Backwoods Blog

GREAT SPRING BLIZZARD

Backwoods Blog;

in the woods and on the road…

I came across several nostalgic pictures (color slides) of the Hutchinson boys planting potatoes in Aroostook County in 1949 and 1950. This first shot is my Uncle John driving his Farmall tractor with my grandfather riding the planter. My grandfather would have been eighty years old at the time and he was still holding down a day job on the farm. As soon as the snow melted and the soil began to dry out, farmers would return to the fields getting the ground ready for the next crop of spuds. Usually this would be the middle of May (before the black flies arrived) and the first real farming activity of the year. Optimism tends to run high that time of year with farmers envisioning potatoes at record-breaking prices per barrel and Red Sox fans thinking the Old Towne team might make it all the way to the series this year.

I remember the old-timers still talking about the year of “The Great Spring Blizzard.” This was the year it snowed so hard during spring planting that tractors couldn’t get out of the field and snow lay as high as the potato rows. As far as I can narrow it down, it was a fine spring day in the middle of May in ’54 or ’55 when the blizzard hit. My father recalls that it snowed so hard he couldn’t even make it to the end of the row; he abandoned the tractor and planter and made a run for it. Usually the snow in a spring storm is heavy and moisture-laden but in this case the snow was cold and dry with a strong wind whipping it around. A friend of mine said, “The snow was coming down sideways!”  Early the next day my father came back to inspect the damage and he found his tractor half-buried where the snow had drifted over a knowle next to his tractor. He said, “Well, I guess we won’t be working until the snow melts…” That just goes to show that if you live in northern New England long enough you’ll see just about anything and everything. 

In the woods,

Dave

May 11, 2022