Ag digging
Dixon students dig into agriculture
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MOIESE — Despite a gray, drizzly day that threatened rain and snow, a group of Dixon Elementary students had bushels of fun during a field trip Friday to Foust Farm in Moiese.
The event was organized in honor of Global Youth Service Day by Montana Energy Corps volunteer Anna Rebellino, who works with the Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center in Ronan. She wanted to give the Dixon second- and third-graders a chance to see not only the inner workings of local agriculture but also learn about local birds and wildlife around the Flathead River with a special visit to a future public park on the river. The weather put a damper on some activities, but the kids still got a good taste of life on a potato farm.
“It ended up being an educational tour,” Rebellino said of the field trip.
Following an introduction to the farm, students and teachers headed out to picnic tables in a green field along the Flathead River to enjoy lunch and a talk by Natural Resources Conservation Service soil conservationist Larry Robertson. He’s working with Foust to create a 300-acre public park and nature preserve on his land along the river, returning developed fields to the wetlands they once were and keeping a more natural habitat for wildlife. Eventually, the area would become a public access park.
After lunch, it was off to the potato silo for a lesson in sorting potatoes and keeping them fresh once harvested. Foust Farm raises seed potatoes for all those famous Idaho potatoes, Foust explained, and they’re some of the finest Russet Burbank potatoes around.
“It’s such a very good eating potato, so much so that for a long time, that’s all (people) ate,” he said.
The Irish know all about living off of potatoes, Foust added. When they were attacked by invaders, all the other crops were burned, but the potatoes were left unharmed underground. With nothing else left to eat, potatoes became the staple food of the Irish.
“The average adult Irishman ate as much as 14 pounds of potatoes a day,” Foust said.
But with all the ways of cooking potatoes — Foust figured there are more than 100 — people can live off the popular starch for quite a while before getting too sick of it. Foust invited everyone to sample his potatoes, and all the students headed home with bags stuffed with as many potatoes as they could carry. Potatoes should be stored in a cool, dark spot like a closet or basement, Foust advised the children.
As the kids scrambled up a mountain of potatoes, filling the silo with squeals of delight, Foust explained his philosophy on farming: “If you’ve got something good, share it,” he said simply.
