A fundraising campaign is underway in New Brunswick for an aging roadside potato man in need of a hip replacement and a new set of knees.
The massive statue of a smiling, top-hatted potato has greeted visitors to Harvey’s Big Potato farm — now Silver Valley Farms — in Maugerville, N.B., since 1969. Daniel Boudreau owns the farm and he’s aiming to raise $10,000 through an online campaign to get the potato fixed.
As of Wednesday, people had donated about $6,000.
“It’s phenomenal,” Boudreau said in an interview. “Everybody’s sharing memories and photos. It’s great to see.”
New Brunswick is home to a number of curious landmarks and statues, including Buttercup the cow and Daisy the calf in Sussex, and a 15-metre-high axe in Nackawic. The towering spud in Maugerville was constructed by Winston Bronnum, the same man who built a 90-tonne lobster statue in Shediac, N.B., which is said to be the world’s largest.
Markus Harvey is part of the Harvey’s Big Potato dynasty. His late uncle Karl Harvey owned the farm and asked Bronnum to build the potato man as a way to attract customers, he said.
Harvey figures the potato man is about seven metres tall, looming over a two-lane stretch of road southeast of Fredericton that used to be part of the Trans-Canada Highway.
“The potato had lots of things lobbed at it,” Harvey said in an interview. “It was always a good target for beer bottles from people flying by, cigarette butts, old fried chicken buckets. The occasional car kind of skimmed it a couple of times.”
But it’s the wet New Brunswick weather — along with regular flooding — that has ultimately caused the concrete-and-mesh statue to crack, crumble and fall off in chunks, Harvey said.
Pictures posted to Boudreau’s fundraising page show large pieces of concrete missing from the potato man’s hip, while the tip of one knee is completely blown out. Cracks spread from his hat down over his eyes. What appears to be a single tooth in his smile is a thick streak of bird droppings, Harvey explained.
Most of the Harveys have now moved away from Maugerville. Markus Harvey said his immediate family _ and the big potato man _ will be the only Harveys left there as of May. “It’d be nice to keep him around and keep the family foothold and heirloom in the area,” he said.
Boudreau leased the farm for a few years before he bought it last September, and he said he’s been looking for someone to repair the potato man ever since. After a few dead ends, he finally found someone in Edmundston, N.B., with the required expertise. With the success of his fundraising campaign so far, Boudreau says he’s hopeful he’ll be able to pay the $10,000 bill.
“It’s a step in the right direction, anyway,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 27, 2022.
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