When the white men came, they found the Indians raising potatoes. A few days after Rev. Smith arrive in 1849, he wrote in his diary: Bought three bushels of potatoes $1.50 pd. cash.”
Smith cleared some land the first season he we here and raised a number of bushels of potatoes. In 1850 he wrote “I have dug my potatoes 50 bushels.”
He store potatoes in holes in the ground and also in his cellar.
Later potatoes because the farmers’ main cash crop. A report on the Grand Traverse Region by Professor Alexander Winchell in 1866, says that the finest potatoes are produced in this region. In Campbell’s store in Northport he saw three Peach-blow potatoes that weighed 19 1/2. 20 and 26 ounces. Deacon Dame told him that he had raised 300 bushel to the acre.
On land owned by Mrs. Daniel Knox, two miles west of Northport the yield of a variety called Lady Fingers was an average of a bushel to every 11 hills.
On James Martin’s land, 2 1/2 miles north of Northport, a Clinton potato measured 9 7/8 inches in length and weighed 33 1/2 ounces.
In the old days, potato raising required many hours of cutting the potatoes into planting pieces. These pieces were taken out piece by piece from a shoulder bag and planted with a hand planter. Later on a horse-drawn machine for planting potatoes was invented. A lot of people, though, continued to use the hand planter.
The Colorado potato beetle was one of the early insect pests. Children were given the job of knocking them off the plants with a paddle into a container of water and kerosene. Paris green was the first insecticides used on the beetles. It was put on with a brush dipped into the solution and shaken on the plants. Later the knapsack sprayers were used.
In the early years potatoes were all dug by hand with a potato fork or hook. One man could dig 100 bushels a day when the crop was good. Mechanical potato diggers were used later.
At harvest time, schools usually had a two-week vacation so the children could help with the harvest.
In the early 1990s the per bushel price for picking was 1 cent for the big potatoes and 5 cents for the small ones.
The potatoes not hauled directly to market were stored in pits in the field or put in the cellar until sold. Prices fluctuated from week to week. After peak prices in 1889-1890 at 40 cents per bushel, the market fell to 5 cents per bushel in 1896. In 1916, a frost in August killed most of the potato plants, the price per bushel went up to almost $7. In 1931 potatoes were 25 cents per bushel. On Jan. 1, 1982, the price per bushel was quoted as $5 on the Vernon Bardenhagen farm in Leelanau County.
Potatoes were haul by horse and wagon to Omena, Suttons Bay, and Northport. Here they were weighed and then taken to warehouses near the docks, where long lines formed as they waited to get unloaded. It was along these lines that the potato buyers ran shouting their price offerings.
The “Leelanau Tribune” of Sept. 17, 1875, printed the following: “Monday evening, Mr. E. P. Taylor drover on the south dock with a load of potatoes, and while unloading at the warehouse his horses became frighten and commenced backing off the dock into about 12 feet of water and were both drowned. This loss falls heavily upon Mr. Taylor and we are glad to be enabled to announce that a purse is being raised to help him buy another team. We believe this is the first team drowned off the docks at this place.”
In the early days potatoes were shipped out on the schooners and steamers to such ports as Chicago, Buffalo and Milwaukee. The schooner “Cecil” often left Northport with 1,000 bushels which had taken one crew a whole day to load. The “Missouri,”; “Illinois,” ; “Manitou”; and “Puritan” were some of the steamers that carried potatoes from the township’s ports. After the railroad came, potatoes were shipped in carload lots. A carload held 360, 100-pound sacks; on the steamers they were in 150-pound bags only.
Many potatoes were shipped from the Kehl Brothers dock.
Excerpt from “A History of Leelanau Township” by The Leelanau Township Historical Writers Group
