Potatoes and Onions and Garlic, Oh My! (Part #2)

... The conclusion of the potato process...

4. After the furnace, there is an inpection stage. there are usually two or three people looking over the potatoes leaving the furnace. If there are defects/bruises, the potatoes are dicarded.

5. From inspection, the potatoes fall onto a mechanical potato sorter. This stage sorts potatoes by size: small, medium, and large. The potatoes are spun over gratings of increasing apertures as they descend toward the sacking station. Potatoes that are small enough will "fall through the cracks" to sacking stations along the side of the sorting stage. This is how you get those little salt potatoes for graduation parties.

6. The washed, dried, inspected, and sorted potatoes are bagged or boxed and moved to another room for loading.

The sacks of potatoes are very heavy. One sack weighs 50kg, or 110lbs. I struggle to lift a sack over my head. Tiago is very strong though, he can toss the sacks around more easily. There is one guy, Joao Maria, who can raise a 50kg sack over his head with one hand! Everyone at the business is very nice... very good people in Brazil.

I help out at the business only sometimes. I spend many afternoons at the business, but I usually just make coffee and study Portuguese in the office. I help out when there is a shortage of people to work, but that only adds up to about once every two weeks. More often, I'll help unload a truck making a delivery.