> Features

In pictures: the Jersey Royals harvest

In pictures: the Jersey Royals potato harvest

Great British Chefs 11 May 2017

Jersey is home to some of the best potatoes in the world, and during spring is when the hard-working farmers of the island take to the fields to harvest their precious Jersey Royals. We take a look at the whole process – from a birds-eye view and down on the ground.

For new potatoes, Jersey Royals are actually pretty old. They’ve been cultivated on the beautiful island of Jersey for over 130 years and were given PDO status back in 1996 – making them the only potato in the UK deemed special enough to gain EU protection. Along with other seasonal ingredients like asparagus and broad beans, they’re one of the real treasures of spring and early summer, making their way into homes, restaurants and eventually our mouths from late March to July. After that they’re all gone, and we all have to wait another year to taste these creamy, flavourful potatoes again.

It’s easy to forget about the hard work that goes into farming when it’s so easy to buy clean, ready to cook produce in shops. But without Jersey’s potato farmers, who spend the majority of the year tending to this one single crop planted across 7,300 acres of the island, we’d never get to taste Jersey Royals. It’s not just a case of throwing a few sprouted spuds into the ground before reaping the rewards months later, either – there’s a lot of hard work that goes into getting these potatoes to taste so good.

Our photo story of the Jersey Royals harvest is an homage to the farmers who work tirelessly on the island to bring us this very special ingredient each year. Taking photos using a drone and getting up close to the produce on the ground gives you a real sense of the island, its people and its potatoes.

Jersey gives up around half of its total land to farming, and agriculture is a vital part of the local economy. Around 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of Jersey Royals are grown annually, many of which are exported to mainland UK – the only other place the potatoes are available. Harvesting begins at the end of March and lasts until July, with growers working round-the-clock to make sure the produce is packed up and shipped off as quickly as possible to ensure freshness.

Surprisingly, many Jersey Royals are harvested by hand, as the fields they’re grown in are too steep for machinery to work on. The pickers work in twelve-hour shifts, taking up to 1,500 tonnes of potatoes out of the ground during peak production in May. Towards the end of the season potatoes on the flatter fields can be harvested by mechanical means, but these tend to be inland rather than by the coast.

Once all the potatoes are picked, checked over twice to ensure quality, packed into refrigerated trailers and distributed across Jersey and the UK, the fields are left empty for a few months (or longer) until it’s time to get ready for the next harvest. That doesn’t happen until at least November, when sprouted Jersey Royals are planted under sheets of glass to protect them from frost and cold weather. However, it’s from January through to April that the majority of the seed potatoes find their way back into Jersey’s rich, fertile soil. There are only around twenty farmers responsible for the world’s supply of Jersey Royals and they like to do things traditionally – for example, many of them use a local seaweed known as Vraic as a natural fertiliser.

So while we’re eagerly waiting for the crop to come back into season and Jersey Royals to appear on our supermarket shelves once again, this handful of farmers are tending to their crops on a daily basis, making sure their potatoes are just as special as the previous year’s harvest. And they haven't had a bad year yet.

Photography by Matt Porteous.

Comments ()

In pictures: the Jersey Royals potato harvest

 

Please enter text

Comments must be less than characters

Change your username in user settings to something more personal.

 

(Editing)

>

This comment was edited

Please enter text

Comments must be less than characters

Reply | | Edit | Delete Report

This comment has been deleted

Report this comment

Please state your report in the space below

Please enter text

Reports must be less than 750 characters

loading

>

Please enter text

Comments must be less than characters

(Editing)

>

This comment was edited

Please enter text

Comments must be less than characters

Reply | | Edit | Delete Report

This comment has been deleted

Report this comment

Please state your report in the space below

Please enter text

Reports must be less than 750 characters

loading

>

Please enter text

Comments must be less than characters

Be the first to leave a comment on this page...
...   ...
 

Please enter text

Comments must be less than characters

Change your username in user settings to something more personal.

 

You may also like

In pictures: the Jersey Royals potato harvest
Jersey Royal new potato
Recipe Collection
Know your spuds: our ultimate potato guide
by Great British Chefs
7 new potato recipes to save you from the plain boiled spud
by Pete Dreyer
New potato
Recipe Collection
Potato
Recipe Collection
Chip
Recipe Collection
Let’s hear it for… Pembrokeshire Earlies
by Great British Chefs
7 recipes to cook in April
by Great British Chefs
Warm salad of Jersey Royals with goat's cheese, pine nuts and fresh figs
by Shaun Rankin
Roast Jersey Royals with glazed pear, Roquefort cheese and walnut salad
by Shaun Rankin
Sauté of Jersey Royals with fried duck egg and griddled asparagus and Parmesan salad
by Shaun Rankin
Pan-roasted fillet of salmon with marinated Jersey Royals and dill and crab salad
by Mark Jordan
Jersey Royals with onions, milk skin and lovage
by Christoffer Hruskova
Warm Jersey Royals salad, spring onions and aioli
by Dominic Chapman
Potatoes with spiced sugo, curds and fried eggs
by Dan Wilson
Pembrokeshire Early potatoes with nasturtium pesto and quail's eggs
by Urvashi Roe
British Gem potato and bacon skewers
by Rosana McPhee
Watercress sauce, marmite roasted new potatoes, tarragon and almond dressing
by Joey O'Hare
Jersey Royals with crispy eggs, dashi and hen of the woods
by Steven Smith
Spiced roast potatoes with coriander, cumin and black pepper
by Sumayya Usmani
Vegetable
Recipe Collection
Roast potato
Recipe Collection
Mashed potato
Recipe Collection
Causa puno – purple potato, tuna and rocoto pepper causa
by Martin Morales
Purple aloo
by Atul Kochhar
PDOs and beyond: Foods with protected status
Roast potatoes
by Josh Eggleton
Easy roasties
by Lisa Goodwin-Allen
What's in season: April
by Sally Abé
Chargrilled chilli chicken breast with Jersey Royals and romesco cakes
by Graham Campbell
Fillet of cod with poached hen's egg, crushed Jersey Royals and chive butter sauce
by Mark Jordan
Confit salmon with crushed horseradish Jersey Royal new potatoes
by Adam Gray
Jersey Royal potato and chocolate pastries
by Frances Atkins
Grilled sardines on toasted focaccia bread
by Shaun Rankin
Summer lunch
Recipe Collection
Hayden Groves' guide to making perfect chips
by Hayden Groves
Asparagus, egg and potato salad with tarragon vinaigrette
by Monica Shaw
Provençal potato salad with truffle oil and edible flowers
by Karen Burns-Booth
Grilled mackerel with beetroot and new potato salad
by Monica Shaw
Sous vide salmon with pickled kohlrabi, garden pesto and new potatoes
by Food Urchin
Brunch
Recipe Collection
How to roast new potatoes
How to cook new potatoes
How to cook potato
How to make mashed potato
How to cook roast potatoes sous vide
Protected food classifications in Europe
by Great British Chefs
Protected food classifications in the UK
by Great British Chefs
Potato
Recipe Collection

NAVIGATE

© Great British Chefs 2018