Maine Tales. National Geographic Meet Aroostook. Bridgewater, Maine. Circa 1994.

    Some potato harvests are more memorable than others. Take 1994, for instance. We didn’t know it at the time but that Fall of ‘94 marked the end of the Late Blight epidemic which had plagued Maine and the Northeast for three consecutive wet years beginning with the potato crop of 1992. The miserable ‘A2’ Late Blight strain first made its way north from Mexico into the USA in '92. The next year, 1995 turned out hot and very dry - one of the four driest years ever recorded - and miraculously inhospitable to Late Blight. The blight died out in ’95. Maine was free of blight pressure for another five or six years and times were good.

     In 1994, Megan had our second boy, Caleb, born after potato planting and before we were done haying at the end of June. Sometime during that wet Summer we got a call from the National Geographic magazine. They were doing an extensive story on ‘Sustainable Agriculture’ and wondered if they could send up a photographer during 'digging', as potato harvest is known here in Aroostook County. We replied, send away.

Lights, Camera, Action!

     Back in those days we dug our Organic Maine Certified Seed Potatoes with an Oliver-tractor-pulled John Deere 30 two-row ‘Potato Digger.’ With a small crew we gathered up by hand into buckets the potatoes gently laid on top of the soil by the digger. Then buckets of potatoes were poured into awaiting 11-peck cedar potato barrels. Then barrels were hoisted (‘histed’) with a hydraulic boom and grapple onto a potato trailer. Then barrels were hauled into our ‘Potato House.’ Barrels were rolled inside. Barrels-full-of-potatoes were dumped through strategic holes in the floor through canvas potato-chutes down into ten foot deep wood-walled storage bins in the underground concrete-floored cellar below.

     The NG photographer, Jim Richardson hailed from the Front Range in Colorado. He was a very affable fellow. One of the benefits of digging-by-hand is that the quiet and steady work allows for good and very long uninterrupted conversations. Time passed quickly as Jim regaled us with his year’s worth of farm adventures gleaned from traipsing back and forth across rural America and photographing farmers while they worked. During the three days he spent with us, Jim took eight hundred photographs, all with film. After Wood Prairie Family Farm, his final farm stop was at Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm in Virginia. Then, Jim was to be given his marching orders at NG headquarters in Washington DC, before heading home to sort through a staggering one year’s worth of photographs.

Give it Your Best Shot

     In a comment reflecting the era, one thing that Jim Richardson said served as encouragement that Megan would find her way into the magazine. Jim observed that in shooting a story about American agriculture, if you didn’t go out of your way and make an extra effort to include women, that an article could easily wind up having shots of all men. Megan always has been an active farmer, doing everything from driving tractors to running barrel hoist to picking taters. After Jim’s comment we gained confidence Megan would somehow make the cut. In the fullness of time, she and three-month-old “Baby Caleb” did appear as a two-page-spread in the December 1995 issue of National Geographic.

     Back in those days, NG printed an amazing nine million copies each month. That number would equate with one copy for every twelve or fifteen American households. The NG photo created a local flurry of interest in our little farming town of Bridgewater. The shot elevated our hometown status like nothing else before or since.

Our Rocky Road

     For months after publication, we would receive notes and calls from friends and farmers across the country. The most common refrain went something like, ‘Boy, I never knew your soil was so rocky!’ Now it’s true: many glaciers have come through Northern Maine and left us all with wonderful, well-drained loamy potato soil and a great mess of rocks. Fact is, we have been picking rocks here steady for going on 50 years. And others before us picked rocks for another sixty years going back to when our fields were first cleared of trees just before World War I. And those Rose Gold Seed Potatoes happened to be sitting pretty on one of our ‘cleanest’ picked-of-rocks fields. So while there was no intention to insult, those rocky comments did kinda hurt our feelings. Not that you’d ever know. Being as how it pains us to let show our true feelings. Because that’s not the way you do things in Aroostook.

Caleb, Jim & Megan

Come Join Us! Immediate Job Openings at Wood Prairie Family Farm in Maine.

     Enjoy working together on a down-to-earth & real 46-year-old organic family farm and in our year-round organic seed mail order & web business located right here on the farm in beautiful Northern Maine.

     NEW job openings include: 1) Year Round Full-time Seed Assistant, 2) Seasonal Full-time Seed Assistant (Summers Off!) and 3) Part-time Seed Assistant.

Find Job Details Here.

     Please help spread the word by sharing with friends & family in Maine. If you are on Facebook, please go to our Wood Prairie wall and ‘Like & Share’ so that Maine folks may learn about this opportunity to earn their living working with us.

Thanks! Caleb, Megan & Jim

Kale & Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes.

Wood Prairie Family Farm Photos.

Birds of a Feather Flocking Together. With near perfect field conditions we can use our Finnish Juko Potato Harvester to harvest the small but long Fingerling Seed Potatoes. Most every year has its challenges and this year definitely fell short of perfection. First thing in the morning, we had dug up the Fingerling rows with a tractor-pulled John Deere 30 ‘Potato Digger.’ In this shot the variety we’re ‘picking by hand’ is the Century Heirloom, Rose Finn Apple. In the foreground, the youngest members of the crew were two boys who were, of course, attracted to one another. Seven-year-old Nolan (dark long-sleeved shirt) is son of long-time employee Kenyon and his wife, schoolteacher Jess. Beside Nolan in the red shirt is 15-month-old Jack, son of our new re-bound co-worker Justin (at left in the gaggle of hand pickers in white t-shirt) and nearby his wife, Chelsea (navy blue t-shirt). Chelsea worked for us for over 10 years before and after high school. Then she met Justin when he began working here. After awhile they got married and about six years ago they moved to Southern Maine, buying a house in a rural spot not too far from Freeport & LL Bean. After having had enough of life Down South, they sold their house and have now moved back to quiet Aroostook County. Also visible in the photo are Caleb (straw hat) and behind him his sister, Amy, (kneeling up straight in light blue t-shirt) who comes home from college on weekends to help us harvest our Organic Seed Potato crop.

Wood Prairie Potato Harvest Going Well. Northern Maine is having a rainy Fall. However, the day or two before the next rain have given us some good digging conditions. In this shot, the crew is digging with our Finnish “Super Midi” Juko (pronounced "Yuko") One-Row Potato Harvester. Right next door is a perimeter-planting of Beneficial Insect Flowers, this time of year dominated by tall Cosmos in full-bloom as well as Sunflowers. Those are Organic Dark Red Norland Certified Seed Potatoes you can see coming up the ‘Primary Lag Bed’ of the Juko. Working on the Juko's perpendicular "Secondary Bed" (L>R) are Justin, Rob (Caleb’s brother-in-law) and Kenyon. Out-of-sight working on the ground-level trailer gleaning tubers which dropped through the cracks is Caleb. Jim is driving the Oliver 1750 Diesel pulling the Juko and he snapped this shot. Megan is in the office keeping up with shipping orders and answering the phone. Amy is back at college studying and no doubt wishing she could be digging Potatoes with us! In the distance on the right is our Oliver 1850 Diesel outfitted with a pair of forklift-forks mounted on the 3-point-hitch. The 1850 is used to switch hardwood pallet boxes in the field when the box on the Juko gets full. Each full pallet box holds a ton of Potatoes. It’s very common, that on the days that are good enough to dig in, Maine is blessed with wonderful Fall days which are sunny and beautiful.