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This Is Why We Take Food Safety Seriously

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In case you missed it, in the beginning of February an odd news story was floating around the internet and getting airtime in broadcast news. A relic of World War I was found in a shipment of potatoes in Hong Kong. What was the relic? A hand grenade.

Hong Kong police photo of WWI hand grenade that was shipped with potatoes to a Calbee snack plant from France.
Believe it or not, this WWI grenade is about the size and shape of chipping potato!

The un-detonated WWI hand grenade was found in a shipment of chipping potatoes that was shipped to snack food producer, Calbee, in Hong Kong. Incredibly, the grenade survived almost a century in a field in France, harvested with the potatoes and shipped to Hong Kong, where it was detonated on the factory grounds.

While incredible, this story highlights the importance of food safety, something we take seriously in our potato packing shed. We strive to ensure our processing plant is not only efficient and we try to eliminate damage to our potatoes, we also try to ensure our customers receive product that is safe for their factory.

Our Fortress Metal Detector installed on the export line

We can confidently say we wouldn’t ship chipping potatoes overseas with hand grenades in them. It’s a pretty safe claim since we’re not near any modern war zones, but also because, as you recall, we have a metal detector on our export line. Initially, the Fortress Metal Detector was installed to ensure wire, nails or any other metal items wouldn’t slip past our optical sorter or hand sorting crews and into customer orders. Now, it appears there’s another good purpose.

We have invested in a lot of systems in place to make sure our customers receive a product that not only meets their high standards of quality, but is also safe. Though this seems like an odd story to make light of, to us it puts a spotlight on why it’s important to invest in the equipment we have in our potato processing plant. Food safety is something we take seriously at Gold Dust & Walker Farms, and we’ve invested in the equipment to reduce the chances of something our customers don’t want making it out of our shed.

2018 Klamath Basin Potato Festival

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Gold Dust Potatoes and Walker Farms' 2013 Klamath Basin Potato Festival float.
Our epic, award-winning Klamath Basin Potato Festival float from 2013!

For us, it’s hard to think about potato harvest without the Klamath Basin Potato Festival being mentioned. In our last post about potato harvest, we mentioned the Potato Festival in a list of other activities going on during harvest. However, if you look through our Farm Blog, you’ll see we’ve been participating in the Spud Festival for years.

Obviously, our history with the Potato Festival goes back before that.

Years and years ago, before we moved into our processing plant in Malin and weren’t farming as many acres, Jan would gather and clean the potatoes entered for the Spud Festival. Parade time would find the Walker family gathered at the home of Glenna Walker, aka Grammie, aka Bill and John’s mom. The kids would gather candy thrown from the floats while Glenna hosted family, friends and neighbors.

Over the years, things changed and new traditions developed. Our companies started getting more involved with the Spud Festival and creating new rituals. For a few years, we put together floats and tossed candy and bags of potato chips to the crowds, hoping to take home the bragging rights for the best float while the chipping potatoes hand selected by our agronomy team earned ribbons in the potato judging. The office staff started a potato lunch potluck where everybody brings something different to top off baked potatoes with.  Between the camaraderie and community involvement, it created an opportunity for fun during a crazy time of year.

Our Klamath Basin Potato Festival float from 2011

Our traditions have changed again, and in a way have come full circle. The huge floats of years past have gone to the wayside for now as the trucks are needed on the road and our staff is busy. The office potato potluck still lives on, and instead of our agronomy team entering the potatoes for judging, our employees’ kids entered them this year. Still wanting to be involved with the parade and the community, last year we started a new tradition that will likely carry forward. From Grammie’s garage, just across the street from the Merrill Civic Center, our office team handed out hot drinks and potato chips to friends, family and anyone else who came to Merrill to watch the parade.

We’re proud to be a part of a community that celebrates ag the way the Klamath Basin Potato Festival does. We’re also proud to have a group of dedicated employees who help us carry participate in the community. Thank you to our staff who helped during the Spud Festival, and thank you to everyone who stopped by for a bag of chips and something to sip!

Chipping Potato Harvest 2018

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Two potato bulkers parked in a chipping potato field near Malin, Oregon.Save for fall farming, the fields are mostly quiet again. The hay has been stacked in the barns, waiting to be sold and shipped and the granaries are full of wheat and barley. Chipping potatoes have been piled in our cellars while spud trucks run from the storages to the packing shed instead of from the fields to the storages. Another successful potato harvest is in the books!

