 Good morning! Mother Nature put on a stunning display of fall colours earlier this week. It was a beautiful moment that we all stopped to admire even as we pushed hard to finish the potato harvest. We are in the home stretch now and anxious to finish. Wish us good luck and more good weather! You can visit “Captivating Colours” to have a closer look at some of the vivid colours spotted around the farm.
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     This feature article appears in the October East Gwillimbury Bulletin magazine. It is published in the “EG Women In Business 2022” section of the magazine dedicated to the celebration of Women’s History Month. I have included the photo that is described in great detail in the article. You can visit “BJ’s Radio Interview” for another inside look at the farm.
 It’s a little known fact that one of the side benefits of potato farming is the annual rock harvest. The growth conditions we require for our potatoes are the exact same conditions that generate quick growth in the small pebbles in our fields. As you can see from the photo, the rocks can get quite large in a matter of a few months. All the rocks we harvest are stored in separate boxes and sold to local quarries.
Are you questioning any of this yet?! The truth is that rocks are a huge menace to our equipment. Every year the ground heaves and suddenly there are rocks where none existed before. We always keep a careful eye out and remove the new large rocks and boulders from our fields before they can damage our equipment. The rock pictured above was picked up by our potato harvester. It would have done some severe damage had it rolled through all the belts. Fortunately RJ caught it before that happened. Thank you for reading along with me and Happy April Fool’s Day to you! You can visit “Winter Harvesting” for another fun April Fool’s Day joke where I dispel a common misunderstanding about our potatoes we sell all winter.  Spring is in the air! Murray would like to remind everyone to change their clocks tonight as we begin daylight savings time. After a long and lonely winter, I think I can safely say we are all looking forward to longer days, warmer weather and the start of our next growing season.
To see some fun spring photos, you can visit “Spring Cleaning” where John is hard at work performing routine spring maintenance on our tractors. Celebrating women today and every day. Christina and myself wear many hats at the farm. Our jobs entail customer service, organizing daily delivery routes to restaurants, health & safety, food safety, accounting, payroll, general bookkeeping and data management, maintaining our website, updating our social media…..and yes I can go on!
Here are a few great photos of us in action: the good old days when we used to work in the same office before COVID interrupted us; myself hanging banners and signage at our self-serve produce stand and Christina enjoying a view from a tractor on a rare field trip out of the office. One thing we know for certain – we are appreciated here since we deal with all the papers so the guys can be out in the fields where they truly want to be. You can see my role as spokesperson for our farm by listening to my radio interview at “BJ’s Radio Interview’” or watching a promotional video for Snapd magazine at “BJ’s Acting Debut.” Happy Family Day! Here are some photos of our potato farming family over the years. There is a rather strong family resemblance so I imagine you will have no problem picking out who is who!
Photo 1 Don Thompson’s family in 1969 (generation 1 & 2) Photo 2 John Thompson’s family in 1990 (generation 2 & 3) Photo 3 RJ Thompson’s family in 2007 (generation 3 & 4) Photo 4 RJ Thompson’s family in 2021 (generation 3 & 4) You can visit “Our Story” to find out more about who we are and where we came from. Over 8 decades of growing in Holt. To learn a little bit about who we are and where we came from you can visit The Common-Tater category called “The Faces Of Our Farm.”
In case you missed my post last week, I am dedicating the month of February to things that “I know” instead of dwelling on everything that “I don’t know.” So… I know that despite all the difficult restrictions we all suffered through, we still had the wonders of our world around us. “For The Beauty Of The Earth” is an old hymn, and I often hear the music resounding in my head when I look out our windows. Each of the four seasons offers its own spectacular view. (Although to be completely honest, I prefer enjoying winter from the inside.) I know we are grateful that we can enjoy travelling around our farm…no matter what colour lockdown we are in at the moment! To see more pictures of the landscape around the farm you can visit “The Sky.”
 I am so tired of saying “I don’t know.” So I am dedicating the month of February to posts about things that “I know!” The last ten months have proven to be the most challenging times we have all lived through. But I know that together RJ and myself are strong. We pulled through every challenge and every change because we can lean on each other, run ideas past each other and figure out what to do together. Nothing was easy on the farm last year, but together we successfully finished the season. (Just to be clear, I was not recruited to help with field work. I am still the paper pusher!) So I know that while life certainly has many surprises and upheavals, we will always have each other to lean on. To learn a little bit more about who we are, you can visit “Our Story.”
Yesterday we received word from Mexico that one of our employees passed away unexpectedly. We were lucky enough to have Alfonso Martinez-Hernandez work with us for almost 20 years. Alfonso was a devoted father and grandfather, a dependable and reliable employee and a good friend to all of us here at the farm. His infectious smile and great sense of humour will be sorely missed. Although he was taken too soon from this world, we will always keep him close to us in our hearts. May you rest in peace dear Alfonso.
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The Common-TaterThompson Potato FarmFarming is fascinating! 
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