Picking Up Potatoes

Just outside of Gering, right next to Scotts Bluff National Monument, is a fairly new museum, formerly called the Farm and Ranch Museum (FARM), and now known as Legacy of the Plains. The museum sprawls over several acres, including some working fields and plenty of old farm equipment, as well as a large, dedicated, museum building, some fully furnished period houses, a barn, and a blacksmith shop. Although it's a mecca for school field trips, the museum is open year-round for anyone to stop by and see what farming and ranching were like in the Nebraska panhandle from the late 1800s throughout the twentieth century.

Every September, the museum sponsors a Harvest Festival, where the old machinery is fired up and used to harvest the year's crops: some combination of corn, dry edible beans, sugar beats, pumpkins, and potatoes. The old guys who volunteer their time at the museum are in their glory, using horse-drawn equipment, or driving vintage tractors through the fields. Even the shuttles are pulled by horses or old tractors.

It's fun to watch, but it is more fun to pick up the potatoes after an old potato harvester digs them up. Our family rarely misses a Harvest Festival. We take our own five-gallon buckets, but other people purchase gunny sacks or use Walmart bags to hold their potatoes. I didn't get any pictures of our actual work in the field, because it didn't take long to fill both of our buckets. It was a great year for potatoes!

Levi decided to stay home this year--he's picked up a lot of potatoes over the years--but Meagan's family met us at the museum. Everyone enjoyed riding the tractor-drawn shuttle to and from our vehicles, so we didn't need to tote those heavy potato buckets very far. 

Bill enjoyed riding on the shaded shuttle, with our potatoes right next to him.

 

Riding the shuttle was a highlight for everyone.

 

After our potatoes were safely stowed in our vehicles, we toured the rest of the musem grounds, stopping at the noisy blacksmith shop to watch the blacksmith at work, and taking a quick walk through the log cabin and 1950s house that have been moved onto the museum grounds. The kids stopped to pet some horses, but they were anxious to climb the hay bale castle, ride the peddle tractors, and take a ride on the barrel train.

Meagan and the kids watched as the barrel train pulled up close by.

 

The three older kids had ridden the train before, but Ari was too timid to ride it last year, so this was his first time.

And they're off!

The longhorns are always fun to see. On this day, they gathered around the stock tank like a bunch of office workers around a water cooler, just basking in the hot, late September sun.

By the time we had seen all the sights, we were all craving snow cones from the Snowy Bus, but it pulled away just as we got close. What a disappointment! It's a good thing that the snow cone place in Scottsbluff was open that day.

 

Ruthie didn't get a snow cone this year, but she was happy to socialize with the rest of us while we waited for our rather large snow cone order. It was a refreshing way to end the afternoon.

The farmer knows just what to do, for God has given him understanding...The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is a wonderful teacher and he gives the farmer great wisdom. Isaiah 28:26, 29

He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in broad meadows. Isaiah 30:23

And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain... And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. Deuteronomy 11:13-15

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Deuteronomy 8:10