Growing spuds – and having fun

CARIBOU – Maine is a largely rural state, and many kinds of farmers can be found along its highways and byways. Roger and Jeannette Pelkey fall into a special category.

The Pelkeys grow potatoes at their farm on Fort Fairfield Road in Caribou. Not many potatoes, only about 4 acres, but they do it all alone. They cut their own seed, plant their own potatoes, nurture the plants through the summer, kill the vines, dig up the spuds, pick and store them for selling later. And they have fun doing it.

“We are it,” answered 66-year-old Roger Pelkey when asked when the crew would arrive for picking. “What you see is what you get.

“I wouldn’t do this for anyone else,” he added with a laugh. “This way, when we get tired, we just sit on a barrel for a while.”

Retired from Cary Medical Center in Caribou, Pelkey and his wife work together on their small farm. They actually rent their field from a neighbor, and they pay him by supplying him with potatoes for the year.

Jeannette Pelkey, 59, says potato farming keeps them in “pretty good shape.”

The Pelkeys grow Superior, Katahdin and some Green Mountain varieties. They store the spuds in a root cellar near their home. Their equipment includes two tractors. An old Oliver model was hauling a two-row digger and the other tractor was attached to a flatbed trailer used to haul barrels at day’s end.

The couple sells their 400-to-600-barrel crop to stores, neighbors by the roadside and to packers looking for specialty potatoes.

“I dig about 150 feet of potatoes, and then I walk back slowly to help her pick,” Roger Pelkey said chuckling. “She picks faster than me and I don’t have to do as much if I walk back slowly.

“We don’t start too early, and we don’t work too late,” he said. “After we are done, we have to haul the potatoes back to the root cellar, and store them.”

The Pelkeys say they don’t hire youngsters to pick because they don’t want to deal with insurance, Workers’ Compensation and other state and federal regulations.

With their laid-back operation, the Pelkeys pick slowly, cleaning potatoes as they go, leaving the bad sunburned ones on the field along with the soil.

“We may only have 400 or so barrels to sell,” Pelkey predicted, blaming the weather. He and his wife said goodbye before setting up a barrel, firing up the tractor and picking another 150 feet or so.