Zen and the Art of Potato Maintenance 🥔💓

If you ask me, it’s a real travesty that more self-help books aren’t written by potatoes. Life-style gurus and podcast purveying wellness experts could learn a lot from these subterranean starchy stoics. Here are ten take aways I hope to keep front of mind from the past month of working on potato harvest here in Iceland:  

1. "Take care, you." “First thing: Don’t fall off, take care your hands to not get stuck.” These were the first words of wisdom farm owner, Anna, imparted to my fellow farm hands and me on our first day on the massive potato harvesting machine. Turns out you can’t help anyone or anything else if you don’t take good care of yourself to start. “Take care, you,” was also the most common refrain I heard from her husband, Svienn, over the subsequent month as I learned the (literal) ropes. Whenever one of us would accidentally, say, be standing somewhere where some part of us could be inadvertently smooshed between a 1,300 lb. bag of potatoes and a steel beam, this was the advice. While subtle, “take care, you” has a distinctly more supportive sense than “watch out!” which feels more aggressive in its correction, and focused on the disruption of a goal vs. the well being of the human. Similarly, in the nearest major town of Akureryi, 25 minutes south of the farm, all the red traffic lights appear in heart shaped form. This innovation of design conveys subconsciously at every intersection: “We care about you. Please stop so you and others are safe” as opposed to the more punitive message implied by the ubiquitous mounted ticket cameras above traffic signals in the States which seem to suggests: “we don’t trust to you to stop, asshole, and when you do break the rule, as we know you will, we’re on your ass to fine you.” What a difference a shape makes.

2. Stay balanced. I’d heard of getting one’s sea legs being on boats, but never potato legs, which were needed to respond to the slight sway of the tractor as it moved up and down and around the rows, rocking slightly (or sometimes more) in the wind. This maxim was important too for the cultivation of the land. Anna and Svienn grow three breeds of potatoes on the farm: one Dutch (Premier– a yellow variety that ripens earlier in the summer) and two Icelandic (Gallauga, a yellow toddler’s fist size variety and Rauðar, a slightly larger (kindergartener fist?) red one). They balance the breeds, seeds and soil composition across their 17 hectars (about 42 acres) of fields in a way that is conscientious not only of the potential for yield, but the overall “carrying capacity” of the land over time. On a friend's recommendation, I'd been listening to an audio book of Wendell Berry essays while here, one of which examines this carrying capacity term both for the land, and humans. It’s so different to ask what is sustainable over a long period of time than what is possible with a maximalized mindset now. 

3. Pay attention to what’s in front of you. The potatoes were collected using a red Grimme SE 140 bunker harvester, towed by a blue tractor. It works by plowing into the field and bringing the potatoes up onto a series of two increasingly inclined conveyor belts. Either Anna or Svienn drove the tractor while generally two of us were on the harvester, standing on either side of the belt to swiftly remove all the non-potato materials (stones, dirt clods, misshapen potatoes, etc.). The detritus varied depending on the field, the type of potato, and the soil composition. When there was a lot of it, it was tempting to focus on what had come that had been missed, or look ahead to what was coming, but then we missed what was right in front of us. It required a conscious resistance of perfectionism, because spoiler alert: you can never catch every tiny dirt clod. There were many duties to attend to in the rhythm of harvest as well--a set of procedures every time we filled a bag, off loaded it and loaded another. But especially as I was learning, if I missed or forgot something, there was someone else on the team to help. The corollary of perfectionism, of course, is individualism (I have to get everything right because it all depends on ME) which is definitionally impossible in the harvest process and requires trusting each other to get a job done well as a team.

4. When things feel like they’re going too fast, slow down. The initial potato shifts felt very much like the famous “I Love Lucy” episode at the Chocolate Factory (though it’s harder to sneak potatoes into your mouth when you get behind….). When I worked with Anna and Svienn, I was always struck by how, while incredibly efficient, they never seemed rushed, even when objectively moving quickly. They exuded that calm focus, grace and ease that comes with decades of experience. I am watching the Michael Jordans of potato harvesters here, I thought to myself more than once, observing Anna’s seemingly effortless cross over picking technique. It always helped me when I started feeling overwhelmed to take a breath and try to emulate that mode of calm and physical flow. 

