Blog - Thompson Potato Farm - Thompson Potato Farm

The Scoop On Poop

11/26/2023

Fall chores here at the farm don’t exactly mean raking the leaves and cutting back the gardens. We work at preparing our land for next year in many different ways. One of the essential jobs that needs to be accomplished is spreading manure to replenish our soil nutrients. This key job needs to be done in the fall so we can meet food safety guidelines.

It’s a stinky job, but someone has to do it. And this means Curtis! He works at spreading the manure in between delivering potatoes to restaurants and running our corn to the grain elevators. It’ll all be worth it next year when the potato yield is high due to the fertile seed bed the seed potatoes were planted in. You can visit “Racing Old Man Winter” and “Fall Field Chores” to learn more about different fall chores we work at here at the farm.

The Compelling Combine

11/17/2023

This aerial video offers a glimpse of the grain corn harvest at one of our fields. Any way you look at it, a combine is a massive piece of equipment. Even though ours is a rather small combine, we haven’t had any problems cutting through the super tall corn stalks this year. John runs the combine, and RJ & Curtis run the grain trucks back and forth to the grain elevators.

As a side note, there are a few things I learned shooting this video with my new drone. First of all, the combine speed was hard to follow. Secondly, drones don’t like landing in a corn field so I had my first crash landing. And lastly, Christina knows a whole lot more about video editing that I do. Thanks for showing me some cool tricks! You can visit “A Combine In Action” to watch a video of the soft red winter wheat being harvested.

Grain Corn Harvest

11/9/2023

So, the sweet corn in long finished, the potato harvest is finished, and now the pumpkins are also finished. Does this mean it’s time for us to finally kick back and relax? Not even close! Now we’ve switched gears, pulled out the combine and started moving our grain corn to the elevators.

The growing conditions were perfect this year for the early planted crop as you can see from these enormous stalks. They created an amazing photo shoot for RJ and myself (and many other people who were driving by and stopped to take selfies, believe it or not!) You can visit “Tater Tales: Nov 30th” to get a glimpse of the final destination for our grain corn crop.

Happy Halloween!

10/31/2023

Happy Halloween from all of us here at the farm! Do you recognize the design in this jack-o-lantern? Artistic credits completely belong to Christina who designed and carved this pumpkin. We still have a great selection of pumpkins of all sizes for anyone who waited for the last minute to get ready for Halloween. You can visit “Jack-O’-Lanterns” for some fun carving inspiration.

Jack-O’-Lanterns

10/27/2023

We have a great selection of awesome pumpkins here at the farm. They’re waiting for you to take them home and turn them into your Halloween masterpieces. I skipped off work early to carve these ones to get you inspired. Since I was working on a blog, I was technically still working…right?? Right! We are open to the general public seven days a week. You can visit “At The Door” for pricing and our hours of operation.

Pumpkins For Sale

10/21/2023

Now that we’re finished the potato harvest, we can turn our attention to another crop. These beautiful, extra-large pumpkins were grown by our sons, John and Curtis. The pumpkins had a bit of a tough growing season this year. Cooler temperatures, cloudy skies and too much rain slowed down the ripening process. But now they are ready and waiting to be your Halloween Jack-O-Lantern! You can visit “At The Door” for pricing and our hours of operation.

The Busy Bin Filler

10/17/2023

As we approach the very end of our potato harvest, I wanted to share an aerial video of our bin filler that I took earlier this season. This gives you a great overview of how our potatoes travel from the bulk truck to the potato storage. You can easily see the field debris dropping into the garbage box, the teeny tiny potatoes being sorted out as well as our crew pulling out all weeds, clumps of grass and small stones that we don’t want taking up valuable space in our potato storage. The building is now so full that I doubt we could cram one more potato in!

Our son Curtis operates the bin filler here at our farm. It means keeping the machine operational when there are breakdowns, moving it to different bins and buildings as we harvest different varieties and running empty trucks to the fields to be filled up with more potatoes. You can visit “The Wonderful Windrower” and “The Hypnotic Harvester” to see more aerial videos of our potato harvesting equipment in action.

The Hypnotic Harvester

10/1/2023

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years working at the farm, it’s that people are utterly fascinated by the potato harvester. It’s huge, it’s impressive and there are a lot of moving parts to watch. This aerial video I shot using my new drone gives you a rare insight into how the harvester works.

Our harvester is operated by my husband RJ who also has to coordinate the windrower and the truck driver while he runs the harvester. The harvester digs 2 rows of potatoes while simultaneously collecting the potatoes left in a row by the windrower. As the potatoes roll up the belts, field debris is sorted out and shot rather emphatically out of the back of the harvester. You can visit “The Wonderful Windrower” if you’re wondering what on earth a windrower is!

The Wonderful Windrower

9/27/2023

This implement is called a “windrower” and it’s something to get excited about as we rock ‘n’ roll through the fall harvest. Our windrower is operated by our son John and it plays a vital role in our potato harvest. It digs up four rows of potatoes at a time and piles them neatly into one long row where they will be collected up later by the harvester. It actually digs more potatoes than the harvester even though it doesn’t look as impressive.

Here’s a fun fact about how the windrower got its name: A “windrow” is a long line of material heaped up by the wind or by a machine. So our potatoes are piled in a “windrow” by the “windrower.” Interestingly enough, it also is the official name for the piles of snow left at the end of your driveway after the snow plow has cleared the road. Now you know!

You can visit “The Potato Windrower” to see another video of our windrower in action.

Fall Harvest Begins

9/18/2023

Last weekend we began the fall harvest. We dusted off our bin filler (figuratively speaking of course – the bin filler is always rather dusty) and started filling the potato storage. These are our Yukon Gem potatoes that were transported in large bulk trucks from the field to our farm. Curtis is picking out unwanted debris such as grass clumps, weeds and stones as the potatoes fall out of the bulk truck. The potatoes travel along several belts until they reach the bin filler.

Our crew pulls out every last bit of unwanted debris as the potatoes roll along the bin filler. The potato pile will fill this entire section of our storage from floor to ceiling. This is one of our two potato storages that will hopefully be full to the top by the time we finish the fall harvest. You can visit “The Potato Bin Filler” to see a video of our bin filler in action.