50 Years Ago — October 2, 1974
Harvest in the valley – Snow flurries on a Monday in 1974 may have held up potato picking in the St. John Valley, but the crop “looks good,” as Lewis Cote puts it. Youngsters, and some oldsters too, have put the traditional three-week potato harvest break from school to good use, gathering tubers to feed the nation. Some 35 to 40 percent of the crop in Aroostook County had been gathered as of Saturday, reports the Maine Potato Council, adding that an average of about 240 hundredweight per acre is being produced.
25 Years Ago — October 6, 1999
Valley schools extended harvest break – Superb weather prior to the harvest start-up gave way to periods of heavy rain at the onset, causing delays for some farmers. At the request of area farmers, the SAD 27 school board met and board members decided in favor of extending the harvest break an additional four school days for all district students. Superintendent Sandra Bernstein said there are approximately 100 high school students out of 400 working the harvest. At the elementary level, she said there are approximately 20 students out of 900 working the harvest.
10 Years Ago — October 1, 2014
First week’s largest moose: 1,017 pounds — The first week of moose hunting season in northern Maine came to a close Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014, with nearly 200 animals registered at the two tagging stations in the St. John Valley. Among those were two very large bull moose. In Fort Kent, Jules Perreault of Connecticut, pulled up with a bull moose shot in zone 1, the far western end of the St. John valley to the Canadian border. The animal had a dressed weight of 1,017 pounds and a spread of 61 inches, and was the heaviest moose tagged in the area that year at that time.