5. Even things that are known for being tough need care. After passing through the harvester, and up the conveyor belts, the potatoes drop into an approximately 4 ½ foot tall by three feet wide and three foot long woven bag that is secured on four corners to an iron I-bar. A thick blue pad hangs from the center of the I bar to serve as a soft backdrop for the potatoes to bump into before falling straight to the bottom of the bag. This prevents them from getting bruised or punctured, and thus being ill-suited for long term storage. One person working on the team each day was on “bag duty” which meant moving swiftly back and forth from the conveyor belt to monitor the progress of the filling bag, adjusting the weight distribution, remove the blue pad before the bag was filled (so it wouldn’t get buried) and, as the bag approached full, strategically move the potatoes around so that it was almost to the point of overflowing, but not quite. My initial instinct, when staring at a seemingly already teeming half ton pound bag of potatoes as a steady plunking waterfall of spuds continued to cascade into it, was to frantically push and jostle the potatoes around in a desperate attempt to make room for more. It’s not faberge eggs, after all, I figured, it’s potatoes–the epitome of “hearty.” They can take a little shove, right? 

But we were clearly told at the beginning to be gentle with them and not to push them around too fast. At one point I asked for clarification. “So… when the bag is filling up, is it okay to move them at all?” I asked. “Of course! Sometimes they need our help,” said Anna. “So when they need, we help them move. But we always take care.” This was a reorientation that was constantly reinforced and really altered my approach to the work of potato bag balancing as one of tender repositioning; like I was some kind of very dirty, blue coveralls wearing potato doula. Likewise, I found it oddly moving the times when I observed both Anna and Svienn pick up a single potato from a bag that contained thousands of them, lovingly considering it, find a crack or some other flaw that prevented its use for market, make a face like: awww. Too bad you are hurt. I’ll return to where you’ve come, before gingerly tossing it back to the field like a fisherwoman re-releasing an undersized bass. Such specific care in the face of soooo many potatoes. 

6. Cultivate whimsy. It costs nothing and can make for magical little moments of delight in a day. When my colleague Mathilde shared her hope for a museum of potatoes shaped like objects other than potatoes, then I too began to see caterpillars, butts, snowmen and hot air balloons coming up the conveyor belt towards me. Whenever we worked together, in the midst of a busy moment, we could still find time to hold a particularly anthropomorphized specimen up to one another, exchange a wry smile, and then toss or pocket it, depending on if it was already in the collection. 

7. Everything can have value. Just because an object/person/place/creation isn’t suited for an intended purpose, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other merit. For harvest purposes, all potatoes with cracks, rotten spots, green blotches from the sun or other such market imperfections were removed as they came up the conveyor belt. Same for potatoes with long shoots emanating from them–the mother potatoes. (I’d never thought about potatoes having mothers?) We also took out the numerous mud clots and stray bits of above ground potato greenery, but all these materials were put in a shoot that deposited them back down into the field. The mother potatoes help reseed the coming year’s crop, and the rich brown dirt and blemished potatoes of this year return to the land to enrich next year’s soil. Having worked in school systems for years, I wondered how much more humane all our structural institutions could be if, when someone didn’t fit a pre-prescribed mold, they were declared not to be “failing” but rather “a mother potato with a different purpose than a supermarket bag.” 

8. Trust your neighbors. In addition to selling their potato wares to restaurants and markets, Anna and Svienn also have a honor system self-serve potato stand across the street from the driveway to the farm. An unlocked darkened turf house holds massive stashes of one and two kilo sacks, and neighbors regularly stop by on their way to and from home to put 600 kroner in the "kartöflur til sölu" (potatoes for sale) box and save themselves a trip to town and the supermarket price mark up. The farm just south of here has a similar process with eggs, and everyone benefits. 

