THE POTATO 85 



the weather was not good for spray to adhere, who 

 had so many acres he could not get them harvested 

 before the unusually early freezing of the ground- 

 (over 11,000 acres of potatoes were frozen in 

 Aroostook County in 1907), found the year a 

 disastrous one. In many instances the crop har- 

 vested was not sufficient to pay the fertilizer bills. 



"By practising the methods of the good farmers 

 of Aroostook County, many men in other parts of 

 Maine are successful with potatoes as a money 

 crop. There is no reason why men in other states 

 may not grow the potato at fully as good a margin 

 of profit as the farmer in Maine. 



"At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts 

 State Board of Agriculture in 1901 the writer 

 (Doctor Woods), in answer to a question, said in 

 substance: 'If a Massachusetts farmer plants a 

 few potatoes, there is not one man in twenty but 

 will allow something else to crowd in and cause 

 him to neglect his potatoes. The one great reason 

 they grow better potatoes in Aroostook County 

 than elsewhere in Maine is that it is the farmer's 

 business to grow potatoes. He does not allow his 

 stock or other farm duties to lead to the neglect of 

 his potato crop. He makes it his first duty to take 

 care of his field of potatoes, and the field will have 

 from twenty to fifty or more acres in it. One man 

 and a pair of horses work on twenty acres from 

 spring until the fall, and the one man and pair of 

 horses will care for the twenty acres, and he will 

 not be taken off to do anything else. This is one of 

 the reasons they grow potatoes better — because 

 they are growing them for business. They are not 

 thinking of the dairy cow or the breed of sheep; I 

 wish they were, but they are not. They are think- 

 ing about growing potatoes. When I used to live 



