By LEE JUILLERAT 

H&N Regional Editor

   A few weeks ago, Walker and his crews supplemented a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., six-day work week with nights on frost watch. During cold spells, he was up at midnight. If temperatures dipped into the low 30s, he called up crews, who turned on sprinklers to keep the plants from freezing.

   “Potatoes are usually pretty hardy, but this long, cold, wet siege …” he said. “Sometimes you go back to bed, and sometimes you get to work. It’s a tough situation but it is what it is. You do what you got to do.”

   Most years, his large family farm operation grows chipping potatoes, along with wheat and hay, on about 6,500 acres in and around Malin and south of Newell.

   Because of the drought and resulting water shortages, this isn’t most years.

   During the 2001 water crisis, Walker Brothers shifted its operations to Butte Valley’s Macdoel area. Those lands are now in strawberries, so the Walkers — John and his brother, Bill — like other potato growers needing to fulfill contracts, searched elsewhere.  

   Elsewhere includes fields in the Poe and Yonna valleys and off Swan Lake Road, 25 miles away.

   “Staub and Schwab,” Walker said of who benefits from the added driving miles, referring to Staub Petroleum, the company that supplies gas and diesel for pickups and tractors, and Les Schwab Tire Center, which provides tires and infield mechanics who repair flats.

   “This has been harder just because of the soil types,” Walker explained. “In the Macdoel area, it was all pure sand, and I didn’t have to put up with the heavy, clay soils” like land in the Poe and Yonna valleys.

   The fields Walker Brothers leased are irrigated with well water but, because of the different conditions, the land has different soil. Some is rocky, some has heavy clay, and some was used for growing organic hay and, as a result, lacks nutrients needed for potatoes.

   “The rents are a lot higher. Easily double,” he said, noting the 2001 cost was $175 to $200 an acre, compared with $400 to $450 or more this year.

   Walker Brothers has contracts to meet. The company grows chipping potatoes, spuds specifically engineered to meet the needs of potato chip makers. If the contracts aren’t met, they likely won’t be renewed next year.  

Side Bars

Weston Walker, field manager and international sales agent

Weston Walker was about 12 when he started farming.

The son of Bill and Jan, two owners of Gold Dust Potato Processors and Walker Brothers Farms, and the nephew of John Walker, farming is in his blood.  His sister Tricia Walker Hill, is corporate counsel and manages the office staff.

"It's the only thing I've ever done," Walker, 27, says of farming,  "This is always what I wanted to do,"

This morning he's supervising crews in leased fields in Poe Valley.  In the summer, he's the company's field manager.  Other times of the year, he handles international sales.

He graduated from Lost River High School in 2001 and spent four years at Oregon State University majoring in agricultural business and crop soil science.  He returned home before graduating.

Collage prepared him for many things, but not the variables of a year with limited irrigation water.

"Tough year," he says.  "Not having the water.  Not doing the normal farms.  Different soils.  Tougher soils.  And the weather hasn't cooperated."

Tough, but Walker isn't complaining.

"It's up and down, but at the end of the day, working with your family is awesome," he says.