The Common-Tater
Earlier this week I managed to escape the office and catch our as he planted our very last field of potatoes for 2023. This is the 5th crop of potatoes John has planted since RJ’s dad “retired.” (Of course, everyone knows farmers never really retire!) Our 4 row planter is loaded with Yukon Gold seed potatoes in these photos. You can visit “Tater Tales Potato Planter” to see a video of the planter.
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“Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” Since we don’t grow oak trees here at the farm, I’ll modify this English proverb to read “Mighty crops from little seed potatoes grow!”
Every humble seed potato is cut in half. One plant should grow from each half. One plant should yield 8-10 potatoes depending on the variety, growing conditions and weather conditions. So each little seed potato can turn into 16-20 beautiful new potatoes. And this is all the proof I need to confirm that great things can and do come from small beginnings. We have been busy planting our seed potatoes for about a week and a half after a sluggish start to our season due to excessive rain and cold temperatures in late April and early May. You can expect to see our new potatoes available for sale in late July or early August. You can visit “Seed Potatoes” to find out how many seed potatoes we need every season. Could there be a better office if you have to go to work on a Sunday morning? John has been learning how to plant the potato crop this year while Curtis has been busy planting sweet corn. If you look carefully at the third picture, you can see both our sons in their socially distanced tractors! Racing the weather is one thing that has not changed here at the farm. They were both up early this morning to get as much planting done as possible before the rain arrives. To see a video of the potato planter working you can visit “Tater Tales May 17th.”
Today’s headline story coming to you Fresh From Our Farm is called “And It’s A Wrap!” We are pleased to let you know that #plant19 is now complete. All the seed potatoes are safely underground where they belong despite an extraordinary cold and wet spring here at the farm. The photos above show some of our seed potatoes in storage before we started planting. Each wooden box holds approximately 3,600 seed potatoes and each white tote bag is holding about 5,000 seed potatoes. So how many seed potatoes are you looking at in each of the photos? I would tell you but that wouldn’t be any fun at all. Feel free to do the math and see what you come up with. To watch a video of our potato planter in action you can visit “Tater Tales May 17th.”
Welcome to the second post in my brand new blog series called “Fresh From Our Farm.” This long weekend the men will be busy planting potatoes since the weather looks like it will finally cooperate a little bit. This video clip shows our seed cutting line in action. This is where we cut the larger seed potatoes into smaller pieces. They are loaded into bulk trucks and driven to the field to get loaded into the planter. To understand more about our seed potato cutting line and why we cut our seed potatoes in the first place you can visit “Journey to the Underground Part I.”
And so continues our very cold and wet #plant19. Have a great long weekend everyone! And no matter what your plans are be sure to make great memories, have some fun, stay safe and look out for slow moving tractors when you’re out and about! |
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