First, a bit of background on the farm's potato production, now entering its 40th year:
"Our first crop was in 1985 just a year after Howell Farm opened to the public. We did the planting and harvesting as a public program to benefit the then just-opened Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, and to raise awareness and support for efforts to combat local and global hunger and malnutrition. A large group of New Jersey's former Peace Corps volunteers were invited to come and help us show families and other visitors plant and harvest the crop. The farm's interns -- who were studying historical agriculture as part of their research and training in sustainable farming methods -- did all the weeding, cultivating, hilling, and pest control (hand-picking Colorado potato beetles) in between.
The effort produced over a ton of potatoes for the soup kitchen and became part of the farms annual calendar. The experience prepared us to use many of the farm's other production systems to help food pantries and other soup kitchens during the pandemic...and to expand and improve our ability to directly involve the public, students and researchers in the work.
Since 1985, we have donated more than 50 tons of potatoes to hunger organizations, doing so with the help of many thousands of visitors in the process.
The effort has enabled us to cultivate visitors' awareness of food security needs and helped us demonstrate and showcase the importance of preserving historical farming tools, technology and skills for current and future use in education, adaptive research, and community building.
The "potato program" also helped shape the decision by Mercer County and it's Park Commission (Howell Farm's owner and operator) to establish an urban farm in Trenton, adjacent to the soup kitchen that the first crops of potatoes were grown for. Howell Farm was called on to help plan and start the new farm, called Capital City Farm, and is now working with the County's new Office of Food Security to advance food production and distribution systems at both Capital City and Howell Farm, and to assist with related educational goals focussed on food and nutrition literacy, and environmental sustainability."
Potato cultivation 2024
On April 18th we started plowing a 1.5 acre field for potatoes. Half the field was fallow (grass and clover) and the other half had corn growing on it the previous year. The field was plowed over two days with a team of Belgian draft horses and a Syracuse 401 walking plow. The entire field was then disced with a tractor.
draft horses working on the fallow Syracuse 401 walking plow
On April 20th we planted half the field with the help of the public, staff, and volunteers. We used a team of draft horses and the Syracuse 401 to plow up shallow furrows in the field. Each furrow was about 36” apart. Visitors helped to cut potatoes and then laid the potatoes in the furrows and raked soil over them. We planted only Lehigh potatoes. Lehigh potatoes are mid-sized potatoes, slightly oval in shape, with a pale yellow inside. They keep well and are a good all purpose cooking potato.
During the next couple of weeks, visitors and volunteers helped plant the remaining side of the field. (We let it sit for a while after plowing because the grass we had overturned needed to decompose more.) Overall we planted around 700 lbs of potatoes.
During the growing season we cultivated the field multiple times. Sometimes we used a single horse, and walk behind cultivator with school groups, and sometimes we used a two horse riding cultivator. After cultivating the field we used the riding cultivator to hill the rows several times. When cultivating, the riding cultivator is set with spades and when hilling it is set with shovels and discs.
On August 10th we had our potato harvest day on the farm. We used a potato plow and two horses to plow up each row of potatoes. Visitors then came from behind with baskets to collect the plowed up potatoes. It was a bit wet that day, so the potatoes then went on racks to dry before being bagged. We continued the harvest with school groups in the coming weeks until the entire field was harvested. Overall, our harvest was around 743 lbs. All of the harvest was donated to local food pantries.
After harvesting, the field was disced with a tractor and planted with rye. To plant the rye we used an Ontario grain drill and a team of horses. The potatoes will be planted in a different field next year to let the ground recover.
Comments