During Lent, many farm families and urbanites may have turned their mind to spring garden planting.  If the room is there, many families enjoy planting their own potatoes.

A central Illinois farmer was told by his uncle: “You should always plant potatoes on Good Friday because Easter is determined by the sign of the moon.” A gardening post online says this is just a myth and that the whole planting potatoes on Good Friday was a religious thing – that Irish Protestants would not eat potatoes because they were not mentioned in the Bible, so they planted and blessed them all in one fell swoop by planting on Good Friday.

Whether this is true or whether potatoes are planted on Good Friday because of the position of the moon, this particular farmer insists on planting his potatoes on this traditional day … and they always seem to flourish.

Often seed potatoes are nothing more than potatoes in the bin that are sliced, then planted eye up and with 2-3 eyes per slice. This same farmer I’m writing about, rather than using a paring knife to cut up his potatoes uses his John Deere Hoover potato cutter. Made in the late 1920s, according to a contract book, in 1929 the cutter sold for $11.85 new.

Prior to the 1926 purchase of Hoover, John Deere sold Hoover products, according to the Encyclopedia of American Farm Implements & Antiques. The Hoover Mfg. Co. was started by a farmer by the name of Isaac Woolverton Hoover. Born in 1845, he grew up on 115-acre farm in Oxford Township, Erie County, Ohio.

Growing up the son of a farmer and stonemason, Hoover settled on a farm near Avery, Ohio, and was well known for his record-breaking potato harvests. To ease the back-breaking burden of digging potatoes, he invented a mechanical potato digger and first used it during the winter of 1884-85.

Before the advent of mechanized diggers, a farmer could only harvest as many potatoes as he could dig by hand, so a mechanized way to do this was a revolutionary development, allowing the farmer to harvest hundreds of bushels a day. Hoover submitted his application for a patent on his new machine in March 1885. The patent (No. 318,254) was granted May 19.

After obtaining the patent for his mechanical potato digger, Hoover and his brother-in-law, Albert Prout, opened for business. It began under the name Hoover & Prout Co. Around1910, Prout left the business and moved to Cleveland – thus the company became just the Hoover Mfg. Co.

Apparently potato diggers were in demand because by 1915 the company had expanded its potato line with a few new products. Hoover Mfg. Co. offered a whole potato line with a one-row potato planter; a two-row planter; then in 1917, potato sorters, cutters and fertilizer distributing attachments. In addition, Hoover sold optional attachments for the digger.

A history of the company indicates the potato digger could be ordered with a different size or with a set of rolling coulters, which were used for harvesting sweet potatoes. Farmers also could buy road tires for easier transportation of the digger, and a picking attachment that allowed crates to be attached to the side of it.

The Hoover Mfg. Co. caught the eye of growing agricultural giant Deere and in July 1926, Deere bought out Hoover. The Hoover family remained a part of it for a while; retaining possession of the factory at Avery they continued to manufacture products under their name from 1926-27.

That’s when Deere moved production from Avery to a Deere-owned subsidiary, the Syracuse (N.Y.) Chilled Plow Co. For a time, Deere marketed the digger as the John Deere Hoover potato digger.

Isaac Hoover made a big difference in the advent of potato farming. He became a civic leader and lived to the ripe old age of 96, dying on March 4, 1941. The central Illinois farmer that owns this particular potato cutter mentioned above said they seem to be quite rare.

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.