Gallery 2 - Sense of belonging and taking roots into Greater Madawaska (1860-1960)
16. Drummond
Potato harvest in the 1950's (am_2395)
Potato harvest time is usually from mid-September to mid-October. Even though this photo was taken
around 1980, it shows how potato harvest was done in the 1950's. A mechanical loader is used to load
the potato barrels on the truck that carry them to potato houses. The people still have to kneel or
bend to pick the potatoes by hand. The potato pickers fill wicker baskets that they empty into
barrels. They get 25 cents per barrel and the best pickers can fill up to one hundred barrels a day.
Later on, in the 1970s, very complex and expensive machines were used to pick the potatoes that went
directly into trucks equipped with containers. Photo in 1981. Lent by Jean-Guy Plourde.
