A history of potatoes in Aroostook County

Edward F. Johnston, Agricultural Economist Circa 1959, Special to The County
15 years ago
    A few years ago, a gentlemen visiting the state of Maine for the first time, spent a night in Caribou. Commenting about this stay, he said, “Conversation on the street was all on one thing … the past, present and future of potatoes.”
This topic has dominated conversation in Aroostook County for many years, and quite probably will continue to do so for some time to come. Quoting the late Charlie Fisher of Fort Fairfield, “Here in Aroostook, it’s mainly all potatoes. We buy land and borrow money to grow potatoes, then we grow potatoes to pay back the money and buy more land. We build big houses and sheds to store potatoes in, then we’ve got to grow a mighty lot of potatoes to fill up the storage. We eat potatoes, work potatoes, thrive, flourish and starve on ‘em.”
The potato in Aroostook is 150 years old, being first planted in the County over 50 years after the Scotch-Irish brought potatoes to Maine about 1750. As near as can be determined, Joseph Houlton, for whom the town was named, planted the first potato in Aroostook County, then included the counties of Penobscot and Washington, in June of 1807 — the variety was known as Early Blue or Blue Nose. From then until several years later, potatoes were grown in Aroostook only as a garden product. They were planted in the new land among the stumps and logs. The custom was to begin chopping down trees in the winter, burn the land over in May or June, and then plant the seed wherever a bit of ground could be seen and enough ashes, earth and refuse could be hoed together to make a suitable hill.
Potatoes were grown in all counties in Maine and grew quite well throughout the entire state. Quoting from a paper given in 1869 by Samuel Wesson of Ellsworth, Hancock County representative to the Maine Board of Agriculture, “From 1820 to 1840, the enlarged cultivated acreage of the potato in this state was almost a surprise. In 1840, the aggregate number of bushels exceeded 10 million; in 1843, the rot made its advent with such widespread malignity as to cause general alarm that the potato was to be swept from the face of the earth and become extinct. Although the malady somewhat subsided after a few years’ run, a decade or more years were required to allay the panic and restore confidence. In 1860, the crop was computed at 6,400 bushels (for the state of Maine), convincing that something had been learned of the nature of the disease and the preventatives, one or both.”
The valley of the Penobscot was the leading potato producing area of the state during this era. In Aroostook, residents discovered that shingle-making was a money-making reason for clearing land, and as more trees were felled and more settlements established, more and more potatoes were grown. Aroostook became a promising region in which to plant potatoes for the manufacture of potato starch, which was in great demand by textile manufacturers.
Potatoes had been first grown in Aroostook for home consumption and livestock feeding and for bartering. The chief market for Aroostook agricultural products was found in lumber camp operations. Potato production increased somewhat with the opening of the road known as “The Military Road” between Houlton and Bangor in 1832. Later this road was extended to Presque Isle and Ashland. Still, potato production rated behind oats and buckwheat for many years, partially because of the bounty given for raising buckwheat. By 1850, about 86,500 bushels were reported grown in this county, and in 1860, Aroostook’s 411,600 bushels comprised about 6 1/2 percent of the states’ production.
In 1862, a prophesy by “S” in the Maine Farmer was, “Of all the places in Maine where potatoes will pay best, Aroostook will excel as soon as it shall have railroads.” In 1871, the railroads came. Rail lines were extended from Debec Junction, New Brunswick, into Houlton, and in 1875, the New Brunswick Railroad Company constructed a narrow gauge spur from Aroostook Junction to the United States boundary with the Aroostook River Railroad Company constructing an extension from the boundary into Fort Fairfield. The next year, the line was continued up along the river as far as Caribou. Extension of this line from Caribou into Presque Isle occurred in 1861.
In 1880, 2,248,600 bushels were raised in Aroostook (about 28 percent of that reported for the state).