This year’s harvest began back in August. Considering we finished up shipping in July, our packing shed didn’t have much time to turn around and get ready for our annual Open House Field Day, let alone for shipping season to start again. But, as we’ve mentioned in the past, we have amazing crews and some of the best employees in the Klamath Basin. Needless to say, they were able to get everything buttoned down and to start shipping!

Crews pulling irrigation pipe from a potato field near Malin, OR.
Before this potato field can be dug, the pipe needs to be pulled.

If we were to venture a guess of when our busiest season is, planting and spring farming might get quite a few votes, but it’s probably potato harvest. It takes a lot of work to get the fields ready for digging, let alone the fact we’re cutting grain, still cutting hay, firing up the processing plant and our offices are running at full tilt. Then there’s all the community-related events, like the the Tulelake-Butte Valley Fair at the beginning of September and the Klamath Basin Potato Festival in October. We usually also welcome school tours to check out our shed and learn about agribusiness and how a farm operates. There’s a lot of action during potato harvest, and somehow our crews manage to keep everything rolling along.

Speaking of our crews, we cannot thank them enough for their dedication and the hours they put in to make it another successful potato harvest. From the shed to our offices, from the tractors and trucks to the fields, we manage to get a great group of people together to help us make Gold Dust and Walker Farms a continuing success. It isn’t always easy, but with their help and dedication we make it through. Thank you to everyone who works for us, and for another great harvest!

Though the bulkers have been put to bed, it doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy a few photos of them in action.  Below are some photos taken just below the Tule Lake leases in the shadow of Mt. Shasta and from the Caledonia, located just Northwest of Klamath Falls by the Running Y Ranch.

Here’s to another successful harvest. Now bring on shipping season!

Open House Field Day 2018

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Gold Dust & Walker Farms' guests at the Reames' Country Club for the 2018 Open House Field Day.
Thanks to everyone who could make it our 18th Annual Open House Field Day!

Another August was almost over. Grain and hay were being cut, and chipping potatoes were already being dug and shipped. Earlier in the month we had a Leadership Meeting and Employee Appreciation Picnic, making this August a touch busier than normal. And as always this time of year, we opened our doors and headed to the fields for Gold Dust & Walker Farms’ 18th Annual Open House Field Day!

This year, the festivities began the night before at Bill and Jan’s house, where Gold Dust and Walker Farms staff mingled with our visitors. Though the past few months in the Klamath Basin were incredibly smokey, the air cleared and everyone was able to enjoy a gorgeous evening outside with cold drinks, great food and good company. A feast of roast, fresh tuna, shrimp and scallops was put together by Jan, Ken Hibbard and Casey Lammers, followed by German chocolate cake and ice cream. Visiting carried on past sunset, and with a touch of smoke still in the air, gave our guests an amazing Klamath Basin sunset. Frankly, we couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful evening.

The next morning, everyone met at Mike & Wanda’s restaurant in Tulelake. After a welcoming speech from Bill, Lexi introduced Klamath County Museums Manager, Todd Kepple. At our Open House Field Day breakfast, we usually have a speaker, and this year Mr. Kepple put together a presentation about the history of Klamath Basin agriculture. From the Reclamation Project to drawing homesteads from pickle jars to the Bucket Brigade of 2001, Todd’s presentation gave us and our guests incredible insights to how farming and ranching not only changed over the years, but how it changed the Klamath Basin itself.

Gold Dust & Walker Farms' guests boarding a bus used for the 2018 Open House Field Day.
All aboard!

Following breakfast, it was time to head to the potato fields! Like last year, our growers showed off their fields and dug up a few spuds to show our group. If you’ve read past posts about our Open House Field Day, you’ve seen pictures of long trains of cars and pickups parked along the fields. This year, we decided it would be more efficient and effective to rent a bus instead of everyone driving to the fields on their own. With everyone on the bus, on the way to the fields our growers were able to provide their family’s history of farming in the Klamath Basin as well as answer questions about potato varieties, the ins-and-outs of potato farming and anything else that came to mind. Not only was this a more efficient way for us to get everyone on the field tour, it provided a great way for our guests to chat while learning more about us and our growers.

