There might have been a time when northern Maine wasn’t covered with rocks. But we know for a fact that wasn’t in the last 10,000 years since the last glaciers retreated northward.  What we do know is we’ve got awful nice soil for growing potatoes once you haul the rocks off that the glaciers left behind. Everyone up here has learned a lot from our life with rocks.  Like what rocks can do to bruise up potatoes and bust up machinery.  Some ground is thick with rocks and some ground maybe not so much.  Our farm is blessed with a particular abundance of rocks, here on the edge of the North Maine Woods.

     Now some years ago we cleared a four acre field that had been allowed to grow back to woods seventy years before.  We knew this history because we counted the tree rings on the stumps after we cut the trees down. This field is the one we now call New Big South West #3.  Once we got the stumps out we had lots and lots of rocks to pick.  After years of searching we had come to purchase a rare side boom lag rock picker in good condition.  These machines were popular back in the 1960s as farmers became real serious about removing rocks from fields. We used that side boomer with our 12 yard dump truck and it picked the lion’s share of the 600-700 yards of rocks we pulled off that little field. Now’s it a pretty field with woods on the west edge.  We’ve grown a couple of nice crops of organic seed potatoes and the rocks are more or less under control.

     Well the reason we’re thinking rocks in particular this week was the passing of an old retired farmer in the town just south of Bridgewater.  That would be the town of Monticello (‘Mont-Tee-Sell-O’ unless you’re in a big hurry when it comes across as ‘Mont-Sell-O’). Old Mike Brown was well-respected, a good farmer, a hard worker and a real asset and leader in his town.  Like everybody, he grew potatoes most of his 81 years.  And if you grow potatoes in northern Maine, as Mike did, there’s no escaping it, you sure get to know your rocks. We’ll close with a verbatim excerpt from the obituary of this potato man, printed up recently in the local paper.