Guildhall farmer harvests 1.8 million pounds of potatoes despite weather delays

Matt Linehan completed the harvest of his 60-acre potato field in Guildhall on October 10 after a warm spell delayed the necessary hard frost by two weeks. The delay required him and his crew to work quickly to bring in the crop before the tubers could freeze underground.

The farm produced between 1.5 and 1.8 million pounds of potatoes this year. Linehan said the season was good overall, a sharp contrast to the previous two years when flooding in the Connecticut River valley destroyed parts of his fields. In 2023, he lost 20 percent of his crop. In 2024, the loss exceeded 30 percent. Those floods washed away approximately $250,000 in income.

Linehan purchased Sparrow Arc Farm in 2019 for $315,000. The property has been a potato farm for nearly a century. He replaced the Peaslee family, who operated the land until 2018. The barn, built in 1928, still displays the name Peaslee's Vermont Potatoes on its red exterior. Linehan now sells produce under the Northeast Kingdom Potato brand.

His customers include the University of Vermont, Vermont Foodbank, and high-end restaurants in Boston. The Vermont Foodbank contracted for close to 100,000 pounds from this year's harvest. Sean-Michael Lizotte, executive chef at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, buys 400 to 800 pounds weekly for dishes like mashed potatoes and hash browns.

Linehan doubled his yield per acre to 40,000 pounds by focusing exclusively on potatoes. He analyzes plant leaves weekly to adjust fertilizer and pest control. He does not use neonicotinoid insecticides, which Vermont will phase out by 2029. He relies on Canadian fertilizer, the cost of which has doubled since 2020 and risen another 15 percent this year.

The farm stores the harvested potatoes in 21 concrete-lined bins in the barn. Workers remove soil clumps with a bin piler before the tubers enter the storage area. They remain there with a light coating of soil until they are washed for shipping. Linehan said he aims to keep prices low so that people on budgets can buy local produce.

Linehan lives in the late-1700s farmhouse on the property with three of his four children. He has farmed in Massachusetts, Maine, and New York before settling in Essex County. He said he prefers the isolation of the area, where moose are more common than people. He plans to continue farming the land he bought in 2019.