Potato spinner
Encyclopedia
A potato spinner, or potato digger, is an agricultural machine that is connected to a tractor
Tractor
A tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...

 through the three-point linkage
Three-point hitch
The three-point hitch most often refers to the way ploughs and other implements are attached to an agricultural tractor. The three points resemble either a triangle, or the letter A...

. Older machines were drawn by horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 and were driven by a ground drive. It works by a flat piece of metal which runs horizontal to the ground lifting the potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...

es up and a large wheel with spokes on it called a reel pushing the clay
Clay
Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...

and potatoes out to the side. The potatoes are then gathered by hand, placed into containers and transportation from the field for further packaging.

The potato spinner is becoming obsolete because modern potato harvesting equipment eliminates manual gathering of potatoes and leaves fewer potatoes in the soil.
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