It’s tough to be a farmer in the Adirondacks, and doubly so at a scale that supplies wholesale markets out-of-state. And it’s hard anywhere to keep a family farm alive for more than a century and a half. Tucker Farms, surrounded by mountains eight miles north of Saranac Lake, has managed all of that. It’s one of the oldest and among the larger farming operations within the Blue Line.
In mid-February, Steve Tucker met me on the rumpled ice covering the barnyard and we waddled like ducklings, arms out for balance, to a climate-controlled storage barn. It was built some years ago when the farm’s traditional, underground, sod-roofed potato barn finally collapsed. Surrounded by towers of wooden bins, Steve and his brother Tom talked about family history, the challenges
