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  • From: charlie taplin <vthick43 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] root digger implement options
  • Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2012 07:55:53 -0400

Hi,
We were blessed with family farm that once produced root crops for a store
and a University.  I have seen these in Vermont but don't know about other
places. It is a ground driven potato digger and here there are many left on
the farm. If anyone wanted me to I could send them a picture. I have on that
works and on for parts, but I use one like it those only PTO driven. These will
dig any of the root crops you wrote about.
It has like a 3' nose or flat shovel that goes under the rows(adjustable) and
chain that picks up everything, the chain goes up and out for about 5-6' and
all the soil falls on the ground and the crops fall off the end on top of the ground
or in my case Iam making a small wagon to go under the end.  The carrots are harder
to do but it will dig them, they fall through the chain.

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Mike Brabo <mdbrabo AT att.net> wrote:
Kathryn,

After years of back breaking hand digging we switched to an old fashioned potato plow harvester.  We pull it behind a JD755 4WD 20hp tractor's 3pt hitch and it works great.  It takes a few minutes to set up and get your "angle" and speed just right.  

Here's the link to the manufacturer:  http://www.farmingwithhorses.com/three-point-attachments

Regards,
Mike
Vesterbrook Farm - Certified Naturally Grown
Clarksville, Missouri - Mississippi River Bluffs, Zone 5b-6a

On Aug 18, 2012, at 9:34 PM, KAKerby AT aol.com wrote:

We are considering expanding our root crops next year, for livestock feeding purposes.  When I say "root crops" I generally mean potatoes, mangels, rutabagas, parsnips and/or large turnips.  Maybe some of the larger carrot varieties, but these will definitely be for livestock feed, not for market.  So "pretty" isn't important.  But harvesting them quickly and cost-effectively is very important.
 
The last time I planted potatoes, I spent what seemed like the next three years manually harvesting them.  The first harvest was to get them out of the ground that October, and it seemed to take forever.  But we had volunteers coming up for several years later, which tells me that I really didn't do a good job digging them up manually.  It was such a distasteful job the first time around I swore I'd never grow them again other than for occasional home use.  But now here we are, thinking how nice it would be to be able to grow them on a larger scale, IF we can figure out how to harvest them more effectively.
 
I Googled "potato digger" and got a wide variety of implements, ranging from black-and-white photos of what Grandpa used "back in the day", to shiny new looks-about-the-right-size imported from China, to industrial-sized monsters that could eat my house.  I'm looking for an implement that will efficiently harvest a wide variety of root crops, be small enough to pull behind a 20hp tractor with Class 1 three-pt hitch, large enough to comfortably harvest a few acres of any given kind of root crop, without costing the amount of a small country's yearly operating budget.  Oh, and since we're fantasizing here, it should be readily available on the used market for not-very-much-money, with easy-to-find replacement parts, and be simple enough that we can service in our own workshop or hire a local skilled mechanic, rather than exporting it back to whatever was its distant country-of-origin for repairs.
 
Any suggestions as to make/model/manufacturer?  And if my fantasy machine doesn't exist, what are my options from amongst the tools that do exist?  Thanks all.......
Kathryn Kerby
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html
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