More than three-quarters of a century ago, the potato harvest in Aroostook County involved just about everybody who could lift a basket or roll a barrel. The rolling potato fields were bustling with tractors and trucks, horses and wagons, experienced farm hands and waves of school children, to help farmers get their crops in before the frost (or snow) settled in mid-October.

Jack Delano, a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, captured these images of the harvest in Caribou, Perham, New Sweden, Van Buren, Eagle Lake and Fort Kent in late September 1940.

 

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