Potato Harvest 2026 | Digging & Hauling

Oh my gosh, that was the worst idea I think I've ever had. Oh man. Storage is one of the most frustrating times of the year, so... Go backwards a little bit, Brian. Okay. Okay, we'll park. Good morning. Morning! So we finished up storage over here around seven o'clock last night. Didn't show you guys, it was dark though. And today we are going to move the equipment around the building to the back storage. And Shane's getting rid of all this dirt. The other thing I'm going to do is I believe I am going to clean the blacktop. So we'll just see how today goes. I think that we're going to have enough drivers and enough people. And Outback's a little bit easier with cleanup that I'll be able to take care of this and maybe pick some pumpkins for the store because we're running kind of low for the weekend. But yeah, so we're using the loader to scoop up the dirt. Shane's loaded into a dump truck and then he's going around the building and he is dumping that stuff. All right so I'm gonna see what I can do to help here and I'll be back later. Very exciting. I got new boots today. I had those for at least two years I think. Soles held up except they detached in the front here but otherwise they were still okay. But yeah new boots. Okay let's move some stuff. Kato's doing air ducts in place. It is time for me to go get loaded in the field. We are down Max and Paul today. Paul was only able to drive just a couple days for us this year. Max is out on deliveries and I'm gonna drive. We got Mark driving right now and Derek so I will be the third truck. So I'm gonna head down to the field and we will hopefully be able to get a little bit of footage down there. I'm driving Big Betty. This is the 24-foot body. I like driving this truck best, actually, at least over here, where we have plenty of room to turn around. We haven't been down to the field in a little while. We had three days of harvesting, two long days, and then our first day was like, you know, say like 10 to 4. By the time we actually started harvesting, it was probably 10 to 4. The last two days were... 8 to 7. But yeah I'm excited to see like how much is gone because all the yellows are gone and we've already filled up two bins out front of whites and yeah pretty excited. Loaded. I did not get a chance to put the camera out for you guys but I will catch it on another one of these. Look at that beautiful scenery over there. Okay, I'm going to go back to the farm. Hopefully I can come back. I'm going to get a camera in the truck. Maybe hopefully fly the drone and show you guys some harvesting. She stayed home for three days. She was so upset. Oh God. Okay, cool. So this year we did not put air ducts in the very front row there again, just because when we open it up, it makes it a lot easier to just start shoveling instead of taking that air duct out. Cause we're going to get in here pretty, pretty Everyone got here in storage and got Helper. So piling's going good. Storage is one of the most frustrating times of the year. So don't got a whole lot to say today. Yeah and by frustrating you mean hectic? Yeah. There's a lot lot of moving parts in this end and yeah I'm doing my best to try and help. So all right guys I'll be back later with some more footage. Idea I think I've ever had. We're trying to load a potato truck. It emergency stopped in the middle of the field and I landed it over by the pivot. So I was able to like see where it went. But I hope you guys enjoyed that drone footage. I'm in the Peterbilt. I drove this one time already today, just because my batteries were all dead. I didn't show you guys, so I'm driving this now. So this last run I just did was my very first run of potatoes in this truck, which didn't go bad. It is starting to get busy, though. There's one downside to this time of day. I forgot my phone. I got to go get that. I'll be right back. But OK, well, this is the only way I'm going to learn how to do this is if I keep driving and I got a lot of practice in on the skid steer over the last couple days, and I'm like so much better at operating that, so I kind of got to look at it like that, you know? I just got to do it, and I'll get better. Okay, I like pulling out of this way a lot easier than that way, because you have a long stretch here to see who's coming. The successful downshift! I did it. Now let's see if I can keep doing it. Heck yeah! Alright, well that made me happy, and I got nothing else to say other than I can downshift in the Peterbilt now. I know. I don't know if I can keep doing it but I did it that time. Hot cold, hot cold. Now I'm hot again. I'll get out of the truck. I'll get cold again but I'm roasting. Ready all the way up. Is that as high as you're going there? The garage doors? Oh right there? Yeah. 12 feet there. Yep. It'll take me another 20 loads but we'll go another 10 feet higher than that. Yep. You want some help right now? An old storage and The load that we're loading right now, my truck, makes about 100 loads harvested into storage now. Long way to go still. Some nice 10-pounders, huh? Yeah, these are really beautiful. Yeah, they are so nice. I mean, I don't see a scab or just a little russet like that every once in a while. Yeah, they look great in the bin, really. Like that. They're so bright, huh? Yeah. They're sandal. They really look great. I think we're doing that first thing, right? Right? Yeah. I'm getting it. You've got to do it to learn. He looked ahead and he was like, oh, I got to stop. Start slowing down at that telephone pole. Slow it down. Slow it down. Getting the update from the guys. Things are going pretty good. These potatoes are looking great. In a row. Just beautiful. Beautiful. So this is our Norwest potatoes now. We did all the yellows the last couple days and now we're on to the whites. Six o'clock. We are going to unload the next truck of storage and then the last truck is going to get parked underneath the quonset because we need to bag potatoes tomorrow. So I'm going to wrap things up for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed and I will see you guys next time.