Here come's the spuds

I had the chance to take a job during spud harvest (ever wondered how people get potatoes? It's Spud harvest.) My brother and I worked there together for the first time at 12 and 13 years old. We were excited to be working until the second day of work. (We thought it would be fun before that)

Anyway, The first year was torture. It wasn't as fun as we imagined. We woke up at 6 and were ready to go by 7. Our mom would drop us off at the bus stop and then we'd sit there in silence for the next hour until we made it to the cellars. We clocked in and then headed up with one of the workers to the cellar and we would work all day long. We worked at the belt which meant that once the machines had picked up potatoes and filled trucks, the trucks would come to us we would hand sort through all of it. We'd pick out rocks, sticks, grass, mud clumps, animals bones, trash and even live animals sometimes. (I actually never picked a live animal out the first year I worked there.) 

We would take breaks whenever the trucks stopped coming which would usually give us 10-15 minutes to play and eat lunch or dinner before the next truck came. We usually worked until eleven at night and then we'd clock out and be home by twelve on to wake up five or six hours later. It was tiring and we learned quickly that it wasn't as fun as we thought. Long days of work, cold food (we didn't find out there was a microwave until the first week was over), rationed water (We also didn't find out that they had water pumps until the first week was up) and loud machines. 

Our last day of work was the worst. It had been freezing the entire two weeks so we had to wear heavy jackets. That day we slept in till 9 then went to work and worked till 4 the next morning. We were happy it was the last day and ecstatic when we got our envelopes of money and opened it to find a little over $2,000 in it. 

You might wonder why I named the story such a strange thing. Well, we made a parody of "Here comes the sun" while working. We only ever sang a little bit but, every time we saw a truck we would all sing sadly, "Here comes the spuds. Do - do- do -doom." 

You probably think we would never work there again, well, that would be wrong. We worked again the next year and both my brother and I were promoted. We both ended up controlling a machine and it was fun. (Besides the time someone almost lost an arm in the machine. I did turn the machine of in time though. Luckily.) And, you can bet I'll be working through that torture again next year.