With the railroad came an increase in the number of starch factories. The first factory had been started before the railroad came; Alba Holmes made over an unused woolen mill at Caribou to manufacture starch in 1871, and in 1874, a man by the name of Wheeler from New Hampshire built a factory at Presque Isle. In the early days of the starch factories, farmers contracted a certain number of acres with the factory owner, the potatoes to be bought at the factory at 25 cents per bushel.
Potato production became increasingly more commercialized and few table stock shipments were made. In 1833, from accounts of the Fort Fairfield Custom House, shipments from the Aroostook River area included 2,692 tons of starch — “to make which required the consumption of 670,500 bushels of potatoes — and 342,355 bushels of potatoes.” The potato acreage of 1890, double that of 1880, was estimated at 28,000 acres, with a production of 5,000,000 bushels, of which over 1,500,000 was manufactured into starch in the 42 factories, which had been erected in the County.
The maintenance of soil fertility was of leading importance among cultural practices. The $64 question of the day was, “Are we not sending off the fertility of our soil with the potatoes?” Sections of Maine other than Aroostook, which had started the production of starch as a specialty, found themselves unable to maintain the fertility of their soil and the result was soil bankruptcy. This was in part due to the fact that the resources of their soil in the way of fertility were more limited than the loams of Aroostook, and that the rotation of crop system, which very early came into vogue in Aroostook, was not practiced there.
The representative of Waldo County to the Board of Agriculture, J. W. Lang of Brooks, commented in 1874, “Potato culture, from the time the seed is taken from the cellar, is hard, dirty, disagreeable and laborious … it has but few redeeming features. It rapidly exhausts land unless highly manured, which militates against their soundness as thousands and thousands of acres in Waldo County bear solemn witness. We believe the true policy is never to sell off any potatoes, and raise only enough for use on the farm. Other crops can be grown that require less labor at greater profit and we should look to other sources for a market product than to the potato field.”
But in Aroostook, the “Garden County”, the thought of using commercial fertilizer was considered somewhat absurd. Potato raising was considered well adapted to Aroostook for three reasons in the main: (1) “the comparative newness in the soil overlying our calcareous riches, (2) the general absence of surface stones in these towns thus allowing large smooth fields where all machinery can be worked with advantage, and (3) the present fashion in the trade which calls for Aroostook potatoes and pays more money for them than any others.”
However, by 1880, soil fertility was commencing to be of concern to Aroostook farmers also. Edward Wiggin of Maysville, which in 1883 became the northern half of Presque Isle, had this to say: “While the starch factories have undoubtedly been a great benefit to the farmers in the past and the raising of potatoes may still, to a limited extent, be profitably carried on without danger to the soil, yet, if various farmers persist in raising large breadths of potatoes, going over the same fields again and again with their crop without the application of manure, it requires no prophet’s kin to predict with certainty the ultimate exhaustion of their farms … and that at no distant date.”
Walter Balentine, professor of Agriculture at Orono, added “A few years ago, Aroostook County was believed by many to furnish a practically inexhaustible soil, but the bountiful crops of potatoes, oats and wheat taken from these new lands have made such a draft on their native fertility that many of our farmers are fain to supply deficiencies by the use of commercial fertilizers.”
The progressive farmers began to use commercial fertilizers. Francis Barnes of Houlton, Southern Aroostook representative to the Maine Board of Agriculture remarked, “It’s the money we are after. I calculate that if we are using fertilizer freely that we are not exhausting the soil.” Yields in Aroostook began to increase. In 1858, a prize had been given at the exhibition in Presque Isle to Verannus Chandler of Fort Fairfield who grew 250 bushels on an acre, however, the average for the state of Maine in 1872 was only 125 bushels — second to Vermont’s 140 bushels.
In 1886, Barnes reported, “The crop was remarkedly good in all respects. One of our best men stated to me that on 10 acres of land, he harvested as good a crop as he ever had and he took to the depot at digging time 50 barrels to the acre right through. The culls for the factory were just about the same in number of barrels; 100 barrels to the acre, 2 ? bushel to the barrel, 275 bushels … a good yield.”
