While the
other potato planter on display at the Kettle River Museum is mostly complete, this unit is missing quite a few pieces, most notably the hopper, which was made of wood. This, though, is not a bad thing, as it affords a peek at the mechanism which takes the seed potatoes from the hopper and meters them out, one at a time, during planting. The mechanism is quite simple: a rotating vertical plate divided into sections picks up the seed potatoes one at a time from the bottom of the hopper and drops them onto a rotating horizontal plate. Also divided into sections,, the horizontal plate moves the potatoes around a circle until each in turn is over an opening, whereupon it drops down a tube to the ground.
Similar to the other planter, a pair of inward facing discs open a furrow into which seed potatoes dropped. The two outward facing disc blades at the machine's back pull the dirt back in to the furrow, covering the seed and hilling the row somewhat. This unit, a couple of decades or more older than the other planter on display, has no fertilizer attachment.
We won't hazard a guess as to the manufacturer, but, if pressed, we would guess that this unit, too was a McCormick-Deering. Another quess would be that it was manufactured prior to 1930, possibly prior to 1920.