another hobby.

[MercuryMac]

Couper, I'm not much of a competitor so I don't build things to race with. No race. This is a legitimate potato hiller, although maybe 'homemade looking'.

28, potatoes grow pretty close to the top of the ground and as they get bigger and bigger, some of them burst up through the soil. This exposes them to the sunlight which turns them green and makes them inedible. We pile dirt up around the bottoms of the stems early in their lives and keep the potatoes covered. Usually you're weeding as you are hilling too. Usually you're doing all of this with a garden hoe, well, ---- not me, anymore, hopefully.
Laziness is the mother of all inventions.

[Couper]

Thanks for the education on the potatoes Merc.....very cool. I'm good at growing flowers but have extreemly bad luck growing vegetables....even tomatoes. When they do grow the dam chipmunks eat them before I can pick em....Arrrgg

[old28]

MM-- Thanks for the education, will be interested in seeing it in action. Be sure to get some pictures. Good building.

[MercuryMac]

You're welcome Guys.
Yet again I have jinked sideways. The last couple of days have been spent on my 'long neglected' Dodge one ton. I think the transfer fuel pump went out on the Cummins, so I'm changing that and some other needed repairs and maintenance.
It looked like my potatoes got touched with frost last night.

[Bamamav]

When I was a kid, we tried growing potatoes one time. I remember we got some sawdust from a 50 year old sawdust pile at an old sawmill and shoveled that around them to make them easier to dig up. Yes, in the old days, sawmills around here piled their sawdust up on the ground in piles, it didn't get used back then like it does now. Most of the time, the piles would be burning, either set on fire or just spontaneous combustion. They would smolder for years until they were gone. Don't know of any left anymore, guess they have all been cleaned up by now.

[MercuryMac]

Potatoes would be a lot easier to dig with some sawdust mixed in the dirt surrounding them. Good idea.
Sawdust piles can light themselves on fire. The fresh sawdust is green when it's put in the pile so it rots down slowly and creates heat.
Nearing spring, one winter, I was hauling sawdust out of a big pile that my Uncle had made thirty years before. We were spreading the sawdust on an oilfield road to act as insulation to keep the frost in for another couple of weeks. Anyhow, as we dug into the pile a wee bit we could see steam rising, more and more. It was getting hotter as we got deeper into the pile. No flames yet though.

[MercuryMac]

Here's more on the potato hobby. This is an old Allis-Chambers potato digger that is really worn out. I spent all afternoon fixing it up, so I could spend a few minutes digging my spuds before it starts freezing at nights. They will sit out there on the ground until sometime tomorrow so they can dry out a bit. Then I'll sack'm and stack'm in the far corner of the shop where they'll keep fairly cool.

[MercuryMac]

I've done some Imagineering on how to make the other side of my potato hiller. It has to be the mirror image of the left side. Here's what I came up with. I laid out some cardboard on the finished moldboard and drew around it, cut that out and placed it upside down on the next 'donor plow' moldboard [pic one] and drew around it, then cut it out. [pic two] is the new 'right-side hiller' moldboard. Because the plow moldboards are multiple complex curves they are not the same, up-side-down. Here I am trying to bend the moldboard more at the new bottom side, [pic three].

[MercuryMac]

More building today. The share is welded on the moldboard and front mounting bracket is welded to the front of the moldboard at an angle so I can run an arm up to the main crosspiece. Here's a pic of the right side mocked up.

[MercuryMac]

I've been picking away at the potato hiller again and it's almost done now. The right hand half is finished and mounted.
I won't be able to show you some shots of it 'hilling' in the garden, because we have had almost an inch of rain in the last week and there is no chance of that drying out before freeze-up.