Potato Digger - Creston, BC
Posted by: 
T0SHEA
N 49° 06.340 W 116° 31.318
11U E 534890 N 5439312
One of the large array of farm implements in their collection, this potato digger is on display in a long equipment shed at the south end of the Creston Museum.
Waymark Code: WMKEFX
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Date Posted: 03/31/2014
Views: 1
A turn of the century (or even earlier) piece of equipment, this would have saved a potato farmer dozens of hours of manual labour. With a symmetrical plow share, it would have been lowered into the ground sufficiently for the share to be just below the potatoes. Then it would have raised the soil, with potatoes, onto the array of steel fingers behind, which allowed the soil to fall through but not the potatoes, leaving all the spuds lying on top of the ground. Now what our potato farmer needs is a potato picker.
I expect it worked reasonably well, except for one small problem. Any potatoes that were deeper than the norm would be either missed or sliced in two.
This area may once have raised a considerable amount of potatoes, as this museum has this potato digger and two potato planters on display.