9. Pass your knowledge on. I am not, by nature, an inherently mechanical person, and as a native Oregonian, I hail from one of just two states (shout out, New Jersey!) where it’s actually illegal to pump your own gas, so I took outsized pride in learning how to do even that basic task in my early 20s. Within a week of arriving here though, between Anna and Svienn and another woman who had been here just a week longer than me, they had all generously coached me on how to: sort the potatoes on the conveyor, hang and maneuver the the bags holding over a half ton of potatoes each, operate the yellow brick remote control that lifts the full bags up, use my weight on a rope to control the rate of movement as the full bags were moved over to the flatbed, de-clog the gears of a tractor, and the trick to jumping on the lever that opened the belly of the potato machine to release all the excess mud, stocks, rotten potatoes and other discarded materials back to the ground like the world’s most disappointing piñata. She can be taught! 

In addition to knowledge acquisition, potato harvesting was also a process of unlearning what for most of my life I’ve been taught was most valuable professionally–namely, cultivating an incredibly narrow set of expertise reliant heavily on knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite products. Embracing my status as a novice generalist, most days I have felt good at nothing, and continue to work to feel okay with that discomfort. 

Related to knowledge sharing... one day when we were out on the field, Anna and Svienn’s eldest daughter, Guðbergur, and her 18-month daughter, Alexandra, surprised us with a visit. It was a cold day, and both mother and daughter were bundled as they drove out on the six wheeler to join us, Alexandra perched excitedly on Guðbergur’s lap. Alexandra already loves machinery and was pleased as punch to get to join her grandfather in the tractor cab for a couple rows of potato harvesting as her flaxen haired mother jumped on the back with us to help with the conveyor sorting. As we were unloading, Alexandra sat perched on a bag of potatoes like it was her throne, as her afi (grandfather) instructed her what was okay to throw back to the field (ping pong sized bits of stray mud that she could fit in her fist? Yes! Throw that!) vs. not (in-tact potatoes that she’d also grabbed for). Anna’s grandparents started the farm in the 1950, and that day there were three generations of Icelandic woman working together on the field. Perhaps little Alexandra will be the steward of this land in the decades to come. 

10. Make a point to celebrate. in the end, we’d harvested over 300 tons of potatoes across 42 acres. Anna said her grandmother always told her: “You must finish by September 25th!”--An uncharacteristically precise date given Icelandic weather variability, but sure enough, Svienn and I completed the last row of the upper field, overlooking the Eyjafjörður Fjord at sundown on the autumnal equinox, and it snowed the following day. I rarely know what's in store here in the coming 24 hours, so I just accept with Buddhist-esque delight whenever a plan is conveyed to me. So I was happily surprised to come home after that last day, shower, and find that four generations of the family (little Alexandra was there and Anna’s parents also live in the top level of the farm house) had gathered at the house for a pizza celebration. By that point, I was the only foreigner, and while I have been doing daily 30 minute Pimslur Ianguage lessons, the happy Icelandic conversation, to my ears, was essentially a scattering of discrete words ("now... eat... she... 2:00... yes! no!... later, etc.) It's hardly the material of Pulitzer-style prose, but still, I always find it pleasant and relaxing to let the cadence of Icelandic wash over me. We had another proper potato party feast later in the week too, replete with potatoes (of course) turnips, lamb, mushrooms, carrots and ice cream topped with blueberries and grapes for dessert. Appropriately, little Alexandra was gifted a 1980s original Mr. Potato Head toy from her aunt Rakel, and she already has a clear sense of humor, so immediately proceeded to put the toy glasses on her face for our amusement. Gratitude was felt by all for the labor of the season, what the land had again afforded, family and tradition.

October brings work focused on winter preparation of all the equipment we used the past month, sorting out the harvest in preparation for cleaning and sale, and of course, lots of sheep work now that many are down on the farm from the mountains (Thought not all! We went into the mountains last weekend to collect some stragglers, and there are still more to come!) All the sheep are grazing outside right now, but will be brought into the barns in the coming weeks for counting, sorting, and the fall sheering. So there is never a dull moment, but I do hope to keep potato-derived lessons in mind in the days and weeks to come. As gurus go, I could do worse.