Which growers’ fields did we visit?

We started with Luke Robison’s field of 2137 potatoes located just outside of Tulelake. After that, we headed to the leases where Matt Huffman had some 1867 chipping potatoes dug and ready for inspection. Next, we headed back to Tulelake where we visited Sid Staunton’s field of Waneta potatoes. Though we weren’t able to swing by his field located near Lower Klamath Lake, Kyle Patterson shared a bit about his experiences with growing Dakota Pearls, which was fitting because it was on the way to a sandy field of Dakota Pearl chippers grown by Rob Unruh, just a bit north of Gold Dust’s campus. On the way back the shed, Tricia shared a bit about her and Weston’s Basin farming lineage and what brought her back home to farm.

By the time we made it back to the packing shed, the plant had ended shipping for the day and Matt had samples of the chipping potato varieties Gold Dust and Walker Farms can provide laid out on the production floor. To make this visit even more interesting, Frito Lay reps Sanjay Prasad, Gurvinder Johal and Danny Lopez brought along some fresh potato chips from the Lays plant in Modesto. And yes – these were made with our potatoes we dug this week!

Following the shed tour, our guests made their way to Reames Country Club for a fun golf scramble. Once the ceremonial shots of Crown had been taken, the teams made their way to the golf course for a shotgun start. Around 6:30 pm, the teams began to make their way from the golf course to the club house to enjoy cocktails and a dinner put together by the Reames staff.

Katie Walker and Billy Conrad of Pape' Machinery with a plaque honoring Pape' Machinery for their support of Make-A-Wish Oregon at Gold Dust's 2018 Open House Field Day dinner.
On behalf of Make-A-wish Oregon, Katie gave Billy Conrad of Pape’ Machinery an award for their continued gifting.

The Open House Field Day has presented itself as an opportunity to raise money for our local Make-A-Wish chapter, and this year was no different. Katie Walker, Weston’s wife, took this as an opportunity to recognize some of our guests who have given year after year with a plaque to recognize their company’s generosity. After handing out recognition, it was time to start raising pledges.

Last year, between the generosity of our guests and Gold Dust and Walker Farms’ matching their pledges, we were able to raise $30,490 along with 135,000 airline miles. This year’s goal was to raise $35,000.  After a heartfelt thank you from Make-A-Wish Oregon’s Corporate Alliances Manager, Mallory Tyler, and short video about a Wish recipient, our guests gave generously. When it was all said and done, after Gold Dust matched everyone’s pledges, our crowd raised $45,000 for Make-A-Wish! When we say we work with good people, we don’t just mean they’re good at they do. Their pledges for Make-A-Wish is proof of that.

We also went over which teams won the golf scramble and who took home top honors for their skills with the clubs. This year, we had a tie for first and second place – both teams shot a 64. After going over the cards and comparing the performance of the front nine, the back nine and doing some other fancy golf math, the team of Matt Thompson, Sanjay Prasad, Erin Plumb and Ty Hulse came out on top, which left second place honors for Rob Unruh, Steve Parkinson and Drew Huffman. Destiny Huffman had an amazing day as she took home not only the Ladies Longest Drive, but also the Closest to the Pin! Jared Marshall crushed the ball to take home Men’s Long Drive while Jeff Dahl drove his ball Closest to the Pin to take home the other golf club.

Before the night was over, the senior partners passed the mic to thank everyone for coming. Tricia took this opportunity to highlight five folks who have been attending our Open House Field Day since the beginning – Ron Marshall, Jim Boone, Paul Sproule, and Chris Moudry. Weston thanked the crowd for their generosity and Bill thanked everyone who attended for their continued support and attendance to our Open House Field Day. John wrapped it up with a rousing thank you and pep talk that pointed out that what has made our businesses successful isn’t just us – it was everyone in the audience who got up every morning and did what they do best. His mic drop drew loud applause and was a fitting end to the evening.

We always enjoy this opportunity to get together with the growers, suppliers, financiers and customers who have helped us become successful, and this year was no different. Gold Dust and Walker Farms are successful in no small part due to the people we work with. When we say we work with the best – and most giving – we mean it. We hope everyone had a safe trip home and that we’ll see everyone once again next year. Last, but not least – thank you. Thank you for helping us become the amazing businesses we have grown into and thank you for your continued support.

