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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza Lisa Bouchard was the final inspector on the line at Irving Farms potato processing facility on Sept. 4. In back is the USDA potato inspector, ensuring that the potatoes meet the state’s standards. |
By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — The challenge has remained the same since the first potato was planted in Maine soil — find just the right moment when the crop’s mature and dig it out before winter claims it.
Making that process a little less hard (but by no means easy) is technology, and things have changed considerably since the days of horse-pulled plow.
Standing in-between the field and the grocery store at Irving Farms in Caribou are a handful of folks whose job is to make sure that only the best potatoes make it to the kitchen table — and considering that the farm has been named among the McCain Food’s top 10 growers repeatedly, the crew does a pretty good job. (Irving Farms was named the Maine Potato Board Farm Family of the Year in 2005, McCain Food’s Champion Grower in 2009-10, and Food Producer of the Year in 2005 from the Maine Grocers Association.
While some potato farms have completely automated the grading and packing line, a mix of machinery and personnel occupies Irving’s potato processing house and the farm has excelled by drawing from the strengths of both.
“Today, everything’s harvested with windrowers and harvesters, but there’s still a human component,” said Sales and Marketing representative Irving Farm’s Noah Winslow. The Caribou farm has found its agricultural niche selling its produce to grocery stores like Hannaford, where customers will select the tubers to be sliced, diced, fried, baked and mashed.
Winslow has been with Irving Farms for about two years, though his history with the tuber extends back to his childhood, growing up on a dairy and potato farm in Mapleton.
Hands-down, his favorite way to eat a potato is baked and loaded.
“But the great thing about potatoes is that you can eat them with every meal,” he said, echoing a fact that everyone in The County should know by now.
While the potato has been a staple for the county — both in the pantry and as a livelihood — things have changed over the years.
As the conveyor belts pulled freshly dug white round potatoes (Superiors, specifically) along the grading line on Sept. 4, they were sorted, cleaned, sorted again, and inspected by four or five sets of eyes before acceptably settling into five-pound bags. From there they were stacked on pallets to await transfer.
But decades ago, that final packed product wouldn’t be placed in a truck by a forklift — it was done by the strength and sure-grip of potato house workers.
“Just thinking about the forklift … at one point in time, all those 50-pound and even 100-pound bags were hand loaded onto rail cars and onto trucks — so today, the fact that [potato bags] are palletized and then loaded onto trucks with forklifts shows a major ergonomic change our industry has taken,” Winslow said with a knowing chuckle. “There are still a lot of hard-work components of farming and agriculture, but it’s certainly moved tremendously over the last 30 years.”
Other things that have changed over the last 30 years includes a lot less usage of the iconic potato barrel.
“What has changed a lot is the conveyance and moving potatoes around is a lot more automated and less by hand — like rolling barrels, we don’t roll barrels of potatoes anymore,” Winslow described.
Barrels of potatoes would have been used to feed the inspection line as well, but now the potatoes are scooped right out of the trucks into a hopper, which puts them right on to the packing/grading equipment.
They may not be hand picked and barrel rolled like they used to be when Irving Farms first opened in 1936, but the taste and quality of the spud is still revered, as it was hundreds of years ago.
“I think we have a unique set of soils in northern Maine that are excellent for growing potatoes,” Winslow said, adding that the industry’s ability to use predominantly natural rainfall to water the crop also adds a lot to the taste as well as the long-term sustainability of the potato industry.
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza Rhonda Gustafson affixes the bags to the bagger on the potato processing line at Irving Farms. Machinery measure out and automatically fills each five-pound bag of quality inspected potatoes home grown right here in Caribou. |
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza One aspect of inspection that wasn’t part of the potato processing facility 40 years ago was a quick washing to help inspectors determine which potatoes to weed out. |
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza After a light rinse, potatoes are rolled over the sizing table. Only potatoes that are the correct size make it to the first inspection station on the grading line. |
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza From left, crew members Gary Porter, Chris Tracy and Daniel Robinson place the five pound bags of potatoes onto pallets, awaiting a forklift to place them in a truck for delivery. Before forklifts, every pound of potatoes was hand-hauled into the tucks and trains — in 50- or 100-pound bags. |
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie De La Garza If a potato isn’t one that inspectors Jackie Coroniti or David Martin would want to find on their plate, it’s removed from the line. This is how Irving Farms ensures that only high quality spuds make it into their five-pound bags. |
