Potato Predicament

0
fyi_food_potatoes

LAKEVILLE, P.E.I. – Potato farmers on the Island are living on a prayer as wet weather attracts seagulls and ducks to swim in new ponds that have formed in the fields, instead of the farmers themselves to harvest the crop.

So far October has been a wet month that continues to hamper the province’s most prized crop, delaying the harvest of about 85,000 acres of spuds by a week to 10 days, reports the P.E.I Guardian. “It’s a mess,’’ Boyd Rose, the chairman of the P.E.I. Potato Board, told the paper. “It’s very hard going and all we can do is hope things get better.”

And, as if rain isn’t enough, frost has also come earlier than normal posing another problem for farmers who have to wait until midday to farm land that’s been covered with a layer of frost.

The good news is sun and warmer temperatures are predicted for the end of the week, hopefully providing enough rays to dry out the fields and prevent tractors from sinking into the muck.

For more on this story, click here.

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.