Small Changes for Big Improvements In Our Packing Shed

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Frontier Metal Detector installed on a production line at Gold Dust Potato Processors' Malin campus.
Frontier Metal Detector installed on our Export Potatoes Line

With chipping potato seed coming in, chipping potatoes being shipped out and the spring farming that happens in the fields near our sheds, our campus in Malin is hopping with activity. With much of the action happening around our sheds and cellars, we thought this might be a good time to share with our readers some of the changes we made to our processing plant that were mentioned in our post about the 2017 Open House Field Day.

During the shed tour, Plant Manager Matt Thompson shared some of the improvements that had been implemented during the summer of 2017. Focused on employee safety, food safety and efficiency, Matt was excited to share these changes. So what exactly was added?

The first thing Matt shared was three in-line scales had

Gold Dust Potato Processors Plant Manager Matt Thompson with digital readout at the Malin, Oregon potato packing shed.
Matt with one of the digital scale read-outs

been added to the production line. Three scales may not seem like a big deal, but these scales allow us to track production flow in live time. Working like a ticker, they weigh the chipping potatoes as they cross each scale. Now our packing shed can track the pounds of potatoes being processed per minute, and we can be more accurate about the weights of potatoes we’re shipping on behalf of each grower and to judge the yields of each field.

Gold Dust Potato Processors Plant Manager Matt Thompson demonstrating the big digital readout at the Malin potato processing plant.
Matt can easily see this readout from across the shed

For safety – and efficiency – Matt pointed out the huge digital readout on the on the scale at the southend of the shed as the second improvement. This scale is easily readable from across the production floor, which not only saves him time from having to check the weight of the chipping potatoes being loaded into the trucks, it also keeps him and other employees from having to make their way through the storm of activity.

The last item Matt shared was the Fortress Metal Detector that was installed on our export line. Why a metal detector in a potato packing shed? Though it extremely rarely it happens, metal objects can sometimes get in with potatoes we ship. This metal detector can pick up on any metal object – from a tiny piece of copper wire or soda can tab to a bolt that was picked up in the field. If the metal detector senses an item, it stops the line and dumps the product before it goes into the large bags of potatoes we export. As of this post, has the metal detector picked up anything? Not yet. But to make sure it’s working, every morning before production starts Matt uses tools that came with the metal detector to ensure it’s working and able to detect any sort of metal that passes through it. The plan is to buy two more metal detectors for the bulk line and the In-N-Out line to ensure all areas or production are checked before potatoes make it into packaging or trailers.

A Frontier Metal Detector installed on the export chipping potatoes line at Gold Dust Potato Processors' Malin, Oregon campus potato processing plant.
This metal detector on our export potatoes line ensure food safety goals are met

Whether it’s creating systems, updating our farming practices or looking to technology to improve our operations, Gold Dust and Walker Farms are continually looking at how to do things more safely, more efficiently and more effectively. While there may be upfront costs to our businesses, these innovations help us in the long run to remain a sustainable farm and business.

Check Us Out On Facebook!

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A snapshot of Gold Dust and Walker Farms' Facebook page.
Here we are on Facebook!

It finally happened – we set up a Facebook page!

What should you expect to see on the Gold Dust and Walker Farms Facebook page? A little bit of everything. We initially set it up to showcase the various job opportunities we have available on the farm, in the shed and in our offices. However, that’s not all you’ll find. From what’s going on in the fields and on our campus to some of our favorite aspects of farming and agriculture, we plan on sharing those and hope you will do the same.

When you have a few minutes, we hope you’ll take some time to see what we’ve put up so far. And if you see something you like, please feel free to give it a like and share it with your friends in your feed (especially if you know someone that would be perfect for one of our job openings!). And if you want to stay up to date with out latest posts, be sure to like and follow our page.

We hope this will give our community some insights to how we operate and what we feel is important. For example, one of the most amazing things about farming in the Klamath Basin is the sheer amount of wildlife we get to see on a regular basis. One morning in late February, Tricia and her family were driving around the farm and came across a flooded field that full of swans trumpeting and feeding on the leftover grain in the bottom of the open water. We feel blessed that we’re able to live in an area where we can experience that, and so, it ended up as one of our posts.

