BRIDGEWATER – Myreta Shaw turned 80 last Thursday.

For anybody, it’s an important milestone in life, but for Shaw, it’s an event she squeezed in between runs on the potato harvester.

Fellow workers brought in cupcakes and a chocolate cake to celebrate, but after quick festivities, it was right back to work.

The Bridgewater resident said that she has worked the potato harvest for most of her life. She picked potatoes as a child, took a little time off when she married and started a family, and picked up the work again as an adult. For about the past four decades, she has worked for Bradstreet Family Farms in Bridgewater.

Boss Wayne Bradstreet said he didn’t think he could keep Shaw away if he wanted to.

“She loves this work,” he said over the roar of a loaded potato truck he was driving from the field to a storage building.

He pointed out that when all his fields are harvested, Shaw will pick up work elsewhere until all harvesting in the community is done. “I think it gives her something to do,” he said.

Shaw said that’s exactly why she keeps coming back every year.

“I’m a widow and I like to get out and work. I like the outdoors,” she said during a short break. “You know, it’s going to be a long winter, so I might as well get out and do something.”

Wearing a plaid kerchief and several layers of clothing to keep warm, Shaw said it’s not the early mornings or the long days that bug her – she’s up at 4:30 a.m. and works on a harvester from 6 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. – it’s her feet.

“They bother me a little,” she admitted.

But from the way she hoists herself up onto the harvester, you could never tell that just nine months ago she was in a cast because she had broken her hip.

“I said, ‘That won’t get me down. I don’t want to be handicapped and if I don’t get up, I’ll probably end up in a nursing home,'” Shaw remembered with a laugh.

When Bradstreet’s son Ryan started the harvester’s engine, Shaw took her place next to her daughter Brenda Vennart, who just moved home from Connecticut. A large conveyor belt loaded with potatoes, rocks and withered plant stems separated them from fellow workers Kayla Shorey and Lenora Sederis.

When the belt started moving, all four women leaned forward and concentrated on picking out rocks and stems before the potatoes tumbled into a truck driving alongside the harvester.

Shaw moved just as quickly as the others, chucking the refuse out of the way as a stream of potatoes rumbled by.

Every year, she said, she jokes with Ryan Bradstreet about when she’s going to call it quits.

“I think this may be my last year,” she says with a nod, “but I say that every year. I say, ‘I think this will really be my last year, Ryan.’ But if I feel as good as I do now …”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but you can tell she’s weighing her options.

She has six children, 15 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and one great-great-granddaughter. She knows people worry about how much longer she’ll be able to participate in the annual harvest.

But Shaw also knows she has a whole year to decide. For now, she’s just focusing on the day to day, and on Thursday, it was all about her birthday.

“I told Ryan, ‘Today’s my birthday, so you gotta pay me double,'” she said.