LOCALLY-BUILT HARVESTER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30094, 30 March 1963, Page 7

LOCALLY-BUILT HARVESTER

W. Oakley’s "Spudnik” wthtoh is designed and built at Hororata goes into ortrit each year around many of the Malvern potato growers. With a crew of about five men the potato harvester picks up dug potatoes from the row and grades them sufficiently well for sacks of seed potatoes to be tagged by the Department of Agriculture for certification without further grading. The harvester is matched by a douible-row digger which was also constructed by Mr Oakley. This uses a pair of single row aprons running side by side and the

potatoes are lifted and dropped into a single row ready for the harvester.

Both the digger and harvester were demonstrated at the Amnat field day this week and impressed many of the growers who had not seen them in action before with the gentle lifting and handling with a minimum of damage. One of the local growers who uses the machines said that he preferred the separate digging and harvesting operations as he considered the period the potatoes were left exposed to the air was important in hardening the

skins and rendering the tubers less liable to damage during subsequent handling and transport. Two-stage hairvesting is gaining in favour overseas. The harvester has an apron Lifting chain to lift the tubers from the row but there is no share and a scraper bar operated on a crank just in front of the apron helps move the potatoes on to the apron. The grading unit consists of grooved rubber rollers which can be adjusted to allow different sizes of tubers to fall through. The tables pass on over the top to the inspection area and the bags.