Young Farmer of Year has hopes for son

FORT FAIRFIELD – Ronald Barnes says he likes getting soil under his fingernails and breathing his farm’s fresh earth in the spring.

And he hopes his 5-year-old son, Nathan, will want to do the same thing, becoming the fifth-generation farmer in his family.

In the meantime, Barnes, 34, is doing exactly what he wants to do in life – growing potatoes and oats in his hometown.

His commitment has helped make him the Maine Potato Board’s 2004 Young Farmer of the Year.

Barnes Farms Inc. is more than 500 acres of windswept fields on the West Limestone Road. It grows round white seed potatoes for farmers who grow them for the chip industry.

Barnes grows 236 acres of potatoes and 165 acres of oats, and he has another 80 acres of tilled land for crop rotation. He sells his seed potatoes to MFX, the Maine Farmers Exchange, which sells them to potato growers up and down the East Coast. He grows five varieties of seed.

Hard years have taken their toll on growers.

“I’m not optimistic about the coming selling season,” he said. “Adverse weather has been hard on growers up and down the East Coast.” He said his yields were down 30 hundredweight per acre, or 240 compared with 270 in normal years. However, he said the quality is “super.”

“Something dramatic could happen in the market,” he said. “But these are uncertain market times.”

Still, Barnes, his wife, Megan, and their two children, Nathan and Kara, 7, are comfortable in a farmhouse that overlooks potato fields as far as the eye can see in all directions.

Field after field of potato-growing land is split only by fields of rotation crops and some small spots of woods.

He has owned his spread since 1991, when his father, Dana Barnes, retired and the son bought the farm. His uncle Bruce Barnes farmed with him until his retirement in 2001. Ronald is the sole farmer now. Bruce Barnes helps out, along with one full-time farmhand.

“I’ve been working on the farm since I was 10,” Barnes said while sitting at the kitchen table of the family’s, white clapboard home Saturday morning. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and it’s a great way of life.”

“Ron has shown success through attention to quality and sound business practices,” said Timothy Hobbs, director of development and grower relations for the Maine Potato Board. “We believe the Barnes family is a fine example of a successful future in the Maine potato industry.”

Barnes is proud of the hard-earned reputation he has as a quality seed grower. He has made improvements and upgraded the equipment on the family farm. He hopes his efforts will reduce labor costs and make his operation more efficient.

Since he grows seed potatoes, he stores his crop for months each year until he ships in late March through mid-May. Then it’s time to start over, putting the new crop in the ground, fertilizing and caring through the summer months until harvest in September and October.

He stores his crop in two storage houses, one next to the family home, and one twice as large in town.

His wife, he said, is a “spring and fall widow,” and Megan calls her husband a “winter mom.” From December to March, the family has a lot of time together while he checks his storage houses three times a day and waits for the time to ship.

The only time he has spent away from his hometown was when he attended the University of Maine and the University of Maine at Presque Isle. He took courses in agriculture, resource economics and business management.

“Those years helped me to run the operation and helped me decide what I wanted to do,” he said. “I knew I didn’t want to sit behind a desk somewhere.

When he’s not working, he’s out hunting and fishing with the family whenever possible. His face lights up when he mentions trout and salmon.

He is past treasurer and member of the Fort Fairfield Fish and Game Club, and the Lions Club, and provides regular field trip destinations for local schoolchildren on the farm.

He hopes his son will follow in his footsteps. “I would like to see my son keep the family farm in the family. That will be his decision,” he said. “He follows me around [the farm] like a shadow,” he said.