- The Potato Patch,
Submitted by Mike Pitko
This is the eighth in a series of stories that Robert Hodge wrote in the 1980s about his childhood experiences growing up in Lawrence.
“There was one year in the 1930s that my father decided to plant three acres of land to potatoes instead of maintaining the strawberries which usually occupied the land.
“This decision affected my “chores” in numerous ways. First there were bushels and bushels of seed potatoes to be cut with a pocket knife. Each potato was cut into as many pieces as possible but limited by the requirement that each piece have an “eye” (as the buds are called).
“Buckets of cut seed potatoes were then carried to the plowed and harrowed field where a hand cultivator was used to make shallow trenches in rows through the field, the rows being about two feet apart. Walking up and down the rows, the pieces of potatoes were dropped, one at a time, about every foot along the trench, then with a hoe or a foot, covered over by earth.
“After a time, the potato plants began to show their crinkly rough leaves and at the same time, the weeds began to appear. Now one of my chores was to walk or crawl up and down the rows of potatoes and, being sure to get the roots, pull the weeds up. Some of these were taken to the pig pen for the pigs to eat. The rest were placed in the middle of the aisle to dry up and die. This weed removal was too large a task for me alone, and I was joined by my sister, and, when he was not at his regular job, by my father. We also frequently had one or more hired men to help. They were paid about 10 cents per hour to hoe the potatoes. They and my father used a hoe to remove the weeds, but I was not considered old enough or strong enough to use the hoe. I did at one time attempt to use it and while chopping at a rather large weed, chopped through my shoe and cut my big toe. It so bloodied the inside of my shoe and made me limp so badly I thought I should be excused from weeding, but my father thought otherwise, so I limped along the row with my soggy foot and did the expected chores. The weed removal task had to be completed several times prior to the harvest, but was not the last chore connected with the potato patch.
“As the potatoes grew, there appeared on them, eating the leaves, the black and yellow striped potato bugs. It was necessary to walk up and down the rows picking off the bugs and putting them into an emptied tin can. When there were a number of bugs in the can, the can was held near the ear- their crawling on the can and on each other making a weird sound—one that required listening to every so often just to satisfy the auditory senses.
“When the insects were picked off the plant, they frequently exuded a yellow liquid which stained the fingers and provided an unusual and not particularly enjoyable scent. Fortunately, both of these conditions were easily removed with soap and water.
“In addition to removing the insects, I also had to move the leaves about, looking for the clusters of orange eggs laid by the potato bugs. Since these were usually on the underside of the leaves, a lot of searching was necessary. When a leaf with eggs was found, it was pinched off and dropped into the can with the bugs.
“After the assigned number of rows (for the day) had been subjected to “search and seizure,” gasoline was poured into the can to kill the bugs. When they stopped moving, the can was emptied onto the ground and a match was applied to burn off the gas and generally fry the bugs and leaves with eggs.
“At one point, my father borrowed a spray can and purchased some poison. I think it was a copper-arsenic mixture called Paris Green. The poison was mixed with water and put into the sprayer which was then pressurized by vigorous pumping of the handle. When the hand control on the nozzle of the pump was worked, the poison was released in a spray. My father walked up and down the rows spraying the plants to kill the bugs, but it must not have been very effective for I remember having to pick bugs right up to digging time.
“Along about the end of July or beginning of August, right in the hottest part of the summer and the potato plants had died, a man with a team of horses was hired to come with a plow and plow up the potatoes. All the school aged boys over 12 or so that could be enticed to work (I don’t recall any girls working) were hired to pick the potatoes. It was hot and hard work. The clods of dirt had to be broken and all the turned over soil searched for the potatoes. The dirt got beneath the finger nails and attempted to separate the nail from the nailbed as it packed tighter and tighter. Since the work was done bending over, backs felt broken.
“I was too young to pick potatoes, so my chore at this time was to be the “water boy.” This meant carrying a bucket of fresh pumped cold well water and a dipper through the field and let each worker drink one or more dippersful. It did not take long to empty the bucket and it was a long way from the field to the pump and back. Since the demand for the water was high, I was kept busy.
“The potatoes, as they were picked, were put into wire baskets which held, I think, half a bushel. Potato sacks, made of coarsely woven burlap, were distributed among the rows and each picker would empty his full basket into a sack until it was filled—probably holding two bushels. A record was kept of the number of filled sacks for each picker and at the end of the day the pickers were paid in cash. The pay was probably five cents per bushel.
“The full sacks were gathered and placed on a horse-drawn wagon and taken to the back yard near the garage. The garage was always called that, but it was years before our family owned a car and that building served a large number of purposes other than its named one. In the garage was set up a barrowed potato sorter. This device was a long frame with two mesh chain belts, one above the other, arranged on a series of wheels that were turned by a crank (another of the chores assigned, part of the time, to me). A sack of potatoes was dumped at one end of the top chain, the crank was turned and as the mesh chain belt moved, the largest potatoes would stay on top and move to the far end to fall into a chute to which was attached an empty sack. When the sack was filled, it was removed, sewn shut, and replaced with an empty one. Smaller potatoes fell through the mesh chain belt onto the second or lower one. Again, the larger potatoes moved to the far end, fell into a chute, then into a waiting bag. The smallest potatoes fell through the second chain belt onto the garage floor. These were called the “culls.”
The bagged potatoes were sold to a dealer who purchased from all local farmers and shipped the potatoes out in Union Pacific Railroad cars. Some of the culls were taken to the cellar of the house where they were our food source for the winter. The rest of them were bagged and left in the garage. Every few days some of the culls would be put in a wash boiler on the back porch, covered with water and boiled on the hot plate until they were cooked. These were mixed with “shorts” (feed containing a large proportion of brad or wheat germ) and fed to the pigs. Raw potatoes were reported to make the pigs sick.
“The stored culls were always available in any quantity to us kids when, in our play activities, we wanted them to eat. They were eaten raw, fried (on my sister’s toy, but workable, electric stove), baked (in the oven of the same) or in the coals of the fires we were allowed to build next to our Indian wigwams or whatever hut we were using at that time.
“Another chore brought on by the potato caper was sitting in the cellar several times during the winter sorting the potatoes to remove the rotten ones. Now that was a stinking job, for a soft, mushy rotten potato, into which one’s fingers easily sank, was really repugnant to the olfactory senses.
“There was so much work involved in the potato farming, and so little monetary return, that the three acres were returned to being a strawberry patch. While the latter was still a lot of work, it beat raising potatoes!”