Again, we hope you enjoy our page and that you will follow us. And we also hope it gives our followers a better understanding in why we enjoy farming in the Basin so much.

Who Invented The Potato Chip?

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A photo of the brother and sister team credited with creating the potato chip, George "Crum" Speck and Catherine "Aunt Katie" Wicks, with their creation, potato chips.
George “Crum” Speck and Katie Wicks, Creators of the Potato Chip (photo source Wikimedia Commons)

Though National Potato Chip Day is celebrated in March, it’s hard to separate the creation of the potato chip from Black History Month. If it weren’t for a notorious chef of African American and Native American ancestry, we may not be enjoying this crunchy snack nor the legend that comes with it.

If you’re unaware of the legend of the potato chip’s creation, it starts in the mid-1800’s in Saratoga Springs, New York. A wealthy customer was dining at Moon’s Lake House and ordered French-fried potatoes. When the batch came out, the customer, often credited as being well-known rich guy Cornelius Vanderbilt, sent them back. The diner wanted the potatoes cut as thin as the French do for their fries (hence the word “french fries”). After the French fries were sent back a couple of times for being too soggy and under-salted, the frustrated chef sliced the potatoes as thin as possible, fried them until they were crisp and sent them out. This delighted the customer – as well as the owner of the dinner house – and the rest is history.

To this date, the legend remains that George Crum was the chef who created the potato chip, a snack that would go on to create the cultivation of chipping potatoes and spawn a world-wide snacking sensation.

Like most things in life, the truth is harder to pin down than the myth.

What is true is that George “Crum” Speck did fry up wafer thin potatoes and serve them to customers at Moon’s Lake House in 1853. What’s in question is the events of this story and who really should be credited with inventing the potato chip.

Did George Crum invent the potato chip? That’s tough to say, as there was a recipe to something similar to potato chips in William Kitchiner’s 1822 edition of his  best-selling cookbook “The Cook’s Oracle”. Plus, the story of how the potato chip came about trying to please Cornelius Vanderbilt was actually part of a 1973 ad campaign from the St Regis Paper Company, who manufactured the packaging for Saratoga Chips – the potato crisps that went on to be the snack we love.

What we do know is true is that George Crum was a well-respected hunter, guide and chef in the Adirondacks who’s heritage was a mix of local Native American (Oneida, Stockbridge or Mohawk tribes) and mulatto. Though his skill as a hunter was likely sought after by the wealthy New York sportsmen of the day, his skills in the kitchen are what made him famous. The wealthy and well-to-do alike would wait hours to eat meals prepared by the chef – including Cornelius Vanderbilt. From what the historians say, he didn’t give the wealthy any better service than anyone else, and that his service was impeccable.

At Cary Moon’s Lake House, he cooked with his sister, Catherine “Aunt Kate” Wicks. Eventually the man’s reputation as a masterful chef gave him the ability to open his own restaurant simply called “Crums” by 1860. Though his was still in the Saratoga Springs area, the prices were the same as restaurants in Manhattan – and people were willing to wait in line to eat his cuisine and snack on the baskets of potato chips on the tables in his establishment.

But does that prove he didn’t invent the potato chip as we know it? This is where it gets interesting.

Crum likely had something to do with the popularity of Saratoga Chips, though in his 1893 biography he isn’t credited with inventing them and in his obituary he isn’t mentioned as the creator of the potato chip. That honor, actually, is claimed for his sister, Kate Wicks. In her obituary, she is credited with accidentally creating potato chips. In this version of the story, she was peeling potatoes while frying up a batch of crullers and a piece of peeled potato dropped into the hot oil. She pulled it out and her brother tried it. The result? George liked it, said they’d make more of those and Kate Wicks created the potato chip as we know it!

So, Aunt Kate invented potato chips, right?

