Cup O’ Joe: Harvest recess is hot topic for schools

Harvest recess. No two words stir up more imagery and emotion among residents of southern Aroostook County. Ask anyone you meet, and chances are you will get a wonderful story from their childhood on the subject.
    Every few years, the topic of eliminating harvest break is brought up in one school district or the other. This year, both the SAD 29 (Houlton, Littleton, Monticello and Hammond) and SAD 70 (Hodgdon, Amity, Cary Plantation, Haynesville, Linneus, Ludlow and New Limerick) school boards are wrestling with what to do with their harvest recess. Dwindling participation by youth in the harvest has both districts wondering what is best for the students in their respective schools.
Should the schools continue the annual fall tradition of letting students out? It’s not an easy question to answer. Back in the day, practically every school district broke for harvest recess, and that vacation lasted nearly a month. But that was during a time when young children picked potatoes by hand.
It was something of a merit badge you could use when you got older. When I lived on the coast, people would often ask me if I picked potatoes as a child when they found out I was from the County. And I could proudly say ‘Yes.’ Well, for one year anyway.
Those days, however, are long gone as technology has most every farmer using harvesters to extract their product. And as such, only those 16 years of age or older can work on the harvesters. Younger students are still allowed to work inside the potato houses, but the days of seeing fields filled with adolescents scurrying to fill their potato baskets are a distant memory.
SAD 29 and SAD 70 are the only two districts in the southern Aroostook area that still schedule harvest recess. SAD 14 (Danforth), SAD 25 (Katahdin) and CSD 9 (Southern Aroostook) no longer observe the fall vacation.
School officials at SAD 70 have stated only five students participated in the harvest last fall. SAD 29 has been unable to get reliable data on how many of their students actually did harvest-related work last year. It was estimated that only 35 percent of the students in SAD 29 have participated in harvest-related work in recent years.
Local potato farmers attended last month’s SAD 29 school board meeting, urging the board to keep the harvest recess tradition alive in the County. Some farmers suggested expanding the harvest break, arguing that if students had two full weeks off from school, they would be more likely to hire them. High school students can have a second week excused from school to work, but they must makeup all their assignments.
Farmer Dan Corey asked the board to consider bringing back the three-week break at SAD 29’s February meeting. Corey stated he needs workers from Sept. 19 to Oct. 7 to get his product out of the ground, weather permitting.
Compounding the problem for the two districts is trying to figure out which week to start break, which is no easy task. Weather plays a vital role in whether or not a harvester crew heads out for the day. If it rains, crews stay home.
The voice of the farmer has been well heard by the school board, but parents who might oppose the recess have been relatively quiet at recent meetings. The public will get another opportunity to speak on the subject when the SAD 29 board revisits the topic at its next regular meeting, set for Monday, March. 14 at 6 p.m. in the superintendent’s conference room. The meeting was originally scheduled for March. 7, but postponed due to Monday’s inclement weather.
SAD 70 was also expected to discuss the matter at its next regular meeting, which is scheduled for Monday, March 14 at 7 p.m.
Joseph Cyr is a staff writer for the Houlton Pioneer Times. He can be reached at pioneertimes@nepublish.com or 532-2281