hi I'm Mike and I'm Erin and this is a potato quite possibly the most
underrated veggie out there today we take a look at this total tubular tuber
and get a chance to try out our brand-new implement for the BCS
two-wheeled tractor it's all coming up on our wyoming life
the lowly potato a source of tons of essential vitamins and nutrition
nutrients and elements like manganese along with antioxidants potatoes are the
the perfect food for you you could eat them for the rest of your life and never
have any deficiencies I mean I don't really know that you could even the rest
your life if you could you didn't need ketchup there was a man in Australia
named Andrew Taylor and he nothing but potatoes for an entire year surprisingly
his blood sugar actually improved he slept better and somehow he managed to
lose 116 pounds that's really crazy considering all the low carb diets out
there that don't allow you to ki actually sells a potato you can learn
more on the website us bud fit come the best part is if you want a potato and if
you want the best a potato can offer you can slice them you can dice them you can
fry them you can bake them you can boil them you can broil them it's really hard
to screw up a potato and you've been growing potatoes out here on the ranch
for the past few years they're pretty easy to grow aren't they yeah I mean
I've grown them for several years and and yeah they're pretty they're pretty
easy to grow you grow them from seed potatoes you plant them really early in
the spring and your seed potatoes are actually bred to be disease-free and to
give the the healthiest plants that you can in fact there's only 15 states in
the country where seed potatoes are actually produced and they're picked for
their cold winters that helps kill all the pests and diseases that potatoes are
really knowing about for the potatoes actually grow underneath the soil and
they have these really tall bushy branches that grow above the ground and
they get flowers and after the flowers bloom in a few weeks you have baby new
potatoes I actually read somewhere that the the flowers are poisonous you know
the same way that is they're in the same nightshade family as Tomatoes yeah
don't eat the flowers or the potatoes I don't think did you know that the
average American does eat though 126 pounds of potatoes
per year Lincoln can knock that out every week by Tuesday and did you also
know that I've what a potato's favorite horror movie is silence of the gams
that's not true stick around to the end of the video for a whole new a whole
bunch more potato facts and maybe a few more spud tacular puns but we do have
some work today to do today we're gonna get out we're gonna go start harvesting
potatoes in the big garden with the help of VCs tractors and speto I think that's
how you pronounce this spreader or speedo it's not steer too easy speedo
but every time I try to search for sparrow I get speedos it's an Italian
company that produces a potato harvester that attaches to the BCS and hopefully
makes this whole process a little bit easier you've been trying to get a
potato bigger from BCS for quite a while yeah I mean I just want a potato digger
of some form and VCs was great wonderful enough that they had a used one that
they were that was headed across the US they we asked if we could borrow it and
they we wanted to do some testing with it in our soil and they diverted
shipping towards us and we get to try it out so thank you bcs but first we got a
yeah we kind of get it hooked up the bcs is a two-wheeled tractor that we have
had here on the ranch for the last couple of years I use it for tilling
mowing creating raised beds and more it has really been a great addition to the
ranch and I don't know what I did before I had it the speto potato digger is
still on the pallet it came on from shipping and once we have it loose then
it's time to put it on the tractor
attaching a new implement to the BCS is always a learning experience each one
has a bit of a trick to it but once you figure out the app it made this thing's
appears to be a little bit finicky but once we get everything lined up you can
start attaching the PTL one thing that does bug me with some equipment is the
threaded adjustment screws I get the reason behind them but you know there
used to change the angle and the depth of the blade but what I don't understand
is why manufacturers insist on painting them a little masking tape book could go
a long way and maybe even save them some paint cause to which we just grind off
anyway but with the adjustments made it's time to head out and give this
thing a go first Oh we'll give it a low rpm test run just to
see what the shaking portion of the TCO will do here's how this thing works it
digs down into the soil hopefully under the potatoes down in the ground lifting
that the table is up sifting the soil away and leaving the spuds on top of the
ground ready to be picked up if it doesn't stir me up like that paint can't
shaker before we go
normally we dig potatoes by hand that's how I've done it for years
so getting underneath all of the potatoes with a shovel and popping them
up to the surface and picking them up as I go we have about a hundred and eighty
feet of potatoes to dig so we should have about a hundred and eighty plants
each plant can produce between five and ten potatoes on the low side that's
almost a thousand potatoes if the average potato is about five ounces then
that should be around 300 pounds of potatoes that's not something that I
want to dig by hand so I really hope that this potato digger works here we go
to start with I have it set at a depth that I hope will dig underneath all the
potatoes in the ground
but the BCS just doesn't have the snort to pull the digger through the dirt a
little adjustment and here we can go again
this time it cutting through the ground exactly how it's supposed to and
potatoes are coming up on the rock and then lay on top of the soil but it is a
bit hard to control and I can only compare it to trying to hold on to a
slippery button at the baby that just wants to run through the house in all
his glory but eventually I do get through a rope and we can take a look
back
our original thought was that I would run the potato digger in the video but
that's just not gonna happen but I can look at the aftermath with having to set
the depth higher and then I would have liked to
we have cut a lot of potatoes in half but other than that the potato digger
does what its name implies it digs potatoes
it also slices potatoes and it gives your husband brain damage but that just
might have been a pre-existing condition the way we currently plant potatoes the
potato digger doesn't work great for us if we'd held them which I've done in
previous years but didn't get to this year then we would be able to drive over
the hills with the digger and that might work better it would allow the digger to
only dig into the hill and not into the rest of the soil with a price tag of
almost $2,700 for us it's not economical either especially when I only sell
potatoes for $2 a pound however you plant a lot of potatoes and you harvest
a lot of potatoes and you Hill your potatoes in the long run the time that
it saves you will definitely make up for the cost it only take a few minutes to
dig almost 180 feet of potatoes a project that would have taken me pretty
much all day with a shovel and after picking up what we have dug so far it
might be worth another pass to try and dig up some more of the potatoes
but that can wait a while at least until my eyeballs you're done for the day yeah
overall running it you know it might actually take a bigger machine than we
have I guess that would let you you know dig in a little bit deeper and pull it
through and it might actually take out some of the vibration a little more
horsepower might help the situation but as far as it was it might have been just
a little bit too much of the pole I mean it did do what it said it would do it
dug potatoes and now I can take the potatoes over to farm store to sell them
to our customers it's true that the potato is the perfect vegetable and I
will give you all the proof you need no kid anywhere will ever want to play with
a mr. broccoli head mr. Potato Head rules of roast and for good reason be
sure to subscribe we have lots more on the way it's fall that means we'll be
fray check and soon working cows and calves and bringing you more from
Aaron's winter growing in the high tunnels what do you have going on in
there right now a lot of grass but I've got winter crops like spinach and
lettuces turnips Colorado beets carrots it's full it's also full of grass I do
believe though that I promised you some more potato facts and a few more potato
puns good luck with that here we go
so I knew a girl once who owned three french fry factories I was impressed but
to her it was just small potatoes okay how about this one
what do you call a potato at a football game a spectator and another all right
what do you get when it rains potatoes sputters what do you call a lot of
people somebody who spends a lot of time staring at potatoes well that's a
meditator come on guys this thing working hey hey hey don't turn me off
these things jokes are very appealing get it appealing
you