Maybe. In his deeply researched blog about Saratoga Springs’ connection to the potato chip, Dave Mitchell digs deep into the origins of the potato chip creation myth, the history of Saratoga Springs and the people who lived there around the time of the crisp was invented. What he finds and reports only leads to more questions about who actually invented them. For example, other dining houses around Saratoga Lake produced their version of the potato chip, including George Crum’s wildly popular restaurant. Mitchell also found a reference to “Eliza, the cook”, who’s mentioned in a 1849 newspaper article for having a reputation for “crisping potatoes”. Unfortunately due to the times and how people of color were treated by the public and census, all we know about “Eliza the Cook” is that she was a black woman that worked in a restaurant in the area that considered the birthplace of the modern potato chip. Her last name or any other details about her are lost to history, save the few anecdotal mentions found by historians such Mr. Mitchell and the source he quotes, TJ Stiles.

Regardless of who is credited with creating them, one thing is certain – the potato chip is a part of African American history. Whether it was “Eliza the Cook”, George Crum or Kate Wicks, all three of them are tied to the development and popularity of the salty snack. Though the potato chip as we enjoy it today was likely invented by an African American woman and not Crum, he shouldn’t be disregarded for his part in history.

George Crum was obviously a remarkable man. Even if he didn’t invent the potato chip as we’re told he did, he was a black man with Native American heritage in pre-Civil War United States was able to develop his own reputation as a chef and build an incredibly successful business. Keep in mind, in 1830 the census still counted 75 slaves in New York though the Gradual Emancipation Act was passed in 1799. By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, Crum had already opened his own restaurant. Whether or not he invented potato chips, his story is worth learning.

The most unfortunate detail of the history of the potato chip is that because of the times and how people of color and women were treated, their creator never received her due credit and still doesn’t. As incredible as George “Crum” Speck was and as fascinating as his story is, Kate Wicks and Eliza the Cook’s stories and participation in the creation of the crisp is largely forgotten even today. There are few details about either woman, and popular history still tells the story of George Crum’s attempt to appease a cranky customer.

Obviously, we think as you read more biographies about remarkable African Americans during Black History Month the appropriate snack is the potato chip. Even if history later finds that the crisp is much older than the mid-1800s, Katie Wicks and George Crum are still an important part of potato chip history and a part of chips’ popularity.

Before we wrap this up, if you’re at all interested in learning more about George “Crum” Speck, Katie Wicks and Saratoga Springs’ relationship to the potato chip, we strongly encourage you to check out Dave Mitchell’s blog, “Chips, Crums and Specks of Saratoga County History”. Mitchell does an excellent job of not only researching Saratoga Springs’ tie to potato chips, but also gets into society and race relations in pre-Civil War New York. It’s an incredibly fascinating read and tells the story of remarkable people.

Looking For Klamath Falls Jobs? See The Opportunities We Have.

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L:eadership Dinner with Gold Dust and Walker Farms managers and employees.
Join Our Team!

If you live in the Basin and have ever been unemployed, you know looking for a job in Klamath Falls can be a challenge. While the rest of the state and the nation seem to be getting out of the unemployment gap, for whatever reason it seems that Klamath Falls has a hard time catching up. And if you do land a job, sometimes you’ll find wages are lower than elsewhere. For a job-hunter that’s looking to provide for a family, that can be frustrating.

However, have you ever considered agriculture?

Seriously, as a source for Klamath County jobs, agriculture provides a ton of opportunities not usually given a second thought. And our farm is a prime example of the variety of employment opportunities people don’t consider because we’re a farm and/or we’re not located in Klamath Falls. But if you’re willing to drive a little ways and work hard, you might find ag is right up your alley.

For example, on our employment opportunities page, we have listings for not only farm jobs but also mechanic and office positions as well. If you’ve read our blog before, you know it takes a lot of people wearing a lot of different hats to keep the modern farm running and successful.

Have accounting experience or payroll experience? We need help running payroll and are looking for an experienced Payroll Bookkeeper. And if you’ve ever had the opportunity to process billing and have experience with databases, we’d love to talk to you about our Billing Clerk position. These jobs are located in Malin, and if you’re not familiar with the Klamath Basin that’s about 30 miles out of Klamath Falls. While it may seem like a commute, if you’ve ever lived in a larger city you know that sometimes it can take you that long and you’re only trying to go 10 miles to get home!

Perhaps you have a degree in horticulture or agronomy and are looking for an opportunity to make a difference? You should check out our Agronomist job opening. This is a great opportunity for someone who doesn’t want to be stuck in the office or the lab and would love to get their hands in the dirt while helping us grow the Basin’s best wheat, hay and potato crops.

