I headed up to Shelley, Idaho to the Hanny potato farm for a weekend of potato harvest. Melanie Hanny is my long-time friend from graduate school way back in the day. We’d always talked about it (for 8 years to be exact) and I finally bit the bullet and drove up. Shelley, Idaho is about 15-20 minutes outside of the thriving metropolis of Idaho Falls. It is COLD in the winter, perfect spud weather. I drove past the high school, home of the Russets. Apparently, those potatoes can be fierce.

So, Melanie taught me how to drive the potato truck (9 speeds) and I made circles in the potato fields with my erratic driving. We started in the fields and once the potatoes were out of the ground, we drove the potatoes to the cellars. They do everything with machines, so the potatoes are dug out of the ground by a huge machine that covers about 8 rows and brings the potatoes into the truck. They unload them from the truck onto conveyor belts where rotten or damaged potatoes are picked out (along with rocks, dirt clods, potato vines, and anything else non-potatoish). We helped the hired Mexicans as they pretended not to know much English to get out of doing a lot. Things broke down a couple times, so things came to a halt.

Anyway, Bishop Hanny has about 5 cellars and they fill them totally full. As we were in the cellar, they turned the lights off on us and so we were scaling potatoes trying to get out. There are huge fans that blow cool water to keep the potatoes cold and then they keep the lights off once they’re finished. It was amazing! I will never look at potatoes the same. Next time you’re biting into your french fry or baked potato, you will think about the wonder of the Idaho potato. 

 

 

 
The harvester loading potatoes into the truck.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Standing on about 40 feet of potatoes

 

 

  
The cellar about halfway full.

 

 

  
Potatoes that made it through inspection…