We live just 35 miles or so north of an area known as the "potato flats". It is an enormous ancient lake bed carved out by the glaciers long ago. This is potato country. A couple small dairy farms around the edges, rotational crops here and there of grain every summer but mostly just field after field of potatoes as far as the eye can see. When we drive down from the north you slowly gain elevation until you come upon the crest of the ridge just before you drop down into the "flats". You can see the entire ancient lake bed from there and during harvest time it can be quite an amazing sight. One of the farmers even still works his dad's old farmland (farmhouse now just functions as an office and break room for the hands) at the beginning of our road that probably totals 3 to 3 1/2 sections. Only farm north of the ridge. Everything else up here is just trees, trees and more trees with a scattering of small homesteads here and there (like our 65 acres) and cottages crammed on top of one another around anything that's big enough to be called a lake. We're logging country. Anyway, our farmer neighbor gives us all the russet potatoes we want every fall (I think it's his way of thanking us for keeping an eye on his acres that back up to our woods and chasing the idiots off his fields) and the grocery store in the flats just today was selling 5 lb bags of baking potatoes on sale 10 bags for $10. Used to grow potatoes ourselves but it hardly pays when we can even pick up 50 lb. bags Yukon Golds for $15.
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