I was holding off posting this collection of predators until I was able to include photos of a hawk and a snake. Even better would have been a hawk catching a snake! However, the hawks won’t cooperate by pausing their flights long enough for me to capture them with my camera and I have never seen a snake here (which some people would say is a good thing!) So here is my “hawkless” and “snakeless” presentation of predators found around the farm. In order of appearance on the slide show, I present a coywolf in our sweet corn field, a turkey vulture, a murder of crows that landed in our winter wheat, a Nursery Web Spider and a Bold Jumping Spider. (As if regular spiders aren’t creepy enough, we have to have both one of the biggest spiders in the arachnid family AND a jumping one…that’s bold….yuck.) If you prefer seeing adorable animals at the farm, you can visit Tater Tales July 25 to see the likes of bunny rabbits and ducklings.
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These adorable pictures are guaranteed to start your Tuesday morning by generating a warm and fuzzy feeling! I sometimes stumble across the most endearing animals as I travel around the farm collecting images for the website. Here are a few of my favourite photos of the cutest little animals that live here with us, from the family of ducklings that has taken up residence in our irrigation pond to the baby hummingbird that flew into our garage. For more pictures of animals you can visit “Pond Life Part II.”
What’s growing at the farm this week? The potatoes are thriving with all the rain this summer. They are sizing up nicely and it looks like we should be on track to start selling them in early August. The sweet corn is not as far along as we would like to see given the very cold and rainy start to the summer, but rest assured it will eventually be ready to eat. The winter wheat is close to maturity, even the sections that were knocked down earlier this summer. John finally made the first cut of hay and we can only hope the rains hold off for a few days so it can dry properly. So the farming trade off continues….what’s good for one crop may not necessarily be ideal growing conditions for another crop. You can visit our “Production Gallery” to see more photos of our crops growing as well as the equipment we use.
Cooking with my friend Chef Derek Roberts was a two day whirlwind of creating recipes and sharing ideas. As we cooked together, Chef Derek developed a taste for country music while I learned an appreciation for blue cheese.
We are thrilled to present these potato salad recipes that are based on a top secret family recipe passed down to me from RJ’s grandmother. The basic potato salad recipe comes with all Grandma Morton’s cooking tips and secrets she shared with me on how to make the perfect potato salad. Chef Derek and myself have created three different options for dressing: “Dill-icious”, “Blue Cheese” and “Onions 3 Ways.” No matter which of these recipes you choose to make first, we guarantee you will be delighted with the end result. Click on the file above to either print or download the recipe. The recipe section of our website is growing quickly! More potato recipes can be found at “Spud Smarts – About Cooking Potatoes” and in previous installments of “The Common-Tater” in the recipes categories. Bon Appétit! Over the last few weeks the potato plants have burst into flower leading RJ to nickname the fields beside our house “The Garden.” Rather a big garden indeed! Not only are the delicate flowers beautiful to look at, it means good news for those of us who are waiting for new potatoes. The flowers are proof that the tubers are thickening up into potatoes. The white flowers are on our early potato plants called AC Chaleur and the pink flowers are on our Yukon Gem plants. There is a wide variety of potato sizing when the plants are this young as you can see in the picture of the potatoes I scrubbed up and sorted by size. So while they are ready to feed my family for dinner, they are not quite ready to be sold to our customers. To learn more about new potatoes you can visit “One Potato, New Potato!”
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The Common-TaterThompson Potato FarmFarming is fascinating! 
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