Does Maine still ship potatoes?

I think the distinction shoul;d be made between cultivated & wild blueberries.

Maine is #1 for wild blueberries.

" but to clarify: the B&A is the Boston and Albany; BAR is the Bangor and Aroostook."

Not to anyone north of Bangor!!

Historically both the B&A (errm, you know, the Maine one) and the Boston & Albany marked their cars B&A. This of course led to problems. Not surprisingly, the Boston & Albany (AKA New York Central) won the argument (more $, more political clout, etc.) and BAR had to start using the BAR reporting marks. But in Maine nobody thinks much about the Boston & Albany one way or the other...

Snow's Canning Company -- notable for Snow's Clam Chowder -- is still located on the B&M in Scarborough, Maine, but I don't think they've shipped or received anything by rail in quite some time.

? They shut down ages ago. Early 90s? (I think production was moved to MD.) The last rail movement out of Snow's was in the late 70s.

I stand corrected. Their web site says they moved to NJ in 1990. D'oh!

That's OK 407, you can still go to the Clambake across the road and load yourself up with grease!

I do remember boxcars spotted at Snow's when I was a kid as late as '77 or '78. Heck, back then even the town of Scarborough used to get the occasional boxcar of road salt each year at the old DPW in Blackpoint... as I recall they were always Rock Island 40-footers. Brings back fond memories. McGuinness-era Geeps and the rare F-units, NW and DH pool cabooses on NE-87 (a freight that you could almost set your watch to at noon each day), BR-21 in late afternoon, often with 150+ cars... but I digress!

cpf354 wrote:No. I think they stopped shipping potatoes by rail by the 70s. French fries have moved by rail off and on since then. See the MEC French Fry thread, for example.

At one time the BAR was the second largest railroad owner of refrigerator cars in the United States, behind only Santa Fe I believe. They used these cars to move potatoes in the winter shipping season and then leased them to west coast companies to haul fruit and fresh veggies in the summer. I lived in Presque Isle in 1967 and some shipping by rail was still ongoing but trucks had made a huge dent. There were lots of reefers on sidings in the PI area as well as those cars at S Lagrange. A lot of them now dot the Maine countryside as storage sheds. Guess they will live on for a while.

My belief is that our infatuation with the motor car, and Pres Eisenhowers dream of an interstate highway system, destroyed the rail shipping industry. Truck competetion has had free roads to operate on for 50 yrs now and we are the worse off for it IMO.

A great book by Herb Cleaves and Jerry Angier, The History of the Bangor and Aroostook, gives great details on the shipment of potatoes.

WC

Ok I think I can help a little bit here on this one.

Maine, and Aroostook County in particular still have a very very large potato business. The Eastern half of "The County" from Fort Kent onwards is very heavily cultivated. Although perhaps not as much in the past there still is a very significant business there, I seem to remember something along the lines of 1 million acres in the whole state under cultivation for potatoes. Most of the potatoes grown are 'chipping potatoes' that go to the McCain plants Maine and New Brunswick for french fry production.

I was up there last summer in Presque Isle and Caribou and certainly saw plenty of fields still under cultivation, many of them directly adjacent to US Route 1. Aroostook County is one of the few flat places in Maine where there are uninterrupted views for miles at a time because of the large farm fields. Circa 1900 90% of the state was under cultivation or timber harvesting and the other 10% was forested now the reverse is true 90% of the state is forested and 10% is open fields either in residential areas or farms. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Maine potatoes to this day still taste better than their western rivals in Idaho. If you can get your hands on a 50 lb. bag of Aroostook 'Firsts' you're quite lucky. I know people in my neighborhood who will throw a trailer on their truck drive up to Presque Isle load up and bring the trailer back and each of the neighbors pays for the potatoes and throws in a little extra for gas.

The qualitative difference between first quality Aroostook County potatoes and Idaho russets is indisputable. Russets still make better bakers but for hash, mashed, french fries, home fries, and pretty much anything else. You should count your lucky stars if you are fotunate enough to have a grocery store that sells Maine potatoes.

