Eighty-year-old Myreta Shaw has her own way of staying young at heart.

BRIDGEWATER (AP) – In some parts of Aroostook County, the youngest potato pickers are still in elementary school.

At the other end of the spectrum, there’s Myreta Shaw.

At 80, Shaw is still hard at work on the potato harvest.

For her birthday last week, she squeezed in a celebration with cupcakes and a chocolate cake in between a few runs with a mechanical harvester.

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.

Shaw, like most Aroostook County residents, picked potatoes when she was a child. She took a little time off when she married and started a family, but she picked up the work again as an adult. She now work for Bradstreet Family Farms.

Shaw said the harvest keeps her busy.

“I’m a widow and I like to get out and work. I like the outdoors,” she said. “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 she’s up at 4:30 a.m. and works from 6 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m.

From the way she hoists herself up onto the harvester, you’d never know that just nine months ago she was in a cast with a broken 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 said.

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 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 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.

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

For now, she has plenty of energy left. When all of Bradsteet’s fields are harvested, she plans to pick up work elsewhere until the harvesting is done.

“I think this may be my last year,” she says with a nod, “but I say that every year.”

Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com