Volunteer puts antique potato digger, cutter, and more to work on an Ozarks potato patch in a grassroots project that helps feed the needy.
What would a sandwich be without chips on the side? Burgers minus fries are unimaginable. Potatoes are the main ingredient of casseroles, soups and salads. And nothing’s better than potato pancakes served hot out of a cast iron skillet.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re munched on raw in hope dinner will be ready soon, baked, fried, boiled, mashed and covered with gravy – potatoes are just plain ol’ good eatin’.

Eighty-two-year-old Larry Voris, who lives in Springfield, Missouri, remembers picking up potatoes with his brother when they were kids. “Dad was on the tractor, using an old lister plow to grub them out of the ground,” he says. “For some reason, I threw a rotten one at my brother, and Dad gave me a whippin.’ I was 16.”
Putting old iron through its paces
Eight or nine years ago, Larry became part of a church mission team that raises garden vegetables. “My job at Victory Garden is growing potatoes on a piece of land south of Strafford, Missouri,” Larry says. “It’s part of the Campbell Family Farm, and can only be used by Second Baptist Church in Springfield to grow food for needy people.”
To keep the ground at the 2-acre site in good shape, Larry plows it in November or December. In early April, he discs the field. Later that month, when the ground is warm and dry, he plants potatoes. Every step of the process depends on weather conditions – and old iron.

“I use a Hoover foot-operated John Deere Model 450 cutter made in the early 1900s,” Larry says. “A thousand pounds of seed potatoes are fed into it, one at a time, and chopped into pieces about an inch and a half thick.” Then, Larry hooks up an Aspinwall planter (that he refurbished) to his Massey-Harris Pony tractor. It drops the sliced seed potatoes 8 inches apart in 300-ft. rows. The preferred variety at Victory Garden is Red Pontiacs.
Antique potato digger and more
Working vintage equipment makes the process a pleasure. “Using a riding planter is a lot better than walking along, dropping seed potatoes in the furrow, stepping on every one, and covering them with a hoe,” Larry notes. “The planter puts them closer together on top of the ground and then uses two opposing discs to cover them in a ridge of dirt. That makes them easier to uncover with the mechanical digger when they’re harvested.”

After the plants have grown to around 15 inches in height, Larry cultivates and hills them with his Farmall Cub before they bloom. Half a dozen spring-tooth shovels are mounted front and back on the tractor, and a pair of opposing discs are located at its drawbar-end.
Larry prefers cultivating rather than spraying, but weather conditions sometimes cause weeds to get out of control. During the first few years of the program, weeds were hand-pulled. It is also necessary to spray for insects when the leaves begin to show evidence of damage. The plants are side-dressed once with chemical fertilizer to stimulate potato growth.

In mid-July, the plants’ dead tops indicate the crop is ready to harvest. Larry cuts the field with a tractor-pulled bush hog a day or two before digging potatoes. After the dirt on them has dried (usually the next day), they are gathered by hand.
Vintage potato plow pulled by a tractor
The Victory Garden has given Larry hands-on experience that few today can claim. “When I started working in the Victory Garden, I used an old John Deere walk-behind potato plow,” Larry says. “It had wood handles and iron prongs in the back that shook off dirt. Someone needed to guide it along the rows. It was made for horses or mules to pull, but we used a tractor.”
The first riding-type potato digger that Larry purchased – a Hoover – was manufactured in about 1900. It took him a year to get the digger’s wheels and rod-conveyors loosened up enough to operate. It still can’t be kicked out of gear.

