The soil is too wet, the potato plants are too tall. This makes the potato harvester inefficient, and tons of potatoes fall through the grate that is jammed wide, which is just meant for letting the plant stems fall through. Sverre tells me that after a frost, the plants wilt and get very soft, and then this is not an issue. Randsfjord hadn’t seen a frost yet. I ask him if we are doing the project too soon? He said, it’s also risky to leave the harvest too late. The potatoes could become too sweet if left too long. I called Sverre at 9pm that night. He had just come in to the house. Since we said goodbye in the afternoon, he’d been driving a different machine in the rain to cut all the potato plants down. So that we all could have a better day tomorrow. I learned two things.
1) that farmwork really is like performance work. You have an idea of how to get a certain outcome in theory, but in the moment you also have to listen, react, improvise, judge. Sometimes you have to go a little extra because that’s what the situation demands, and
2) when you can work with a person who cares… cares about his work, cares about your work, really wonderful, moving things can happen.
Below: handpicking the potatoes left on the field. Heavy work.
