Farmer Ted knows his spuds
• Ted Forsyth at home on the farm.
By Tony Scott
April 21, 2021
For a man who’s lived in two houses not a kilometre apart for his entire 71 years Ted Forsyth is not one to let the grass grow under his feet.
But he does like seeing the grass and potatoes grow.
The former state chair of the Potato Council knows his spuds, having grown them for longer than pretty much any other commercial grower in Tasmania.
“We started growing them here on the home farm for the first 20 odd years and this is my 50th year of growing potatoes straight.
“We started with 50 tonnes of seed kennebecs now we’re using leased ground to grow 4,500 tonnes of russets .
“We’d dig 16 tonnes on a good day, picking them up by hand in buckets. Now it's 150 tonnes a day with twin row diggers.
“It’s just economies of scale. You had to get bigger to stay in the game.”
He said the family’s potatoes are grown only on leased land now, up to 100 hectares a year as far apart as St Helens and Bracknell, Pipers Brook and Epping Forest.
“You’ve got to have flat ground, pivot irrigation and no stones.
“I’ve picked up all the stones I’m going to in my lifetime.”
They’re also always on the look out for fresh ground.
“You got to have a minimum of five years’ break between planting in the same paddock, but fresh ground’s best. Bigger crops and no disease.”
The home farm at Talawa runs 400 dairy cows, supervised by younger son Tim.
“It’s too steep for potatoes. It’s cow country.”
Ted reckons the minimal diversification, potatoes and grass for milk production, is about right.
The family can usually ride out the peaks and troughs of farming by concentrating on just the two commodities and doing it well.
And sometimes the stars align.
“Farming has never been better than it is at this minute.”
But he’s not so vain as to claim his 15 years heading up the Farmers and Graziers Association Potato Council delivered the good times.
“There’s only one thing that makes a difference in the market – supply and demand.
“You can play around the edges a bit, but it’s like all business if people want something and there’s not much of it about they’ll pay anything to get it, but if there’s plenty they won’t pay much at all.”
It was during his involvement with agri-politics that he did some globe trotting – a couple of study tours to America and one, with an add-on, holiday to South Africa.
The home of fast food and fries opened his eyes to scale. He dined and discussed a wide range of topics with a couple of the world’s biggest growers, Jack Simplot and Albert Waddle in the potato capital Boisie, Idaho.
“Albert and his wife visited us here and you’d never guess he was as successful as he was, a great man.
“He grew more potatoes than all of Tasmania put together, something like 300,000 tonnes.”
Away from the farming life Ted’s had a few other interests, playing football for the Ringarooma Robins, including a couple of premierships then a break of 10 years before joining the committee.
The break was enforced by knee injury, but he filled it with something more exciting – motor racing.
“I’ve always liked cars. We’d work on them out in the shed there.
“We had a couple of Formula Vees, an Elphin 600 and a Brabham, all open wheelers.
Racing as something of a team with his brother Ronny they had some success at Symmons Plains and his preferred Baskerville circuits.
“I think I’m most proud of though a third place in the Tasmanian Road Racing Championships, because that was against some of Australia’s really top drivers.
“John Bowe won it that year.
“We had a bit of rivalry there. We’d just get to the stage of being able to beat John and his father would by him a quicker car.”
But the nights of working on the cars, one built from scratch, and the long hauls to Symmons Plains or Baskerville started to become a drag.
He quit the track and went onto the football club committee, overseeing a further powerful period for Ringarooma.
He left administration five years before the club folded but lays no blame for the demise.
“It’s just a sign of the times nobody’s fault it’s just how it is.
“Back when I was playing football there were young people around to fill the teams.
“This valley we’re in had 11 dairies, now there are two … milking more cows, but not as many people doing it.”
Ted has no regrets of his farming life, as a fourth generation on the family patch at the aptly named Forsyth’s Hill Road.
“I left school at 14. I jumped off the school bus and went straight to carting in hay.”
There’s no denying it’s been a hard grind at times.
“But work’s only work when you’d rather be doing something else, and I very, very seldom do.”
Paramount for Ted are the two ‘f’ words farming and family.
He’s worked the land with his parents, his brothers and now his sons.
“Family is the way to go.
“Some of those biggest farming operations in the Unites States are still based on family.”
He’s studied those farms and families to get a much more expansive view than you’d get just sitting in the porch of the family’s old but neat-as-a-pin cottage at Talawa.
“I’ve not let the grass grow under my feet, but I don’t think I need to leave Tasmania anymore.”
Ted’s country pleasures are relatively simple.
“Nothing beats at six o’clock knock-off driving down the hill as the sun is setting and seeing how green the grass is. See it growing, growing.”