CARIBOU – The family of Murray and Roberta Blackstone believes their strong ties, generations of working the land and a lot of hard work are all reasons why they have been named the 2003 Farm Family of the Year by the Maine Potato Board.

The couple and their two sons, Dan and Bill Blackstone, farm 720 acres of Caribou land off the south bank of the Aroostook River with rotating crops of potatoes, oats and canola.

Farming isn’t anything new for the Blackstone family. Blackstones have been tilling northern Maine soil since 1694, through 10 generations. Murray Blackstone’s father and mother, Orman and Laurette Blackstone, have their own farm just down the road on Route 161. His brother, Kyle Blackstone, Young Farmer of the Year in 2002, has an operation over the ridge on the Hardison Road.

“Farming’s in our blood,” Blackstone, 48, said Saturday morning sitting at the kitchen table of their home. “I had to be on the farm.

“We’ll always be farmers,” he said. “We are honored to be recognized by the industry.”

“I kind of had some adjustments to make,” Roberta Blackstone, the family matriarch who came from a nonfarming family and married her high school sweetheart, said. “This was all new to me when we got married. I was really surprised that we were selected,” she said. “We are, after all, small farmers.”

Being small, according the Blackstones, allows them to pay more attention to their crops, testing soil as they need to, rotating crops, and remaining a family farm.

“Being a farm family is important,” Murray Blackstone said. “I enjoy working with the boys, teaching them and learning from them.”

The Blackstones’ farmland, which they partially own and partially rent, is located along the Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield and Limestone roads. The homestead, where they have lived since 1980, has several white, wood-frame buildings, including a large barn used for storage and a garage area where they reconfigure equipment to suit their needs.

The buildings are surrounded by all kinds of flowers and trees in which Roberta Blackstone, a flower aficionado, toils. The area includes an enormous 80-by-100-foot flower garden, which was selected as Flower Garden of the Year in Caribou three years ago. Family and friends are the recipients of her blooms for special occasions such as weddings.

“I grew up in farming,” Dan Blackstone, 27, said, with his daughter on his lap. “There’s something about the dust and the smell of diesel fumes, I guess. We work from can’t-see in the morning until can’t-see at night,” the eldest Blackstone sibling said of the dusk till dawn hours on the farm. “It just feels right, feels good.”

“I never thought of doing anything else,” Bill Blackstone,22, the youngest son, said. “It’s the only thing I know. We get two to three hours of work done before most people leave home for work,” he said while sitting next to his mother. “It’s great being recognized by other farmers for the work we do.”

The middle child, Jenny Blackstone, 24, does her own farming, but with flowers. She’s the only family member not living on the farm, but she takes after her mother with her love for flowers. She works for Sprague’s Nursery and Garden Center in Bangor.

The Blackstones like the independence of farming, even though that fierce independence works against farmers at times. Like most of their peers in the Aroostook County industry, they work day after day trying to make a comfortable living off the land.

It’s hard work, but Murray Blackstone wouldn’t do anything else. He said he tried radio and television repair early on, after attending trade school at Presque Isle. That lasted less than one year.

Murray Blackstone would like to see more, diversified, potato processors in Aroostook County, and he is hopeful that day will come. He said he worries about overproduction of potatoes in the United States and the Canadian import of potatoes, both of which are detriments to the laws of supply and demand, he said.

He said the industry could use more markets for their commodity, and he longs for a home for off-grade potatoes, possibly in the frozen or dehydrated market.

“There’s no money to be made by digging a hole in a back field and burying them,” he said of off-grade potatoes. “We just need more places to go with our potatoes.”

Blackstone said he believes the Aroostook County potato industry is stable now despite the loss of acreage over several decades.

Blackstone has been involved in trying to make the industry a better place for farmers. He has been on the Agricultural Bargaining Council for years, serving on the board of directors for six years and as its president this year.

He has worked with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Program for potatoes, canola and soybeans and has attended the Potato Industry Leadership Institute, where farmers are exposed to all aspects of the potato industry.