'Come Fill Your Boots': Five P.E.I. farms offering free potatoes to Islanders

Five farms on Prince Edward Island are telling Islanders to "Come Fill Your Boots" with potatoes.

Prince Edward Island’s potato industry has been hard hit following the suspension of exports to the United States in November after potato wart was found in two Island fields.

With a surplus of product, some farmers have had to destroy what could not be sold.

"They're putting them through a snowblower and spreading them on the field so that they'll freeze and they'll decompose in an environmentally-safe way,” said Randy Visser, president of G. Visser & Sons Farm.

“We just thought, we're taking these perfectly good potatoes out of storage, why don't we invite our community?"

G. Visser & Sons, R. A. Rose and Sons Ltd, Blue Bay Farms, Vanco Farms, and WP Griffin are all opening their storage to give away their product.

"Come with their boots, their bags, really anything that they can carry potatoes with. So, I am very curious to see what creative things people come up with,” said Kayla Nieuwhof of Blue Bay Farms.

The giveaway aims to put at least some of the spuds to good use. There are so many potatoes, it's more than any organization could handle in terms of donations.

"We've seen local schools are partnering with us to do fundraisers and they have purchased potatoes from us to sell for their fundraisers,” said Nieuwhof.

Many farmers have already donated to charitable organizations.

"They've certainly been supporting us and every other food bank across the province and, you know, knowing the difficult times that they're going through we couldn't be more thankful for them thinking about us," said Mike MacDonald, the executive director of The Upper Room Food Bank and Soup Kitchen.

Some potatoes will be shipped to Puerto Rico where the market allows import, but that has made extra work for farmers.

"They added a restriction that we have to put a sticker on every small bag, so that's literally thousands of stickers per load. Within a couple hours we got calls and emails and notes from people saying that they would love to help volunteer and put these stickers on these bags,” said Visser.

Saturday's event will act as a thank you to the community that's helped them through this hard time. Organizers say it will also give visitors a sense of how many spuds are going to waste, as millions of pounds of potatoes will be destroyed.

"It's an immense amount of potatoes and it's hard to picture that without actually seeing it in a potato warehouse," said Nieuwhof.