The foregoing mention of the word “barrels” in the 1886 issue of Agriculture in Maine was the first observation of the use of that word while reviewing these books. These books were published, generally, each year beginning in 1856. The first barrels used in Aroostook, it is said, were those in which fertilizer had been shipped into the area. The farmers used also flour, sugar and fish barrels. Then, as barrels were used to ship starch, the coopers’ trade made them for both starch shipments and farmers’ use. In 1891, a law was passed to establish the standard weight of a barrel of potatoes at 165 pounds. Indications are that bags were used at one time. A comment made in 1886 was that potatoes “will usually scar and lose their fresh inviting appearance if tumbled into bags or barrels in the field and out again at the market.”
Other cultural problems facing the potato farmer were the “potato disease” — late blight — of which control was still an uncertainty, scab, and the Colorado beetle, which first appeared in Maine in 1876. Scab was considered a product of high civilization, as it was not found on virgin lands. The beetle was controlled by plaster, most of which was ground from rock obtained from Plaster Rock, N.B. and Paris green. Commenting on control of the beetle, Barnes said, “There are a few people who have tried taking off the beetles with their fingers rather than use the Paris green, but in a little while they get tired of that kind of work and take Paris green.”
Acreage and production had continued to increase and the definite future of the potato in Maine, particularly Aroostook, was established. With the increase in acreage and production, farmers shifted from hand labor and oxen to horse power when and where it was possible and feasible. Planting and digging continued to be done by hand, but plowing, harrowing, hilling, and hauling were done with horses.
Beginning in the decade of the 1880s, many machines were brought into the County by demand of the farmers. Early in the decade, sulky plows and wheel cultivators were used by some and some of the first planters appeared — the Evans, the Robbins, and later the Aspinwall — as well as the Pruin digger.
A satisfactory digger seemed to be the greatest machinery need as production increased. One type of digger, advertised in 1858 as R.L. Allen’s New Potato Digger, was described as “simply a double moldboard plow, the boards being shoal and but little curved and slit longitudinally so as to allow the earth thrown up to sift more or less through the openings. It is light, weighing only 85 pounds, of light draft and simple in its construction and with a pair of horse or oxen and a boy to drive; will dig potatoes as fast as twenty men can pick them up, turning them out so clean that not one bushel in fifty is left uncovered. The standard is so high as to allow it to work well without clogging from weeds or potato tops and will work on all soils, side hills or among stones and stumps. It is also recommended as a cultivate or a weeding plow. The price is $10.”
This “new” digger and others developed in the next score years were used but little if at all in Maine. In 1869, Secretary Gilbert said, “It would seem that so simple an operation as digging potatoes could be mostly performed by horse power. Implements have been constructed for this purpose but have proved little, if any, advantage over the process of hand power digging.” Barnes of Houlton, while speaking before the Board of Agriculture in 1886, said, “Every machine that is manufactured for digging potatoes by horse power is brought to us up there, but the perfect has not come. Our machine for digging potatoes is the Madawaska Frenchman and his wife and children. And when they will dig, sort and put potatoes at 10 cents a barrel, we calculate that is cheap enough. We furnish hose power to get the potatoes out of the field. My potatoes were all dug by one man and three children — the oldest seven years old and the others coming along in order.”
After 1890, however, a horse-drawn traction drive potato digger, the Hoover digger, became widely accepted. “At first, farmers of Aroostook were quite conservative and somewhat prejudice against the use of these new fangled machines,” said Edward Wiggin of Maysville, “but latterly this has been almost wholly removed and they are now fully abreast of the most progressive ideas in this respect.”
A few tractors were used in Aroostook prior to World War I, although most were not too powerful. As John Erskine of Presque Isle says, “They worked all right — as long as you weren’t going up hill.” As tractors improved, several other pieces of farm machinery used in conjunction with tractors improved also. Nevertheless, the Hoover, horse or tractor drawn, remained the prominent digger for about a quarter of a century. Then the snows and freezing rains of the fall of 1925 prompted much greater use of engine-driven diggers in Aroostook, even though a few had been tried previously. Four or five years later, another step was taken and power take-off diggers made their first appearance in the County.
