Aberdeen has many firsts in the field of machinery in relation to the potato industry in harvesting and handling of potatoes.
Mr. Isaac Nelson, a farmer and a man with ideas and good mechanical ability to match, is the person responsible for the ideas in developing the machinery that took so much of the back breaking labor out of handling and harvesting potatoes.
The first one I know of was the development of the first drive in potato storage. This is a storage cellar which would accommodate a team of horses and a wagon to be driven into the cellar. There the potatoes were in sacks, were lifted off the wagon and carried to the sides of the cellar and dumped, this having been done by hand. Since carrying 50 to 60 pounds each of potatoes about 15 to 20 feet was such hard work, Mr. Nelson invented the first potato piler. This was a conveyor belt on wheels whereby you could dump the potatoes into the conveyor while standing on the wagon. Mr. Nelson applied for a patent for this machine.
The next machine that was developed on the Nelson farm was the potato picker. As many hours the back breaking job it was to pick potatoes by basket or sack one can understand the need for this machine.
It was a conveyor attached to the back of a potato digger and elevated the potatoes high enough to have a sack on it. It also carried a platform for workers to stand and separate the foreign material of dirt and vines from the potatoes before going into the sacks. This operation still required the need for sacks and handling and carrying to put the potatoes in storage.
The next step was to develop a machine to elevate the potatoes from the ground to the truck to the piler without sacks or men having to touch the potatoes.
Mr. Nelson could visualize the harvester to elevate the potatoes from the ground to the truck, but how to get the potatoes out of the truck and into the piler was something he had a hard time with until a truckload of coal was delivered to his place. This stoke coal was the kind used in what was called a furnace with a stoker. The coal was ground up into small pieces so the coal could be fed into a furnace mechanically. The truck carrying the coal had a bed with a conveyor belt in the center.
The belt was covered with short boards that carried the weight of the coal. As you pulled out a short board, the coal which was on the board would fall on the belt and be carried off the truck into the conveyor and into the storage.
It was while watching this truck being unloaded that Mr. Nelson determined the way to get his potatoes out of the truck.
He took his ideas to TS Vanderford, and Vanderford thought they were good, so he had Knudsen’s (!) blacksmith build him a harvester and beds and Mr. Nelson built his own harvester and beds.
These ideas of Mr. Nelson have developed into a rather large industry and very sophisticated machinery, but the basic idea was a first in the potato industry and were developed in Aberdeen on the Nelson farm.
Handling blk potatoes from storage to sorting shed was the first in potato handling and started in Aberdeen. The machine was designed and developed by (Harding George) and built in Idaho Falls and brought to Aberdeen. Instead of sorting potatoes in the cellars, potatoes were scooped into a hopper and elevated on chains into the truck beds that had conveyor belts.
