Saturday, June 29, 2013

The earth is flat


The McCullough potato operation is an all natural enterprise and not just for altruistic reasons since quality has gotten better and better since going native.  Puh-leeze don’t use the term “organic” around Jim McCullough.  The word organic has been so misused, abused and downright lied about that it's nearly useless.  We'll go with natural.

Jim controls every step of his operation.  Unlike some farmers, Jim plants, fertilizes, harvests and warehouses his own potatoes.   His team literally invent and build equipment to do jobs that others farm out.  And every decision to keep these big jobs in house has paid off with improved quality and lower costs.  Jim claims he wasn't a school learning kind of guy but you could go to school on his business savvy and intuition.



The top three images have little to do with the potato story but the furrowed fourth is one of Jim McCullough's fields being planted. The abandoned farm house that is about to be leveled and the grain bins, those aesthetic corrugated cylinders, are not potato icons though they do speak to farming generally.  And, of course, since they're all platinum toned black and white they must be serious photographs.

The San Luis Valley has been described as pancake flat.  Uh huh.