Speaking of working with your hands, perhaps you’re more mechanically inclined and love the smell of oil and diesel in the morning. Perfect! We’re always looking for mechanics, and right now we’re looking for a Diesel Mechanic and a Farm Mechanic. These are great opportunities for someone who’s looking to get out of the headache of working for a dealership and loves the idea of turning wrenches and trouble-shooting issues for a wide variety of pickups, tractors and farm equipment. Not a mechanic, don’t want to farm but love shop-life? Then you should see our Assistant Shop Manager job opportunity. Again, not a typical farm job but still a position we need filled to keep our trucks and tractors on the road and in the fields. And all three of these jobs are based in Merrill, which is roughly 20 miles out of Klamath Falls.

And if you do want to farm, we have those positions available too! We always need experienced Tractor Operators to help in the spring, summer and fall to help with planting, laying out pipe and harvest. If you’re experienced in leading people and are motivated to succeed, we would love to talk to you about our Hay Farm Manager and Assistant Farm Manager positions. Both of these positions could provide a career with chances for advancement in our companies. 

Don’t see a job you’re interested in but have skills, experience or education? We’d still love to talk to you. Whether you’re a welder, have an accounting degree or computer networking experience, there may be something on our farm, packing shed or offices that we need your help with. Gold Dust and Walker Farms offers benefits and wages on-par with many of the Klamath Falls job opportunities you see in the paper or online. We pride ourselves on trying to be innovative, which means it takes innovative people from many different walks of life to helps us succeed. 

While this post may seem like a recruiting push (well, it kinda’ is), we hope our readers can see that it’s also calling attention to how much agriculture and farming has changed over the decades. There’s a lot of non-traditional farming jobs in ag these days. We need someone who’s just as skilled at running a tractor just as much as we need someone who’s skilled at running reports in Excel or Access. Both jobs are important – and keep our farm going. If you’re ready for a change of pace or a new opportunity, let’s talk.

Tis The Season at Gold Dust and Walker Farms

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The 161 presents Gold Dust and Walker Farms donated to Klamath Falls Toys For Tots.
Thanks to our employees, carriers and growers, Gold Dust and Walker Farms donated 161 gifts to Toys For Tots

Yesterday, December 20th, Gold Dust held its annual office Christmas party at Bill and Jan’s house just north of our campus. The atmosphere was merry and there was lots of laughs and cheer over the white elephant gift exchange. Good food, good times and great people always make the holidays a special time of year!

While on the topic of great people, Gold Dust and Walker Farms are blessed to work with the most generous folks. If you look through our farm’s blog, you’ll find post after post about giving and donating. This year alone our companies and the people who help us succeed raised $31,000 and 135,000 airline miles for Make-A-Wish Oregon. So, it goes without saying that when the holidays roll around, we also experience the generosity of the people coming and going from our packing shed.

Photo credits Lexi Crawford

Years past, we’ve held food drives for the Klamath and Lake County Food Bank and adopted a family for Christmas. More recently, we’ve been holding toy drives for our local Toys For Tots. For example, last year between what our employees donated and what the company matched, we were able to fill the back of Tricia AND Lexi’s SUVs! This year, with Nayeli Pena leading the charge, we held another successful toy drive for Toys For Tots.

And this year was amazing! As usual, our farm, shed and office crews contributed with toys and cash. Truck drivers that work for the various carriers that deliver our chipping potatoes and hay to our customers also contributed. Then our growers stepped up, with Luke Robison’s family donating $500. Our office was filled with toys and bicycles, and the cash donation bucket was filled with a variety of bills. Overall, 25 toys, four bicycles and around $1,000 was donated by the incredibly generous people we work and do business with. And yes, Gold Dust and Walker Farms matched it!

On Tuesday, December 19th, Tricia and her husband made the trek to Fred Meyers in Klamath Falls to fulfill Gold Dust’s end of the bargain. Fred Meyer’s manager also stepped up, offering discounts to help our contributions go even further. In the end, we were able to drop off 161 gifts to the Klamath Falls Toys For Tots.

