Take Note: Digging for a lesson; That voodoo that you do

Some students might think a three-week October break is to die for. But for many in rural Maine, it's enough to make school seem like a vacation.

Youngsters there play an important role in the annual potato harvest--ditching school for some good old-fashioned manual labor come rain, sleet, or shine.

More than 1,000 elementary, middle, and high school students every year are given leave to work on Maine's 650 or so potato farms, most of them inAroostook County, an area about...