Hasta La Ideas

Two years ago, Ukrainian farmer and inventor Yuriy Serbin rigged up a self-powered potato digger that drags a rectangular basket behind it. It looked like this:

The problem: Every time the bin fills up, Yuriy must bend over, lift the bin and empty it into a wheelbarrow. Doing this dozens or hundreds of times a day gets hard on the back.

After thinking about the problem, last year he came up with a modification by hacking some motorcycle parts and farm equipment together. It looks like this (all of the new parts are green):

Here’s how it works:

I don’t know if you watched until the end, but Yuriy reveals that 1) he’s no longer exhausted after getting through the whole field, and 2) he knows the design isn’t perfect; the smaller potatoes fall through the cracks.

That may lead to some marital trouble–it’s his wife’s job to pick up the small ones afterwards.