Blog - Thompson Potato Farm - Thompson Potato Farm

Baby It’s Dry Outside!

7/11/2022

Baby it’s dry outside! Our crops are thirsty, so we pulled out the irrigation reel last week much to everyone’s horror. Irrigation is labour intensive and it runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every time one field pull is completed, the pipe needs to be laid again by hand. The irrigation requires constant monitoring to ensure there are no leaks or equipment breakages.

The reel needs to be turned off when it reached the end of the pull so there is no flooding. And no matter how carefully we calculate when the reel will be done, the one thing we know is that it almost never finished when we think it will be done. But there is always hope…there is rain in the forecast for tomorrow.

To learn more about irrigation you can visit “Inside Irrigation.”

Official Start of Summer

7/3/2022

School’s out, Canada Day has passed and cottages are open. This can only mean that summer has officially kicked off. And that leads to one thing here at the farm. The season for new potatoes is upon us!

RJ and myself dug these beauties last night. All they needed was a quick rinse and then they were dropped into the pot. We dotted them with butter and gobbled them up. Very soon we will dust off the harvester and you will be able to purchase them at the farm door. You can visit “Tater Tales Grilled New Potatoes” for further cooking inspirations for our new white potatoes.

Rock Harvest

4/1/2021

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.

Busy Busy Week!

3/28/2021

The packing shed is crammed 50lb bags of potatoes ready for delivery. This is one of three rows of potatoes that are being delivered on Monday. All week the grading line goes full tilt to keep up with orders from restaurants that are planning for one of their busiest days of the year this Friday. Where are you getting your fish & chips from?! You can visit “Chip Butty Recipe” for a fun and very different recipe involving fresh cut fries.

Spring Forward!

3/13/2021

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.

International Women’s Day

3/8/2021

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.”

Random Things We Do - Culverts

3/6/2021

Every business has little jobs that no one really knows about or thinks about. Here is one of the random jobs we do during the fall harvest. Cornelio and Roberto are moving a culvert (which is not called a “big black heavy tube used for air flow” as I previously thought it was called!) The culverts are essential to air flow and temperature control in our storage buildings over the winter. And they do not move themselves in and out of the buildings! To see a little bit more about our harvest you can visit “Tater Tales Oct 6th #harvest17.”

Tractors For Every Season (Turn! Turn! Turn!)

3/1/2021

Sing along everyone. I know you all know this classic song:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose under heaven
A time to plant
A time to reap

We use our tractors in every season and have implements for every purpose imaginable. Here are our tractors hard at work preparing our land for planting as they pull implements such as the fertilizer spreader, disc harrow, cultivator and manure spreader. The heavy duty tractors pull the large potato harvester and the smaller windrower during the harvest. And sometimes we even allow a special guest to tag along with the drivers to provide some company during the very long summer days!

To see videos of these machines at work you can visit “Tater Tales Potato Planter” and “The Potato Harvester.”

#AgProud One Pan Dinner Special Recipe

2/23/2021

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One thing I know is that we proud of our product. In fact we are #AgProud! Today we celebrate Canada’s Agriculture Day by releasing a new recipe showcasing the food we grow and the food we all love. This simple one pan dish can make a real splash when you are looking to serve something wholesome and special. Roast beef, potatoes and vegetables are roasted in one pan to create a perfect meal for your family. All of these items are available from local farmers at most grocery stores.

You can click on the link above to print or download the file. If you are looking for inspiration for some other fantastic recipes to spice up your meals, you can visit “#AgProud Potato & Sweet Corn Chowder” and “Spud Smarts – About Cooking Potatoes.” Bon Appétit!

Happy Family Day!

2/15/2021

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.