few feats in all the world to match that of bringing in the kind of successful harvest today’s growers do. I don’t mean for anybody to get too big for his britches, but it is an impressive and, dare I say, noble accomplishment.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, autumn is nearly upon us. More importantly, so is harvest time. Get ready to drink it in.