There is a potato farmer from Fryeburg who got sick and tired of bad prices and decided to make vodka instead. Cold Creek Distillery in Freeport was the result of this effort. I've heard they're quite good. You can sample their product aboard Amtrak's Downeaster service between Portland and Boston.

As everybody else has pointed out on the thread BAR sold their reefer fleet and ever since then that's pretty much been it other than a small MEC French Fry hauling operation in the late 1970's. I do however see McCain trucks on the road all the time. So in reality part of the problem here is that the finished product instead of the raw product is being shipped out of state. This change may have something to do with why rail doesn't make sense anymore.

Mr OKeefe, sounds a wee biased! The unfortunate fact is that Maine's potato acreage has dropped by ~50 percent since 1980. According to the Maine Potato Board, only 57,000 acres were planted in 2007, not 1million+. I can't vouch for comparative taste, but I do recall that Burger King was given flak back in the 80s for using "foreign" potatoes, so switched to Maine spuds, only to have to switch back due to quality problems. (I think the growers subsequently got their act together.) I was under the impression that a good deal of Maine's harvest is now seed potatoes (and much of that goes to FL). Sounds like Maine has been pummled not so much by western US, but by production in the Maritimes.

Dear Cowford,

How wonderful to hear from you again.

To be honest I wondered in the back of my head whether or not the 1 million figure was acres or lbs. or something. That'll teach me not to check my figures.

I would strongly agree that production from the Maritimes is an issue right now, but then again the russets from Idaho don't help. I would also still maintain that if you can get your hand on a bag of "Firsts" from Aroostook you really would be surprised by the quality. I didn't believe it until I tried it myself.

Shortly after the NYC/PRR merger, the Penn Central LOST! (mislaid?) an entire season's crop of potatoes, putting many growers out of business, and driving the rest to the trucking industry, putting the BAR into a decline from which it never fully recovered. Incidentally, although it's spelled BAR, it's pronounced BAH. Ask my down-easter wife!

Cowford, you absolutely see and eat Maine blueberries in the Midwest, you just don't know it, as probably 95% of the harvest is either canned, frozen or made into syrup. If you ever have a blueberry muffin or blueberry pancakes, you're more than likely eating State of Maine product.

As to whether any of that canned and/or frozen product is shipped out by rail, I'll defer to others on this forum.

Maine potato production began to be lost out to Canada. I don't know status now as the Canadian Dollar is worth more than the USA Dollar.



BUT like everything else there is no potato chip brand left from Maine ? Humpty Dumpty. Very popular. They were bought by a Quebec firm which closed Maine manufacturing but as to USA sales they seemed to zero out.


I think Shaws Supermarkets private label is Humpty Dumpty. (from Quebec)

Speaking of potato chips, I was in Wal-Mart today (unfortunately) and they had a HUGE display of Frito-Lay potato chips, in the produce section of all places, and a sign that said something along the lines of "support Maine potato farmers, buy Frito-Lay chips" (very loosely paraphrased; I was in a hurry).

I remember Humpty Dumpty potato chips... those were the best! They had an office on Route 1 in Scarborough. They had some wonderful flavors that were very hard to find, such as Ketchup, Dill Pickle, and best of all, Clam Dip. My uncle used to drive truck for them and would always bring us a few bags of Humpty Dumpty clam dip chips when he was in the area.

Geesh, I leave the forum for a bit and look what happens... this thread is all starchy!! HA! So the long and short of it is, no more taters shipped by rail in Maine.

Did they have to be shipped in reefers? How fragile is a potato? They sit in stores without being cooled. Was it simply too much heat that could ruin them? I don't usually handle potatos (potatoes?)... Mom does THAT job!

JD

>>Did they have to be shipped in reefers?

Ayuh. Got to keep 'em from gettin' too cool or too hot, less'n they get ugly bruises or diseases. Dunno what the temperature range is, but I know it's critical. Nobody wants to see eye to eye with an ugly potato .

PBM

I've a vague memory of my father (who put himself through college working as a yard clerk on the Soo Line in the late '50s) telling me that in the old days, the potato cars had charcoal stoves in them in the winter to keep the cargo from freezing, and that the railroad would hire people to tend the stoves... was this the case, or was it my dad's idea of a joke?