Good harvest for Valley potato, carrot crops

The potato sheds and carrot bins are full. Hay is stacked to the rafters. Temperatures are dipping below freezing. For Valley farmers, another growing season is at its close.

Despite a remarkable lack of sunshine during the summer of 2010, farmers are reporting average to above average yields of two of the Valley’s primary truck crops — potatoes and carrots.

That should mean readily available Alaska Grown vegetables well into 2011.

“Nobody’s really complaining,” said Suzan Benz, statistician for USDA Agricultural Statistics, Alaska office. While Benz is still waiting for her surveys to growers to be returned, comments she’s heard as the growing season wound to a close were quite positive.

Michelle Keyes of VanderWeele Farms called potato yields on her family’s farm in the Springer system of Palmer “average.”

“The building’s full,” Keyes said, “can’t complain about that.”

While some crops, like broccoli, had issues with the wet summer, root crops weather the extra water quite well.

“The potatoes need a lot of water and the cool weather is OK for potatoes,” she said.

She said their yields of carrots are down a bit, but local consumers can expect to be eating local carrots into April.

“One crop that didn’t go well was onions,” Keyes said. “No heat — just didn’t do it. I can’t say we got our money back on them.”

Over in the Butte, Paula Giauque said it was a pretty good year for Gold Nugget Farms — except for cabbage. And this time, it wasn’t weather but moose. They will run out of cabbage this month, instead of December, as in a normal year.

She’s got plenty of carrots stored up for her wholesale customers — mostly restaurants and some bulk carrots for stores.

“I think we did really well,” Giauque said.

Butte Farms’ Jerry Huppert isn’t complaining about his potato harvest, either.

“The warehouse is plumb full,” Huppert said. “We have more than we had last year.”

Because the wet weather kept them from getting in the fields as early as usual, the potatoes are bigger. It took longer to harvest the spuds, too, with Huppert digging the last on Sept. 23.

There is still some harvest going on.

Pam Bue was reportedly digging the last of her carrots this week. Keyes said they may bring in some more Brussel sprouts, which are freeze-hardy.

With the harvest in, consumers take over.

Amy Pettit, development specialist for Alaska Division of Agriculture, said local stores are good about stocking Alaska Grown items, but they don’t necessarily get premier placement. Stores may promote Idaho potatoes and put them on the coveted end caps of aisles. Savvy consumers need to look for the Alaska Grown logo and ask store managers if they don’t see Alaska vegetables, Pettit said.

“We can move more product,” Pettit said. “You have to ask.”

Last year, more potatoes than usual were designated on statistical reports as “shrink and loss.” According to USDA figures, Alaska farmers raised 13.7 million pounds of potatoes in 2009, up from 13.5 million in 2008. Estimates are that 9.7 million pounds of those potatoes were sold in 2009, compared to 9.8 million in 2008.

Keyes said sales of VanderWeele potatoes were slow during the winter of 2009-10. They were looking at significant stocks left unsold, but in the end, most sold.

“We still had a lot of potatoes come June,” Keyes said. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

Giauque said local producers are also seeing changes in eating trends affect their sales. Prepackaged salads and other convenience foods cut into the fresh-food market.

“I wish we had a processing plant here,” she said. “Maybe we could sell it.”

While they are wishing, Alaska farmers are putting in some other requests for the summer of 2011.

“More sunshine; more heat,” Keyes said.

“We’d like to have rain once a week — a nice, mild sunshiny summer,” Giauque added.

But for now, farmers like Palmer’s Gerald DeVilbiss, whose hay and haylage is all put up, it ready for the off-season.

“We’re OK with this hard frost,” DeVilbiss said.