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Editor's note: Katie Pinke will be checking up with Thomas Shephard throughout the growing season as part of our Follow a Farmer series.
CRYSTAL, N.D. — Thomas Shephard’s favorite part of potato harvest isn’t the potatoes being dug from the ground.
Shephard’s favorite part of harvest is the people he does it alongside.
“My favorite part of harvest is the people we do it with. It’s kind of fun. My uncle is here all the way from Idaho to help. A friend of mine from ministry, he’s just staying in my basement helping out, driving truck. Different people come, and we all get together. There’s a lot of jobs that need to be done. I am just thankful for all of the people that get it done.”
Potato harvest is rolling on Shephard Farms at Crystal, North Dakota, about 30 miles west of Minnesota and 30 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border in the northeastern corner of North Dakota.
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“It’s probably our busiest time of year, but it’s a good thing. We are rolling pretty well,” said Thomas Shephard.
Potato harvest started mid-September, after the Shephards finished small grains and simultaneously as they harvest edible beans. Potato harvest runs for about one-month.
“We usually say it’s about a month. We say mid-September to mid-October as what we tend to plan and then we adjust as we need to,” added Shephard, who will finish potato harvest to start soybean harvest and lastly as things slow down, corn harvest.
Recent rain positively impacted potato harvest.
“You need a good rain to really get the potato harvest rolling. I like to say so. When they’re coming in with that direct, if the dirt is hard and dry, it’s kind of like a rock. It’s bruises the potatoes a little bit, which you don’t like to do," he said. "And then as soon as you get a nice rain, that dirt turns into a mud and it’s much softer and it’s actually a cushion. And to be able to get potatoes into the bin, to have good moisture in the field, it’s a huge blessing.”
Potato harvest on Shephard Farms started with chipping potatoes.
“Right now, we’re harvesting the Dakota Pearl. It’s a beautiful name, beautiful potato for our area. And it’s our main variety of a chipping potato. Then we’ve got a few different varieties for chips that we’re going through. We finish up with our red ones from here.”
Potatoes start shipping immediately and continue throughout the year.
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“Right now, we’re putting them in our warehouse right here in Crystal, and we’ve got different bins separating different varieties. It depends on what time of year that they’re going to be shipped,” Shephard said.
“What we do throughout the whole year is we load railcars and semi-trucks and really go throughout the whole country.”
Potatoes are stored in climate-controlled warehouses, and some will keep fresh until as far out as next summer.
“We can keep them up to a year, but pretty much as soon as we finish harvesting, we start shipping. We’re thankful to have different bins here that hold some longer than the other ones, depending on temperature and humidity controls. We’ll have some that won’t go out until next summer.”
“It’s cool to think, you can be eating in this area, eating something grown in this area, and we take pride in that.”
In November, Agweek plans to return to Shephard Farms for potato shipping and check in on the soybean and corn harvest.
