Potatoes are a big deal in New Brunswick – at least along the side next to Maine. So here’s everything you never wanted to know about potatoes . . . . . . and more!
We believe growing potatoes simply MUST require precision tractor-driving skills. They are planted in ram-rod straight rows and they plow between and over top the plants (the actual potatoes are underground) for the purpose of weeding and keeping the potatoes covered to prevent sunburn. Yep! You read right, sunburn. Don’t ever eat a sunburned potato! Not sure how you know if it’s sunburned, but just DON’T!
The town of Florenceville-Bristol is designated The French Fry Capitol of the World. We would miss their annual festival by one day! Darn! But here’s why they’re called that:
Florenceville-Bristol is home to the corporate headquarters for McCain Foods, the largest producer of french fries in the world.
Not too far south, and beyond the World’s Longest Covered Bridge (see previous post), in the town of Waterville, you’ll find the Covered Bridge Potato Chip Factory. For $5 you can take a self-guided tour and watch them make the chips. Best of all, you do it while munching on a free bag of chips! The tour ends up in a ‘souvenir’ area where they sell their many flavors of chips – things like ketchup (which we had already seen a bag of Lay’s in a grocery store!), lobster, fruit, hot chocolate, loaded hot dog, just to name a few. They have a tasting table with shakers full of the flavorings and yet another bag of chips so you can dump what you want on each chip or the whole bag. Some were very yummy. Others, not so much, but all were interesting!
Following are excerpts from our tour. You’ll either skip it, be sorry you wasted so much time reading it all, or find it interesting information to add to your knowledge. Hey, you never know when trivia will come in handy.
