In an area of New Brunswick rooted in agriculture, life in most of northern Carleton County revolved around the growth cycle of the potato – even the school year.
Every August, weeks before the rest of Canada, school buses would be back on the roads ferrying students into classrooms. The reason? So that during late September, we could put down our books, pick up our baskets and head for the potato fields for an activity known as the Potato Break.
Don’t take the word “break” to mean this was a vacation. Back “breaking” was more accurate.
The Potato Break was akin to a two-week paid internship in manual labour for anyone too old for kindergarten. My career debut began at 6 with the help of my father, and from then on I picked independently for the next seven years. Getting hired was as easy as making a couple of phone calls;there were always farmers looking for hands and no résumé was required. We worked eight-hour or longer shifts from Monday through Saturday, enduring cold mornings and sweaty afternoons.
The job itself wasn't complicated. You marked off a part of the field and picked up all the potatoes in your section after the digger drove by and unearthed them. You'd empty your basket of potatoes into a barrel until it was full, then tag the barrel with a card that had your PIN on it.
Basically, pick potatoes, lift potatoes, dump potatoes. Repeat. Over and over.
Potato Break in New Brunswick in the old days (1946) Source: Provincial Archives of New Brunswick
