ST. ANTHONY — Consider the humble potato, hidden beneath the ground for months and now it is ready for harvest.

    Potato harvest is well under way in the upper valley with digging, trucking and sorting going on even during the night and farmers are enjoying rare mild weather for the fall season.

    The path of the potato from field to cellar involves favorable weather, the right machinery and experienced workers.

    Judd Crapo, of Crapo Farms, was busy Friday morning supervising the operation at a potato cellar on 2600 East in the Wilford area.

    He said the potatoes being brought to the cellar are from a leased farm about a mile south.

    “We couldn’t ask for a better harvest — the weather has been excellent,” he said, noting that yields are slightly above average and quality is good.

    “It just takes a really experienced team of help,” Crapo said.

    And he said the company takes pride in the fact that many of the workers in the harvest are young people.

    “The young people are a very important key to our operation,” he said.

    So what goes on during potato harvest?

    One of the key roles young people fill along with other farm workers is to monitor conveyor belts for stones, weeds, vines and anything else that isn’t a potato.

    As the pile of potatoes in the cellar grows bigger, the piles of stones by the conveyor belts grows larger, too. But before the potatoes arrive at the cellar they have to be harvested.

    To the uninitiated person observing from the edge of the field the three tractors out there pulling diggers seem to be working at random surrounded by clouds of dust.

    But there is actually a great deal of coordination going on say farmers, and Crapo explained it.

    In the potato field, the typical process is to use two “crossover” diggers running ahead   of a harvester, a tractor-pulled machine that simultaneously digs and picks up the potatoes already on the surface and uses a conveyor to lift them into a truck driving alongside. One of the crossover diggers throws the potatoes to the left and the other to the right to deposit the potatoes in front of the harvester.

    The process allows 14 to 16 rows of potatoes to be dug on each pass. A steady stream of large three-axle diesel trucks carries the potatoes from the field to the cellar.

    Ondrea “Ony” Palmer, 22, is one of the truck drivers, back for a second year in the spud harvest. Her rig is a tan Peterbilt with a diesel engine.

    She says matching the speed of the trucks to the harvester takes skill.

    “We go out to the field and go under the digger, then back and unload on the belt, then back to the field,” she said. “Last year I had a truck with an automatic, but this year they gave me one with a clutch. I have 10 gears — it’s pretty simple to drive. I was a little intimidated at first — it’s definitely a learning experience.”

    Josh Davis, of St. Anthony, is a student at Madison High School and he is taking advantage of the harvest vacation to make some money.

    Friday morning he was busy operating the conveyor belt that takes the potatoes from the truck to the sorting machines, and he looked like a pro.

    “This is my first year,” he said.

    Asked about the tempo of the harvest, he said, “Busy — it’s one truck after another — you stay busy 10 to 14 hours.”

    But he said the money earned will be put to good use, because he plans to buy a car.