in 2015 we purchased a new Potato Harvester.  By new I do not mean “New New”, but new to us.  It is a 15 year old model, 10 years newer than our previous machine.  One of our challenges of being one of Canadas smallest Seed Potato Farms, is that there is very little machinery in North America small enough to efficiently do the work we need.  This new harvester only picks up one row at a time, instead of 2. (many harvesters in Alberta can pick up 4-8 rows at a time), so in the world of Alberta Potato farms, it is quite a small machine.

To find a machine that would meet our needs we had to find one that was imported from Europe, where potato farms our size exist in abundance, it is a Single Row Grimme.  The search for this new machine took 3 years, as we could not justify a new machine and had to wait until a used one came on the market.  Interestingly when it came time to start looking again, none of the Canadian Machinery dealers came up with anything, despite looking for 3 months, instead it was Kijiji that came through 2 days after posting a “Wanted” add.