Melanie Wickham, who is leaving the leadership of the Empire State Potato Growers, has received a national award.
Check it out at https://www.thepacker.com/article/new-york-leader-awarded-2017-potato-woman-all-seasons this link.
Congrats, Melanie.
Showing posts with label New York potatoes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York potatoes. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Potato Surveys Begins This Month
From the USDA:
Beginning in late July, the Northeastern Regional Field Office of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will conduct the annual Potato Processing Survey.
The results of this survey will be used to establish final USDA statistics about 2016 potato crop processing for official processing states. NASS gathers the data for the survey online, by mail, phone and in-person interviews.
“NASS safeguards the privacy of all responses and publishes only state- and national-level data, ensuring that no individual operation or producer can be identified,” stated King Whetstone, Regional Director, NASS -- Northeastern Regional Field Office.
NASS will compile and analyze the survey information and publish the results in the Sept. 14 annual Potatoes publication. The publication will be available on the USDA-NASS website at https://www.nass.usda.gov/.
For more information on NASS surveys and reports, call the NASS Northeastern Regional Field Office at (800) 498-1518.
The results of this survey will be used to establish final USDA statistics about 2016 potato crop processing for official processing states. NASS gathers the data for the survey online, by mail, phone and in-person interviews.
“NASS safeguards the privacy of all responses and publishes only state- and national-level data, ensuring that no individual operation or producer can be identified,” stated King Whetstone, Regional Director, NASS -- Northeastern Regional Field Office.
NASS will compile and analyze the survey information and publish the results in the Sept. 14 annual Potatoes publication. The publication will be available on the USDA-NASS website at https://www.nass.usda.gov/.
For more information on NASS surveys and reports, call the NASS Northeastern Regional Field Office at (800) 498-1518.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Potato Farm Finds Ways to Survive
From Empire Farm & Dairy magazine
By LESLIE SHELDON
lsheldon@wdt.net
GABRIELS — Nestled in the northern Adirondack Park, with Whiteface Mountain in view to the east, a small, diverse farm is making its mark in the potato industry.
Tucker Farms, Inc. has been in business 152 years and is owned and operated by fifth-generation farmers Dick, Steve and Tom Tucker, in Gabriels, Franklin County, N.Y.
The farm produces 14 varieties of New York-certified seed and table-stock potatoes, and it supplies potatoes and other vegetables to several high-end restaurants in Lake Placid, a local tourist town that hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics.
The Tucker brothers say the key to success is diversification.
“You just can’t be doing the same thing as the economy changes and what people eat changes,” Steve Tucker said.
The farm plants between 65 and 70 different vegetables, but the main crop for the Tuckers is potatoes, which the farm began growing in the 1920s.
“It’s an ideal climate for potatoes,” Tom said. “We’re isolated from everywhere, we get a pretty good dew every night so they’re always getting some moisture. It’s cool so it’s not too hot during the day, so it’s kind of ideal growing conditions.”
The Tucker Taters brand was established 50 years ago by the Tuckers’ father, Don, the same year Tom was born. Don drew the brand’s original logo that is still in use.
The Tucker family has learned to thrive in a region known for the coolest temperatures in the state. The area has a substantially shorter growing season compared to the rest of New York.
“It’s picking the right crops that will survive,” Tom said. “Usually our last frost is around June 10th and our first killing frost is usually right around Labor Day, so you’ve got a pretty narrow window. If you go 50 miles, or even 40 miles, in any direction around us, you gain two weeks on the spring and two weeks on the fall, growing-wise, so that’s a month that we don’t have. (The main thing) is growing the crops that will fit in that window.”
The farm is comprised of 390 acres, and the Tuckers rent another 105 acres. They grow nearly 50 acres of potatoes, and their goal is to increase to as many as 60.
Tom’s son, Ben, is a high school senior at Saranac Lake Central and plans to farm full time following graduation, allowing the family to increase its acreage.
