Tucker Farms, Inc.
 
SPECIAL FARM TOURS
 

Tucker Farms can tailor tours of the farm to the needs and desires of any age group or interest from high school to college and beyond. While kindergarten children are delighted to pick up freshly dug potatoes (even from mud in the rain), we realize that others want to know more. We can easily address the myriad questions and issues asked by all age groups.
 

To do justice to those who want something more than the standard wagon tour, we highly recommend making special arrangements for a tour tailored to your desires. You need only to tell us your interest or focus.
 

  • Such tours may well be walking tours of the storage and processing facilities, the potato machinery and equipment, and some nearby fields, or it may be a wagon tour with stops for interactive discussions. We can make it what it needs to be.
     
  • We are prepared to discuss the growing processes of potatoes, including the rigorous regulations for seed potatoes, the importance of cover crops, crop rotation, weed control, pest control (insects, bacteria, fungus, virus), IPM measures to control pests. We can discuss what it meant to potato growers last year when unknowing consumers spread the late blight all across the Northeast with infected tomato plants purchased from a company headquartered in Alabama.
     
  • We can discuss the differences between and among potato varieties and potato types. What makes a baking potato different from a boiling potato? What is a chipping potato? Why are some potatoes good for processing and others are not? What is an Idaho potato? Why are some varieties now being considered as functional foods? What is functional food? Why consumers should know and care about what potato variety they are buying?
     
  • We can discuss the differences between seed potatoes and tablestock potatoes. We can discuss the reasons why seed growers grow the varieties that they grow, why tablestock growers grow the varieties they do, why some growers produce only potatoes for processing, and why gardeners grow the varieties they grow.
     
  • We can discuss how potatoes are stored over the winter without deterioration of quality. We can suggest ways consumers can keep their potatoes longer without losing quality.
     
  • Aside from potatoes, we can discuss the issues facing farming today and farming in the Adirondacks. We can discuss climate change as we see it affecting our farm operations. We can point out the differences between locally grown food and commercially available food from hundreds and thousands of miles away.
     
The above in not intended to be all inclusive. It is only a starter-set of ideas to provoke thought. Whatever your interest or focus, if you tell us in advance and allow some time to prepare, we can meet your desires to learn about potatoes, potato farming, farming in general, and farming in the Adirondack in particular. Please let us know.
 

CONTACT INFORMATION