In addition to changes in machinery, potato varieties changed through the years. Few people have ever heard of bygone varieties such as Pink Eye, Cowhorn, Irish Buckster, White Bluenose, Long Red and Chanango. From 1900 until the late 1930’s, when Green Mountains began showing great susceptibility to net necrosis, this variety was of greatest importance in this area. In 1928-1930, nearly four-fifths of the average total potato crop was composed of the Green Mountain variety. The Katahdin variety, now the most prominent, was introduced to Aroostook in 1932.
Among other advancements made through the years in the production aspect of the potato industry in Maine have been those related to fertilization, soil conservation practices, disease and insect control, and cultivation techniques. With these advancements, the annual production of potatoes in Aroostook has increased ten-fold since the turn of the century to over 60,000,000 bushels. Yields per acre have increased to around 400 bushels. Aroostook now has about 90 percent of the state’s potato acreage and produces about 95 percent of the Maine potato crop. Maine supplies about 15 percent of the United States crop.
Yet Maine, a leader in potato production, has lagged in changing potato handling practices. Generally, Idaho, Nebraska and Colorado are among the first to start making changes in handling potatoes. They are a long way from market, their freight rates are comparatively higher, and so they have to do something better to get into the eastern market. Many Maine shippers, even with comparatively lower freight rates, seem to possess that Yankee conservation which makes them resistant to changes and thus use many machines and methods of questionable efficiency.
Starch factories were built at a number of points in the County and the owners contracted by acres, potatoes to be ground for starch. Aroostook shortly became, and has remained, the nation’s principal area for the production of this product.
As Aroostook increased its production to include potatoes for shipment as table stock, frost-proof storage houses were built — the first being at a siding in Presque Isle. These began to be a measure of the industry. Quoting Francis Barnes, Southern Aroostook’s representative to the Maine Board of Agriculture, “A few statements of the present situation (1886) in Houlton will illustrate the point. There are eight large frost-proof receiving houses at the railway. These are open the first of September and continue so until well into June following. In all of them, one man is kept constantly employed; sometimes two.
“Now the industry is faced with such questions as: Is it best to market in fall or keep till spring? Shall we sell here or shall we consign them to a commission merchant? How much advance should we receive on the fall price if we keep them over until spring? Potatoes are selling today in the market for 62 cents per bushel. How much would they bring next spring or summer in order that the holder meet no loss in the operation?”
Movement of potatoes within the trackside storage houses at first was strictly a manual operation. Bins were filled by rolling barrels up a plank which rested on the potatoes already dumped. Vertical movement was accomplished by rolling barrels on a plank from one level to another. Later horse power was put to use in this part of the industry also. With block and tackle, a horse moved forward about seven feet to raise a barrel 15 feet to the second deck or from the basement. After some experience, most horses, as a matter of habit, walked the prescribed distance hoisting a barrel, then backed up or turned and walked back to the starting point lowering an empty. During cold weather, the harness was put on the horse over one or two blankets, and through the fall and part of the shipping season, manure piles beside the storage house became higher and higher.
Sizing and grading, such as it was, was accomplished by allowing the potatoes to roll over a rope rack. This rack consisted of several parallel ropes properly spaced and suspended within a frame. As the potatoes rolled down the inclined rope rack, the small ones would drop through and culls were picked out. The product was then dumped in a railroad car for shipment.
It was not until the last decade of the 19th century that the handling of potatoes came to be considered as important an aspect as the production. The markets wanted Maine potatoes; they were in demand all along the eastern seaboard. Interest in putting out a better product was aroused. In 1893, F. H. Moores of Pittston, near Gardiner, giving a talk on “Marketing Potatoes” said, “Many of our potatoes are spoiled in getting to market. In the first place, they dump them into vessels (freight cars), walk over them and shovel them over and spoil the potatoes before they get to market and usually such potatoes are not sold as Maine potatoes. The potatoes that do come to Boston in good shape are Maine potatoes no matter where they come from.