“I love being here, and I love the area,” said Ben, who is able to perform every job on the farm that his father and uncles do. “There is a little bit of pressure because the farm’s been in the family for over 150 years. I think that’s the main reason why it drives me to do it because the family’s been doing it for so long it makes me want to stay here.”
The Tuckers grow oats, rye and buckwheat as cover crops. Their potato-seed production is on a three-year rotation, so the two years it’s not potatoes it’s in grain, so they sell a lot of straw for landscaping.
The farm’s six acres of vegetables range from leafy greens to assorted colors of carrots.
“The restaurants all want something different. The more exotic, the more they want it,” Steve said. “So different-colored beets and different-colored Swiss chards.”
It’s hard to sell a common vegetable like green beans because everybody has green beans, according to Steve.
“Anything that helps the restaurants be different that’s what they’re looking for,” Tom said. “They want something that the restaurant next door doesn’t have on their menu, so we try to be as broad a range as we can grow.”
The farm typically harvests vegetables for the restaurants on Thursdays and Fridays during the summer. Their leafy greens and lettuces are picked first thing in the morning on Friday, and they try to have Steve on the road at 2 p.m. so he can deliver to the restaurants before their dinner hours.
The Tuckers also supply nearby Paul Smith’s College with potatoes for its culinary program. Every year the students tour the farm and get to see where all the vegetables are grown.
“Right now they’re taking 10 pounds of each variety, two varieties a week, and they’re doing all kinds of cooking trials with each of the different varieties,” Tom said. “The chef comes once a week when he picks up the next variety and tells us what they’ve done with them and the different things they liked or didn’t like.”
The farm has made connections with some of the local school districts. The Tuckers have been hosting kindergartners since 1973. The kids get to see potatoes harvested, and the Tuckers leave some potatoes on the ground for the kids to pick up and take home.
This is the second year the Tuckers have been selling potatoes in the Saranac Lake Central School district, and in past years they also sold potatoes to the Newcomb Central School district for use in fundraising.
Each family member has his own area of expertise and responsibility. Steve handles all the seed potato sales and does the spraying. Tom handles the purchasing, tillage, planting and crop rotation.
Dick, retired from General Electric, lives 150 miles away in Schenectady and provides all the computer work, including updating the farm’s website. He also helps out with planting and harvesting.
The family has faced plenty of challenges over the years, in addition to the weather and the short growing season. Tom has advice to offer farmers trying to remain profitable.
“Always look outside of the box,” Tom said. “Always try to do something that somebody else isn’t doing already.”
“That’s why I’ve always felt bad about the milk industry,” Tom said. “That’s all they’ve ever done their entire life, but you gotta look and figure out how to do it differently than the next guy and try to make yours a little more unique from them. Always try to figure out something new and different to try to stay ahead of the curve.”
The Tuckers did this by introducing ag tourism into their operation nearly 15 years ago to help keep their farm in operation.
They provided you-pick strawberries for several years until they found it was too labor-intensive to keep the weeds out of the berry patch.
They now offer you-pick pumpkins, the Great Adirondack Corn Maze, and they rent their farm out for weddings and other events.
But they were reluctant to get started.
“We would have never gotten into ag tourism,” Tom said. “We go to Cornell Cooperative Extension meetings three or four times a year to learn about the different vegetables, and it was Essex County’s Anita Deming and Amy Ivy that got us talking to at least considering ag tourism. Of course we’re sitting there, ‘Well, we’re a potato farmer, why do we need to worry about that?’”
seed potatoes brings income in the spring...
“But we were struggling and the free trade really screwed up potato farming, so that was one of those, ‘Well, maybe we should try something different.’”
The staff at Cooperative Extension was instrumental.
“They helped us along the way, so I can’t say anything but good things about Cooperative Extension and their promotion ideas and their willingness to work with farmers,” Tom said.
“When counties and governments are cutting things that’s one program that I just hope they never cut out because it’s the only true education experience some people will get in the agricultural field. There’s an agency out there that’s willing to help them get information they may need to get good crops,” Tom said.
