People flock from across region for Moses Lake potato giveaway
Emry Dinman/Columbia Basin Herald Jeffrey Newman, enlisted to volunteer by a member of the Washington State Potato Commission, lifts two 15-pound bags of potatoes from a pallet before bringing them to a one of the hundreds of cars that came to the Grant County Fairgrounds Thursday.
Emry Dinman/Columbia Basin Herald A volunteer lifts bags from a pallet, staging them where they can be taken to cars lining up for free potatoes.
MOSES LAKE — In hundreds of vehicles Thursday, crisscrossing the length of the Grant County Fairgrounds parking lot, snaking more than a mile all the way back past North Grape Drive, organizers estimated that over 1,000 people came for the potatoes.
They started lining up long before the first 15-pound bag of tubers was given out at 9 a.m. Helpers placed the bags in the vehicles so drivers didn’t need to get out and could abide by social distancing guidelines. By afternoon, the better part of 60,000 pounds of potatoes, the spud equivalent of about five African bush elephants or about a dozen Ford F-150s, wheeled in by forklift by the pallet, had been dispersed to homes across the county and beyond.
It was round two in what is expected to be an at least 20-event initiative for potato farmers to give away their seed potatoes and stored crop to their neighbors rather than watch the potatoes rot.
Both donor and recipient have suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many farmers facing dire financial burdens as restaurants remain shuttered across the country and people flock to food distribution sites as unemployment soars.
That was the thinking of Marvin Wollman, a potato farmer with the Warden Hutterian Brethren, and Michele Kiesz, a fourth-generation wheat farmer from Adams County. The Warden Hutterian farm had already been fumigated, fertilized and prepared for seed potatoes purchased months before, when word came that contracts for their next year’s crop had been slashed. Well over a thousand tons of their potatoes no longer had a market.
But despite the economic blow, Wollman’s thoughts quickly turned to other residents across the region.
“We thought it’d be a good idea to try to get creative and try to move some potatoes,” Wollman said.
With the help of local elected officials, the Washington State Potato Commission, dozens of volunteers, and more farmers by the day, the first potato distribution in Ritzville on Wednesday drew hundreds of people and gave away around 36,000 pounds of potatoes. And, as Kiesz told people as they drove up for their free spuds, these aren’t just any spuds — these were once destined to become McDonald’s french fries.
After the blowout events that took place in Grant and Adams counties this week, there are plans to take the event statewide. Some of those plans are still in the works, Kiesz said, but if the last few days were any clue, they’re not going to be small potatoes.
