Everything I apply to life I learned in the Maine potato field. Sort of.  

Maine youth help area potato farmers get the spuds into winter storage during school fall break.

Seriously, you start each  morning, listening to the radio to see what time the farmer is going to dig today. A little frost or rain over night means a delay, or no picking today. A repreive. But when you do get to the field after a big breakfast and carrying your lunch and water jug, you have to pick out a section. A section is basically, how long a responsibility in the field can you handle. If the rows are long, and one digger proceeds at a slow pace back and forth uncovering spuds to pick, you have to judge what is doable and still stay caught up. You don’t want to be waiting for the digger. You want to avoid being hopeless behind, rows and rows out of uncovered potatoes waiting to be picked. That is discouraging but so is life sometimes. The best lessons are mistakes or miscalculations.
    

     Four baskets fill a 165 pound barrel. You put your ticket on the barrel and it is placed in a can as the barrel is hoisted onto a flatbed farm truck. The potatoes head to storage, your ticket to be counted that night. Sixty cents a barrel was the pay when my four kids picked a few years back before graduating to work in the potato house or on the harvester. Kids spend the money if they think the item is worth six barrels of potatoes or whatever the exchange is as they contemplate a purchase. I have seen my kids pick something up, put it back on the store shelf and utter the word’s “Dad, that’s not worth six barrels of potatoes”. They worked too hard to part with their earnings for something deemed an unfair exchange or quality for the work required to buy it. Maine potato picking video I posted.
    

     No one leaves the field until everyone is picked up. If you find yourself behind due to poor section selection or the hot sun slowing down your production, others will show up to pick up your section to add to their daily tally. If you run out of barrels, you pick tops off the rows you get behind so when you get barrels, you can pick your section faster. Digger pulled by the tractor breaks down? You head to the woods to do your business or have a snack and enjoy the break. Or if hustling for a new bike, you trot down to a section that is behind that has barrels.You pick one or two barrels to tag with your ticket. You stay busy. You make good use of your time.

     Being outside in the Maine fall scenic foiliage is exciting and beautiful. Blue skies, cold mornings, blistering hot afternoons. That’s a lesson in picking potatoes, my entry level job that was the blue print for every other job after that. Growing up on a Maine farm was a valuable experience. And you are needed by the farmer and at both are at the mercy of the biggest unknown, the weather. Your section may grow or shorten too depending on the division marker of your neighbor picker who may be ambitious or become lazy in the sun. The section market may mysteriously re-adjust between where you end and your neighbor starts. End rows also can grow as the field lengthens. You find grass, tough picking, sods on the ends as a rule. Those are the picking ABC’s of mastering a Maine potato field. Watch the operation first hand with this Maine potato picking video