The farm began offering the Great Adirondack Corn Maze in 2004, and the maze is a different design every year. This season it’s a tribute to the area’s music festival and features a guitar, trumpet, drums and music notes.
“We wouldn’t be still doing it if it wasn’t making money, and it’s a great way to bring people to the farm to see farming and see it’s not what you read in a book, it’s not what you see on TV, that we’re still an active working farm,” Tom said. “There are a lot of people who just don’t have a concept of where their food comes from, so it’s a really good thing to do.”
Tucker Farms was affected by the drought that impacted many regions of New York state this summer.
“We went three and a half weeks with no rain here,” Tom said. “So it was about the time that potatoes would have set the number of tubers. It set nice tubers, but it wasn’t the number of tubers that it could have or normally would have set per plant. So the yield numbers are down, but the quality and the potatoes look nice.”
The farm wasn’t able to offer you-pick pumpkins this year due to the drought. The farm sits on top of a hill, and there is no easy way to irrigate. Tom said they usually offer wagon rides to the pumpkin patch at harvest time.
“We had beautiful plants and blossoms, but we just didn’t have enough rain at the time to get them to grow big enough,” Tom said.
There is little other agriculture in the area, and some of the wealthiest in the world have homes in the area. But the Tuckers would not choose another lifestyle.
“Farming is not easy,” Tom Tucker said. “Farming is a way of life. And not everybody is cut out to be a farmer, but the life that we have chosen, I can’t think of a better way to live.”
For more information on Tucker Farms, visit www.tuckertaters.com or search for “Tucker Taters” and “Tucker Farms Great Adirondack Corn Maze” on Facebook.
Editor’s note: Don Tucker, the patriarch of the Tucker family, passed away in his sleep Oct. 14, two days after the photos and interviews were completed for this story. He was 90.
By LESLIE SHELDON
lsheldon@wdt.net
GABRIELS — Nestled in the northern Adirondack Park, with Whiteface Mountain in view to the east, a small, diverse farm is making its mark in the potato industry.
Tucker Farms, Inc. has been in business 152 years and is owned and operated by fifth-generation farmers Dick, Steve and Tom Tucker, in Gabriels, Franklin County, N.Y.
The farm produces 14 varieties of New York-certified seed and table-stock potatoes, and it supplies potatoes and other vegetables to several high-end restaurants in Lake Placid, a local tourist town that hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics.
The Tucker brothers say the key to success is diversification.
“You just can’t be doing the same thing as the economy changes and what people eat changes,” Steve Tucker said.
The farm plants between 65 and 70 different vegetables, but the main crop for the Tuckers is potatoes, which the farm began growing in the 1920s.
“It’s an ideal climate for potatoes,” Tom said. “We’re isolated from everywhere, we get a pretty good dew every night so they’re always getting some moisture. It’s cool so it’s not too hot during the day, so it’s kind of ideal growing conditions.”
The Tucker Taters brand was established 50 years ago by the Tuckers’ father, Don, the same year Tom was born. Don drew the brand’s original logo that is still in use.
The Tucker family has learned to thrive in a region known for the coolest temperatures in the state. The area has a substantially shorter growing season compared to the rest of New York.
“It’s picking the right crops that will survive,” Tom said. “Usually our last frost is around June 10th and our first killing frost is usually right around Labor Day, so you’ve got a pretty narrow window. If you go 50 miles, or even 40 miles, in any direction around us, you gain two weeks on the spring and two weeks on the fall, growing-wise, so that’s a month that we don’t have. (The main thing) is growing the crops that will fit in that window.”
The farm is comprised of 390 acres, and the Tuckers rent another 105 acres. They grow nearly 50 acres of potatoes, and their goal is to increase to as many as 60.
Tom’s son, Ben, is a high school senior at Saranac Lake Central and plans to farm full time following graduation, allowing the family to increase its acreage.
“I love being here, and I love the area,” said Ben, who is able to perform every job on the farm that his father and uncles do. “There is a little bit of pressure because the farm’s been in the family for over 150 years. I think that’s the main reason why it drives me to do it because the family’s been doing it for so long it makes me want to stay here.”