“Now, potatoes taken from the field and dried off carefully, handled as carefully as you would handle apples, put up in barrels or boxes, and put into our large markets that way without being bruised, are in just as good shape as when they come from the field; they will actually be 25-55 cents more on every barrel than when they are sent in bulk in vessels to be walked over and spoiled.”
The branches of the Canadian Pacific Railway which had been extended into Aroostook, facilitated the expansion of the industry, but because of the long circuitous route through a foreign country to Boston, much interest was felt toward an Aroostook railroad with a direct route to Bangor. With the 1880s came the long desired Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. Between 1891 and 1895, the railroad was built from Brownville to Caribou to Van Buren, and in 1902, “The loop” was completed when Van Buren was connected to Ashland via Madawaska and Fort Kent.
With a more direct route to market, further intensity of potato production in Aroostook was stimulated. In 1901, about six million bushels of potatoes were produced in the County, an increase of 2 ? million bushels (42 percent) over that of a decade before.
The horse-drawn digging machine accomplished the feat of harvesting the increasing acreage quite well, but something was needed to speed the handling operation after harvest. One of the first steps in this direction was the introduction of a chain sizer. A continuous wire mesh belt was carried by two wooden rolls permitting all potatoes below a given size, as determined by the size of the mesh, to drop through. These early chain sizers were hand-powered.
However, little advancement was made in handling methods or equipment until World War I and after. During the war, farmers and shippers took advantage of the increased demand and practically every potato they had was shipped to market. It was during this period that grades were first issued by the Government to insure a standardized product on the market. Potatoes were the first product for which Federal grades were established. It was not until 1921 that the state of Maine set up state standards and in 1922, Maine joined the Federal government in a cooperative agreement with inspection extended to the shipping points. Thus the Federal-State Inspection Service in Maine started with the standard grades of U.S. No. 1 and U.S. No.2. The maximum tolerance of grade defective potatoes in these standards was established at 6 percent, and this has not been changed to date.
In the twenties, electricity was put to use in potato houses — more than 10 years after it was brought to the central Aroostook area from Tinker Dam in 1907. Chain sizers and barrel hoists were the first pieces of electrically powered equipment used in handling potatoes. The horse and the manure piles gradually disappeared from the storage area.
Prior to 1924, potatoes were shipped in bulk largely in common box cars which were lined with paper as a protection against frost and equipped with stoves by the shipper. This method was not satisfactory, and the refrigerator car or “reefers” came into use. About the same time, shippers started to use 165 pound burlap bags. Three or four years later, the 150 pound bag came into use, then the 120 pound and the 100 pound sack. There was quite a bit of resistance to the use of the 100 pound sacks and many shippers wanted to revert to the 150 pound bag. However, market demands called for smaller units, and in the late twenties and early thirties, bags since dropped from the 100 pound sacks to 15 and 10 pound bags. A new tie was introduced with these consumer size paper bags — the wire tie. About 1925, roller-type “grading tables and rubber pintle roll brushers were introduced, making better grading of the potatoes possible.
In the mid-thirties, the first roll sizers were brought into use. The introduction of these sizers, consisting of a series of scalloped rolls which could be set to size the potatoes fairly accurately, was the first attempt to offer the consumer a pack of potatoes of uniform size. Prior to 1935, only two grades had been added to the original U.S. standards — they were U.S. Commercial, which came in 1925, and U.S. Fancy, but with sizing, consumers were offered two new State of Maine grades, Super Spuds and Chef’s Special.
