A History of Elmsdale, Elmsdale West, and Brockton, Prince Edward Island

the train? Well, he had customers but he didn’t have a big operation like they have now and he just had a one row digger and we picked with baskets before we had the digger, and we sprayed some of them by hand to kill the bugs and I remember that going up and down the rows shaking powder on the potato stalks.

How many acres do you think he grew? Perhaps around twenty-five acres.

Then where did he put these potatoes? We had a basement under the store, and under the house at home and wherever he could get them in.

Then what was his process before he took them across on the truck? We had to grade them and if he was short he would buy some from other farmers and sometimes they would sprout and we would have to take the sprouts off and we didn’t like that job too much. He mostly put them in seventy-five pound bags.

Where would he take them? He took them across to Cape Bald and to Moncton but I’m not sure where else he went. He had certain customers he sold to at stores and

restaurants.

Thelma, how did your mother manage to work at the store when she had a big family? She mostly had a hired girl and when I got old enough I helped her too, and

did a lot of the cooking.

What happened to the original store after you bought the big store ? Blanche said we sold the little store to Franklin Murray, who lives across from Westisle School, and it is still on his property today, and the lot was sold to the government to better the

intersection.

What becatne of the first store your father had? He must have torn it down.

Thelma, when your father was into raising foxes where was his fox ranch ? It was on our lot behind the house and we used to cook fox biscuits for them.

l

603