The Tuckers grow oats, rye and buckwheat as cover crops. Their potato-seed production is on a three-year rotation, so the two years it’s not potatoes it’s in grain, so they sell a lot of straw for landscaping.
The farm’s six acres of vegetables range from leafy greens to assorted colors of carrots.
“The restaurants all want something different. The more exotic, the more they want it,” Steve said. “So different-colored beets and different-colored Swiss chards.”
It’s hard to sell a common vegetable like green beans because everybody has green beans, according to Steve.
“Anything that helps the restaurants be different that’s what they’re looking for,” Tom said. “They want something that the restaurant next door doesn’t have on their menu, so we try to be as broad a range as we can grow.”
The farm typically harvests vegetables for the restaurants on Thursdays and Fridays during the summer. Their leafy greens and lettuces are picked first thing in the morning on Friday, and they try to have Steve on the road at 2 p.m. so he can deliver to the restaurants before their dinner hours.
The Tuckers also supply nearby Paul Smith’s College with potatoes for its culinary program. Every year the students tour the farm and get to see where all the vegetables are grown.
“Right now they’re taking 10 pounds of each variety, two varieties a week, and they’re doing all kinds of cooking trials with each of the different varieties,” Tom said. “The chef comes once a week when he picks up the next variety and tells us what they’ve done with them and the different things they liked or didn’t like.”
The farm has made connections with some of the local school districts. The Tuckers have been hosting kindergartners since 1973. The kids get to see potatoes harvested, and the Tuckers leave some potatoes on the ground for the kids to pick up and take home.
This is the second year the Tuckers have been selling potatoes in the Saranac Lake Central School district, and in past years they also sold potatoes to the Newcomb Central School district for use in fundraising.
Each family member has his own area of expertise and responsibility. Steve handles all the seed potato sales and does the spraying. Tom handles the purchasing, tillage, planting and crop rotation.
Dick, retired from General Electric, lives 150 miles away in Schenectady and provides all the computer work, including updating the farm’s website. He also helps out with planting and harvesting.
The family has faced plenty of challenges over the years, in addition to the weather and the short growing season. Tom has advice to offer farmers trying to remain profitable.
“Always look outside of the box,” Tom said. “Always try to do something that somebody else isn’t doing already.”
“That’s why I’ve always felt bad about the milk industry,” Tom said. “That’s all they’ve ever done their entire life, but you gotta look and figure out how to do it differently than the next guy and try to make yours a little more unique from them. Always try to figure out something new and different to try to stay ahead of the curve.”
The Tuckers did this by introducing ag tourism into their operation nearly 15 years ago to help keep their farm in operation.
They provided you-pick strawberries for several years until they found it was too labor-intensive to keep the weeds out of the berry patch.
They now offer you-pick pumpkins, the Great Adirondack Corn Maze, and they rent their farm out for weddings and other events.
But they were reluctant to get started.
“We would have never gotten into ag tourism,” Tom said. “We go to Cornell Cooperative Extension meetings three or four times a year to learn about the different vegetables, and it was Essex County’s Anita Deming and Amy Ivy that got us talking to at least considering ag tourism. Of course we’re sitting there, ‘Well, we’re a potato farmer, why do we need to worry about that?’”
seed potatoes brings income in the spring...
“But we were struggling and the free trade really screwed up potato farming, so that was one of those, ‘Well, maybe we should try something different.’”
The staff at Cooperative Extension was instrumental.
“They helped us along the way, so I can’t say anything but good things about Cooperative Extension and their promotion ideas and their willingness to work with farmers,” Tom said.
“When counties and governments are cutting things that’s one program that I just hope they never cut out because it’s the only true education experience some people will get in the agricultural field. There’s an agency out there that’s willing to help them get information they may need to get good crops,” Tom said.
The farm began offering the Great Adirondack Corn Maze in 2004, and the maze is a different design every year. This season it’s a tribute to the area’s music festival and features a guitar, trumpet, drums and music notes.