Only a few changes such as multi-sizing machines and the use of 50-pound bags occurred in handling equipment and methods between the mid-thirties and World War II. During the war, which created a man-power shortage, barrel loaders on trucks, and conveying and elevating equipment were introduced. Elevating by inclined conveyor had not gained much prominence before the vertical elevator was conceived and the first one erected at the Aroostook Farm in 1950. Also in that year, the first automatic bag tying machine was used. During 1953 and 1954, polyethylene bags, automatic-weighing bagging machines, the expanding roll type sizer, and washing machines were tried and put to use. More advancement and changes in handling potatoes were made between 1949 and 1954 than in any prior five-year period.
The number of shippers in Aroostook County varies from year to year. During World War II, there were about 2,800 registered shippers because of the regulation that one needed to be a licensed shipper in order to obtain a permit to have a car allocated to them for shipment. After the war, the number dropped to roughly 800. In the 1958-59 season, the number was 1,518. Some of these specialized to some extent in the packaging and shipping process; others shipped only two or three cars a season.
Handling operations among these shippers have been uniform only to the extent that there has been removal of undersized tubers, grading of the remaining lot with under-grade tubers being removed, in many cases separation into lots of specified tuber sizes, and packaging of the product. In addition to this, some shippers, starting in 1953, washed their potatoes as well as sizing and grading them. Uniformity ends at that point. The methods of accomplishing the sizing, grading, and washing as well as methods of moving potatoes from storage to the operating line have been multifold and varied. Even within one house, the method often is in a state of flux.
Standardization of methods or equipment among shippers has been practically nonexistent. Of the many pieces of handling equipment, only one has approached being standard. This is a chain sizer which separates tubers under the desired size and “peewees” from the remainder of the lot. Uniformity in handling methods and equipment is not essential, but fewer shippers increasing their output with more efficient machines would contribute to uniformity in the packaged product.
For many years, it was common practice to set up packaging equipment in the rollways of storage houses, but as the number of machines in the packaging line increased, the rollways became increasingly congested, thus decreasing efficiency. In many houses, storage space was sacrificed to permit expansion of the work area. With this change came the construction of overhead and hopper-type storage bins. More recently a few centralized packing houses have been built separate from storage facilities.
Interest in more efficient methods of packaging a better product increased, and in the fall of 1954, a cooperative agreement between the Agricultural Marketing Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station resulted in the establishment of the Maine Potato Handling Research Center. This group was composed of four men — an industrial engineer and a plant physiologist employed by the USDA; an agricultural engineer and an agricultural economist employed by the Maine Experiment Station. In general, this group was assembled for the purpose of determining, developing, and testing methods and equipment by which a better quality pack might be assembled economically.
At present, somewhat of a revolution in one phase of handling potatoes is in progress in Aroostook County. Potato harvesters, already in use in other areas, have been tested and are being worked commercially under Aroostook conditions. Many people in Aroostook are interested in a method of handling potatoes which will make the barrel obsolete. Work is being done on two handling methods which are use in conjunction with the harvester — bulk handling and box handling. Bulk handling involves hopper bodies mounted on trucks, a conveyor system including a means of elevating, and possibly bin loaders and unloaders. Box handling involves wooden boxes which will contain about a ton of potatoes each, a fork lift, and a dumping unit.
Concerning the shipping of potatoes, Bangor and Aroostook Railroad have recently developed a conveyorized rail car for bulk loading and unloading of potatoes shipped from Maine. Each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages and its own particular effect on the overall methods of handling potatoes within storage houses. These methods as well as conventional methods are being, and will be, studied and tested by the Maine Potato Handling Research Center with regard to flow regulation, bruising rate, use of man-power, rate of output, cost and amount of facilities and the like.
Work is also being done on other comparatively new handling techniques such as forced ventilation, washing and waxing, bag closing, and translocation of potatoes by fluming or floating in water.
Methods, techniques, and equipment may be developed to increase the efficiency and reduce the damage in handling potatoes, but in the final analysis it is the individual shipper, the people in his employ, and the methods, techniques and equipment they use that effect the quality of potatoes shipped from Aroostook County.