Trapper Creek potato harvest

By Sondra Porter–In Trapper Creek, fall harvest can be the social event of the season. On Saturday around 30 people—volunteers, residents and non-residents ranging in age from 8 to nearly 80, met at Red Cooney’s farm to harvest his two acres of potatoes.

The potato harvest at Cooney’s has become an annual event. Cooney’s crop boosted a fair variety of potatoes including German butter, Green Mountain, and Yukon Gold, but the largest yield came from his Red Eye potatoes. This year’s total harvest was an especially good one, yielding an estimated 25 thousand pounds.Potato pickers arrived early, and the work lasted over six hours. Red cranked up his vintage potato digger and dug the rows while workers followed behind hand-picking the tilled potatoes, placing them in buckets and then bags. Bags were transported to the root cellar, a buried Con-Ex container. Once in the cellar, potatoes were spread in bins to dry for winter storage.

Cooney is generous with his potatoes. Pickers are given their personal supply, and that still leaves plenty for the food bank. The annual event has changed over the years. Trapper Creek’s St. Phillips Catholic Church came up with the idea as an outreach project. For a time, volunteers from Bean’s Café in Anchorage helped with the dig, and the potatoes were then donated to them. Now the crop is mostly consumed locally.

As an added incentive, Cooney treated the crowd to lunch, which consisted of gourmet hot dogs and, naturally, baked potatoes. Contests for bragging rights were on-going as the pickers searched for the biggest, strangest, and most amazing potatoes. And when it was all over, the volunteer crew was already looking forward to next year’s harvest.