LJ Idol Exhibit A Week 3 Shenanigans

[myrna_bird]

When I was nine or ten years old and growing up in Aroostook County, Maine, the Potato Capital of the World at the time, schools would close for about three weeks in the fall for the annual potato harvest season

Comments

[shanns_ljidol]

My great grandparents worked as potato pickers and my grandma tells me stories about working with them. This really hit home with me.

[myrna_bird]

Thank you for sharing that and thanks for reading. :)

[kehlen]

We still did potato-picking by hand in the early 90s when I was about the age you did :). I can so much relate to everything you describe here, even the jumping in the hay. Well, we did not really jump into it, but we certainly ran to play in a big hay barn near the summer house we stayed in, even though it was strictly forbidden. They kept these big rolls of hay there, tied with thin white ropes, and now I understand that our parents feared the rolls might shift burying us under. But it was so much fun to burrow in the hollows between them!

In fact, they used to send students to do a lot of potato picking, but already not when I became one in 1998. The two weeks of it were obligatory for students of the first two years at colleges and unis, and hated too :).