I went to a family do last Sat eve; met my farming cousins. Far from their potatoes being thirsty, they were all bemoaning the fact that they can't be lifted because the ground's waterlogged. If there's a hard frost now, they'll lose the lot. A loss of eighty grand (that's in English quid) each. (Normally the spuds are lifted in the fortnight starting on the first Monday in October!). When I was a boy, they were lifted by gangs of women recruited from the town nearby, who regarded the job as a holiday of sorts (much like hop-picking used to be, I suspect), though now it's done by machine. I learned a lot of new words (mainly for body-parts) from those "ladies".

And they can't lift the sugar-beet either, although I gather that's less critical.