Harvest break

CARIBOU, Maine -- To the teenagers toiling in the dirt at the Holmes farm last month, picking potatoes was anything but nostalgic. The sun beat down on their heads, and the wind blew dust into their eyes. Their backs ached from bending and crouching. Sometimes they cracked jokes to break the monotony as they made their slow way along the seemingly endless rows of potatoes.

To the adults who paused to watch the pickers fill their handmade wooden baskets -- farmer Dale Holmes ; his wife, Phyllis ; other older Mainers who stopped to snap pictures -- the sight of the old-fashioned harvest was something rare to be savored.

For generations, the potatoes grown in northern Maine were picked by hand, during several weeks each autumn when an army of children, let out of school for the harvest, put down their books and pick up potato baskets. Across vast Aroostook County, where striped farmland rolls away in every direction, almost every family helped harvest potatoes. The experience forged a common bond across the region, even among strangers, and people in the region say it taught them lasting lessons about hard work and perseverance.

The old way of picking potatoes has nearly disappeared in northern Maine. Only three or four potato farms still pick their crops by hand, out of about 280 total farms, according to the Maine Potato Board; the rest harvest with machines. In Caribou, seven hours north of Boston, the Holmeses are easing into retirement and say this fall will probably be their last big harvest. Partly out of nostalgia, they chose to handpick their six acres.

So pervasive is the sense of vanishing tradition, even younger people lament the passing of the old ways.

``That was what Maine was about -- you'd get up before the sun, and everyone you knew would be there," said Adam Bither , 23, of Linneus. ``The older guys would play tricks on you, and you learned how to earn your own money. And sometimes people would stop to help just for fun."

Though just a fraction of students still work in the fields, most schools still close for ``harvest recess." Some school districts are reconsidering the traditional calendar, which requires schools to open early, in mid-August, to make up for the fall break. But some farmers say the break is still essential, because they hire older students to drive the harvest machines. And some families say they are deeply attached to the custom, despite the diminishing need for it, because it connects them to the past.

In Hodgdon, a town of about 1,200 people, school officials recently shortened the harvest break for elementary school pupils to one week. High school students still get three weeks off. In nearby Houlton, a larger town where the break is three weeks for all grades, the school board is considering a similar update. A recent survey of Houlton parents indicated that 70 percent favored a change.

``You're so torn," said Lisa Winship of Hodgdon, a mother of two whose husband is a farmer. ``You want to support the farmers, but you see the benefit of not having three weeks off -- especially for the little ones, who lose all that information they just learned."

Maine potato farming has declined since its peak early last century, when the crop covered some 200,000 acres and dominated the economy. Today, about 57,000 acres are farmed, and hundreds of small family farms have been consolidated into larger, more efficient operations. Partly because of the shift in farming, Aroostook County has lost about 20,000 residents since 1980.

But farming remains a cornerstone of life in the region.

``In our economy, farming is huge," said Franklin McElwain , a farmer and the school superintendent in Caribou, where a recent survey suggested that less than a quarter of students work the harvest. ``The farms only need a handful of people, but where are they going to come from for three weeks?"

On a crisp September morning at the Holmes farm, 10 students, mostly teenage males, gathered in a field behind the white farmhouse at 7 a.m. They pulled on cloth gloves and stowed their lunch bags in the dirt. Most had never picked a potato until the start of the harvest a few days earlier.

``You ready to work hard?" Holmes asked, looking down from the seat of his noisy, red tractor.

Potato picking calls for endurance -- pickers must kneel, bend over, or squat for hours -- but little skill or strength. A machine known as a digger does the hardest work, pulling the potatoes from the earth and dropping them behind it in the dirt. On most farms, a machine called a harvester then suctions up the vegetables. At the Holmes farm, teenagers pick them up instead.

Paid just 60 cents per barrel, most would earn no more than $20 for the day. Pickers drop potatoes in large, round baskets, then dump the baskets into sturdy wooden barrels sprawled along the rows, producing a sound like rumbling thunder. Five or six heavy baskets fill one 165-pound barrel.

``People think we're stupid for working for 60 cents a barrel, but I don't care," said Kody Hornick , 15.

Hornick swigged some caffeinated soda, then used his cellphone's built-in calculator to figure his profits. His first day out, he picked 20 barrels, but the next day, he said, he felt sick and left early, after seven barrels. Altogether, he had earned $16.20.

``I'll probably leave after lunch," he said, sounding deflated.

Some farmers and parents lament the work ethic of today's teenagers. In his day, Holmes said, children often worked until after dark, making 5 or 10 cents per barrel. Cutting out early for track or soccer practice was unheard of.

Many locals recalled picking 80 or 100 barrels a day. Even their children seemed impressed. ``My mom and dad used to pick like a hundred a day," Hornick told his friends as they sat in the dirt to eat lunch.

When Rheal Tardif came to pick up his children for lunch, his daughter Laura, 15, had cleared her section, but his 16-year-old son was still bent over picking. Tardif, 56, a stern French-Canadian native, parked his pickup in the middle of the field and waited.

``I don't believe in leaving potatoes there and going home," he said.

Tardif said he could pick 115 barrels a day as a teenager. ``I think it's about the best lesson you can teach a kid, how hard you can work for your money," he said. But he disapproved of the hourlong lunch break. ``We never had a break like this," he said.

When the harvest is over, and they have sold their 1,000 barrels, the Holmeses will head to Tennessee for the winter. Next spring, they expect to plant no more than an acre or two of potatoes, just enough to sell at their farm stand.

Farming is ``one of the best ways of life there is," Dale Holmes said. But he said he understands why his 17-year-old grandson plans to go to college instead.

Hard as it is, Phyllis Holmes said, change must be accepted.

``There comes a time when you turn the light out and go onto something else," she said.

Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.