“We wouldn’t be still doing it if it wasn’t making money, and it’s a great way to bring people to the farm to see farming and see it’s not what you read in a book, it’s not what you see on TV, that we’re still an active working farm,” Tom said. “There are a lot of people who just don’t have a concept of where their food comes from, so it’s a really good thing to do.”
Tucker Farms was affected by the drought that impacted many regions of New York state this summer.
“We went three and a half weeks with no rain here,” Tom said. “So it was about the time that potatoes would have set the number of tubers. It set nice tubers, but it wasn’t the number of tubers that it could have or normally would have set per plant. So the yield numbers are down, but the quality and the potatoes look nice.”
The farm wasn’t able to offer you-pick pumpkins this year due to the drought. The farm sits on top of a hill, and there is no easy way to irrigate. Tom said they usually offer wagon rides to the pumpkin patch at harvest time.
“We had beautiful plants and blossoms, but we just didn’t have enough rain at the time to get them to grow big enough,” Tom said.
There is little other agriculture in the area, and some of the wealthiest in the world have homes in the area. But the Tuckers would not choose another lifestyle.
“Farming is not easy,” Tom Tucker said. “Farming is a way of life. And not everybody is cut out to be a farmer, but the life that we have chosen, I can’t think of a better way to live.”
For more information on Tucker Farms, visit www.tuckertaters.com or search for “Tucker Taters” and “Tucker Farms Great Adirondack Corn Maze” on Facebook.
Editor’s note: Don Tucker, the patriarch of the Tucker family, passed away in his sleep Oct. 14, two days after the photos and interviews were completed for this story. He was 90.
Friday, September 30, 2016
NY Fall Potato Production Down Slightly
Fall potato final production for 2015 is 4.14 million hundredweight, down 5 percent from the 2014 crop, said Blair Smith, state statistician of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, New York Field Office.
Harvested area, at 14,800 acres, is down 6 percent from 2014. The average yield of 280 hundredweight per acre is up 5 hundredweight from the previous year.
The value of all potatoes sold in 2015, at $46.6 million, decreased 8 percent from the previous year. The average price, at $12.20 per hundredweight, is down 40 cents from 2014.
The quantity of potatoes sold from the 2015 crop totaled 3.81 million hundredweight, down 5 percent from 2014. Sales accounted for 91.9 percent of 2015 production, down 0.7 percent from the previous year.
Shrinkage and loss is estimated at 290 thousand hundredweight for 2015, up 21 percent from 2014.
Potatoes used for livestock feed on farms where grown, home use, and seed on their own farms totaled 46 thousand hundredweight, down 44 percent from 2014.
Harvested area, at 14,800 acres, is down 6 percent from 2014. The average yield of 280 hundredweight per acre is up 5 hundredweight from the previous year.
The value of all potatoes sold in 2015, at $46.6 million, decreased 8 percent from the previous year. The average price, at $12.20 per hundredweight, is down 40 cents from 2014.
The quantity of potatoes sold from the 2015 crop totaled 3.81 million hundredweight, down 5 percent from 2014. Sales accounted for 91.9 percent of 2015 production, down 0.7 percent from the previous year.
Shrinkage and loss is estimated at 290 thousand hundredweight for 2015, up 21 percent from 2014.
Potatoes used for livestock feed on farms where grown, home use, and seed on their own farms totaled 46 thousand hundredweight, down 44 percent from 2014.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
New York Chips to Hit Wegmans Shelves This Weekend
Great story from colleagues at the Daily News in Batavia:
Go to http://www.thedailynewsonline.com/bdn01/new-york-chips-to-hit-wegmans-shelves-this-weekend-20160120
Go to http://www.thedailynewsonline.com/bdn01/new-york-chips-to-hit-wegmans-shelves-this-weekend-20160120
Friday, October 30, 2015
New York Potatoes Are A Must for Thanksgiving Dinner
 |
| An Adirondack blue potato |
No matter how you eat them — mashed, boiled, fried, scallopped or in a casserole — potatoes are a hearty starch filled with nutrients.