Larry had his eye on a 1925 Massey-Harris potato digger at a sale eight years ago, but he was outbid. Later, after the successful bidder’s death, Larry was able to buy the digger from the family. His riding potato digger collection had doubled in size.
The Massey-Harris digger is kicked out of gear with a lever by its operator, who sits on the implement’s seat. When the operator hollers “whoa” at the tractor driver, and then “back up,” tension is released on the wheel dogs. The digger is pulled around for the next row before its shovel is lowered and the conveyors are put into gear by the riding operator.
Hitching up the Power Horse
Larry normally uses his Farmall Super A to pull the Massey-Harris digger, but just for fun, he sometimes hitches the digger behind his 1941 Eimco Power Horse. This very rare tractor has a 20hp Allis-Chalmers 4-cylinder engine. It is operated using driving lines by an operator sitting on the potato digger’s seat. Line-drive tractors like the Power Horse were designed to ease the transition from horse and mule farming to tractors.
Larry added a third riding digger to his collection when a friend inherited a farm in Iowa. “She saw a Dowden potato digger among the equipment, and immediately told her husband, ‘That one’s for Larry.’ It is a good machine,” he says, “but it can’t be kicked out of gear, so I normally use the Massey-Harris digger.”

The main problem with riding diggers is caused by small rocks that get caught at the gear sprocket behind the shovel. “That stops the drive-wheel,” Larry says. “Then I’m on my knees, digging out the dirt, locating the rock, and prying it out before the machine can go back to work.”
When the crop lands on top of the ground, Larry’s role ends. A volunteer crew of ten to 20 church members pick up the potatoes and carry them in 5-gallon buckets to plastic totes that hold 700 or 800 pounds. The totes are hauled to Ozark Food Harvest in Springfield, Missouri, and distributed to food banks in 28 counties. In 2020, the group grew 16,000 pounds of potatoes; in 2021, 14,000 pounds. Expectations were low for harvest in 2022, a very dry year.
Old souls and bucket lists
Orville Jackson’s bay mules, Sarah and Sally, added an extra early-day aspect to the potato harvest in July 2022. Early that morning, while Orville and his pal, Eddie Williams, were getting ready in the house and eating breakfast, Orville’s wife, Linda, used a flashlight to locate, feed and lead the mules up to be harnessed.

Arlen Jackson, Orville and Linda’s 8-year-old grandson, helped get the mules ready before they were loaded. At the field, he closely followed instructions about correct handling of the equipment and team. Few youngsters today are interested in this type of experience. Grandpa knows the boy will grow up to be a good hand; Grandma says he’s got an old soul.
One of the potato harvest’s observers was 88-year-old Joe Felin. He grew up on a farm 4 miles from Marshfield, Missouri, and remembers working in his parents’ garden. “Dad bought a 100-pound sack of seed potatoes at MFA every spring,” he says. “They were the white kind. We called them Irish potatoes. After they’d grown a couple of months, we dug little potatoes out of a row’s edge. That way the plant could continue growing. I can still taste my mother’s new potatoes and creamed peas.

“Dolly and Big’un were used to plow the garden,” he continued. “We had 20 or 25 rows of potatoes about 200 feet long. They were laid off with a single-shovel plow behind Dolly, the tamest horse. When the plants died, we used a turning plow to dig up the potatoes before they were stored in a cellar. There were eight of us kids plus mom and dad to feed. Some folks didn’t have cellars, so they made a dirt pile with straw inside to store potatoes during the winter. It was sort of like an igloo.”
One of the younger members of the 2022 Victory Garden potato harvest was 72-year-old Mike Strozewski, Fair Grove, Missouri. Even though he’s traveled around the world on a motorcycle, competed in marathons, been involved in life-and-death situations during many years as a Springfield firefighter and emergency medical team member, Mike crossed two items off of his bucket list that day. Until then, he had never harnessed a mule or driven a tractor.

And Larry? He recently bought his fourth antique potato digger. Since there is no name on it, he is trying to figure out the name of the machine’s manufacturer. Like the Victory Garden, this collection just keeps growing. FC
For more information: Call Larry Voris at (417) 840-4418.
Dan Manning was raised in a central Kansas farming community, and now resides with his wife, Betty, in the Missouri Ozarks. He works with photographer Ron McGinnis, whose work can be seen at www.RonMcGinnis.com.
Originally published in the April 2023 issue of Farm Collector.