And yes, you can get potatoes grown in New York state.
There are 150 New York potato growers who grow and harvest 18,000 acres of the vegetable, mostly Upstate and on Long Island.
One is Jeff Hopkinson, who grows 70 acres of potatoes and seed potatoes in Williamstown, Oswego County. He finished harvesting his crop in early October and said the yield is good and the quality is “awesome.”
“We had a dry July and August, so I had to irrigate a lot,” he said. “But the size is good, the quality is fantastic, and there are no rotten ones. They are all nice.”
You can’t see much when you drive by a potato farm because all the growing takes place under the soil. Potatoes come in all sizes and different colors, such as red, white or blue. Some are better for varied types of cooking, whether it’s baking, boiling or frying.
And some potatoes aren’t eaten at all.
Hopkinson, a fourth-generation potato farmer, said he sells only about 20 percent of his 70 acres of potatoes for table stock. People come to the farm to buy them, and they are sold in some small stores.
But the other potatoes are sold to potato farmers for seed stock, and Hopkinson said most of his go to Florida.
Many potato farmers in New York got involved in the seed business years ago, when it became another way to earn money. Hopkinson said that although the price of table potatoes can fluctuate wildly, seed prices are fairly stable.
Hopkinson is a certified seed provider — one of eight in New York state — meaning his farm undergoes about five inspections of his crop each year to ensure the potatoes used for seed are healthy and not spreading any diseases, such as the harmful potato leaf roll and potato mosaic viruses.
Certified seed is recognized in national and state legislation as meeting high standards for genetic purity and quality.
Hopkinson explained that seed potatoes don’t look any different from the vegetable that could grace a person’s plate. The difference is the inspections and care to be sure they are disease-free and that they always are kept in a cool, darkened storage area for sale later when they have begun to sprout eyes — those hard, beige tubes that grow out of the sides of potatoes. These eyes are the seeds and eventually grow into brand-new potatoes.
Here are the eight certified seed potato program participants in New York state:
** Ayers & Gillette, Pike, Wyoming County, 585-493-2394, T1ayers@yahoo.com
** Kurt Brehm, Wayland, Steuben County, 585- 315-8746
** Childstock Farms, Inc., Malone, Franklin County, 518-483-1239, rchild@childfarm.net
** Hopkinson Farms, Williamstown, Oswego County, 315-964-2221
** Andrew Pryputniewicz, Waterville, Oneida County, 315-841-8426, seedpotato@frontier.com
** Bruce H. Pryputniewicz, Sauquoit, Oneida County, 315-839-5301, bp1potato@frontiernet.net
** Tucker Farms, Inc., Gabriels, Franklin County, 518-637-1230, adkspud@hotmail.com , potatofarmer@westelcom.com , www.tuckertaters.com
** Cornell Uihlein Potato Farm, Lake Placid, Essex County, 518-523-3258, cmn5@cornell.edu , klp3@cornell.edu, uihleinfarm.pppmb.cals.cornell.edu
Potato Facts
** New York ranks 14th in the country in potato production. Idaho is first and Washington second.
** Potatoes are filled with fiber, Vitamin C and potassium, and they have no fat or cholesterol and only 100 calories per serving. The vegetable is 90 percent water.
** New York potato producers grow the vegetable for Cape Cod, Wise, Utz, Herr’s, Terrell’s and other regional potato chip companies.
** It is said that the potato chip was born in New York. In 1853, railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt complained that his potatoes were cut too thick and sent them back to the kitchen at a fashionable resort in Saratoga Springs.
To spite him, chef George Crum sliced some potatoes paper-thin, fried them in hot oil, salted and served them. Vanderbilt loved his “Saratoga Crunch Chips,” and potato chips have been popular ever since.
Source: Empire State Potato Growers
For more great stories like this one, subscribe to the monthly Empire Farm & Dairy magazine by writing to the Watertown Daily Times, 260 Washington St., Watertown, NY 13601
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