Tricia Hill with Toys For Tots volunteers at their Toys For Tots Drop Station in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
When dropping off the gifts, Toys For Tots volunteers told Tricia about the 2,000 kids these presents would go to in the Klamath Basin

That donation was very much needed. When dropping off the gifts, one of the Toys For Tots volunteers told Tricia that this year they were trying to provide gifts for 2,000 local kids – 500 more than they expected. When you consider how many households are in the Klamath Basin, that’s a lot of families that are affected. All the donations to the Klamath Falls Toys For Tots program stay local – which means when you give a gift in our community, it stays in our community.

Gold Dust Potato Processors employee Suzanne Wallace helping load a truck with donated chipping potatoes.
Suzanne Wallace helping load one of our donations of potatoes. Photo credit Lexi Crawford.

Along with Toys For Tots, we also donated truck loads of potatoes to area charity groups and organizations. Those groups included Integral Youth Services, Women Infant Health, Malin City Hall, Tulelake-Newell Family Center, Klamath KID Center, Klamath Lake Community Actions, Henley High School FFA, Bonanza High School FFA, Bonanza Community Church, Livingsprings Church, Klamath Senior Center, Faith Tabernacle Church and Marta’s House in Klamath Falls. All of these organizations give back to community and we’re happy that we’re able to help them with their causes during the holidays.

We are proud of our employees and the people we do business with and the amount of generosity they showed with this year’s giving. Though we focused our holiday giving on our local Toys For Tots, there are lots of other ways to help. Consider those 2,000 children – their families likely also need help providing food, paying the power bill and more. Whether you slip something into one of the Salvation Army’s red kettles or take canned food to the Klamath-Lake Counties Food Bank (you can donate online too!), every little bit helps someone in our community.

Before we wrap this up and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year, we’d like to give Nayeli a big thank you for her work on this. We’d also like to thank Luke Robison’s family for their generous donation and to thank everyone who donated cash or toys. We’d also like say thank you to the Fred Meyer’s managers and cashier who helped make our donations go further. And of course, thank you to Toys For Tots for providing the spirit of Christmas to kids in our community. When you think about our company slogan, “where together we grow”, it’s evident that it extends beyond our sheds and farm and into the community as well. It’s part of what makes the Klamath Basin a great place to live.

And now, may everyone have a happy and safe holiday season and here’s to an amazing 2018!

Where Do Kettle Brand Chips Come From? Ask Tater Tracker!

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Bags of Kettle Brand potato chips on a kitchen counter.
Ever wonder where the potatoes for your Kettle Brand Chips come from?

As a chipping potato grower, we get to work with a lot of recognizable brand names from around world – and it’s pretty cool. People love to know where their food comes from, and as we attempted to answer the question “where do potato chips come from?” in another post, we’ve been given an opportunity to answer it again!

Ever been snacking on Kettle Chips and ever wonder where they came from? Well, they’ve provided an online tool to give you the answer! Kettle Brand has released their Tater Tracker, which highlights their potato growers and the farms where the potatoes come from. As you might recall from our Open House Field Day post – we’re one of those growers. And, yes, Gold Dust and Walker Farms is featured on Kettle Brands’ Tater Tracker page as well as a profile on Weston!

The Kettle Brand potato chips company car at Gold Dust and Walker Farms' Malin, Or campus during the 2017 Open House Field Day.
The Kettle Brand Potato Chips company rig stood out at the Open House Field Day

So, how does the Tater Tracker work? First, you obviously have to get a bag of delicious Kettle Brand potato chips (we recommend buying at least a dozen!). Next, locate the “Best Before” date located on the top right corner on one of the many bags you’ve purchased. Just below it you’ll find two numerical codes – type the second one into the space on the Tater Tracker page and you’ll see which Northwest potato farm your chips came from!

If you look at our grower profile, just under Weston’s bio you’ll see something else that Kettle has done with these pages – a virtual farm tour! While best viewed on an Android device, as the video plays you can turn your phone to get a 360 degree view of our potato farm, the sheds and even chipping potatoes being harvested. It’s a great way to see where your potato chips are coming from and give visitors an idea of what makes each of these potato farms unique.

Video by MaxwellPR.com

We love that Kettle Brand is as proud to work with us as we are with them. Not only does their dedication to sustainable agriculture match ours, it’s great to work with a snack company located in the Pacific Northwest that features local farms on its site. Thank you, Kettle Brand!

 

From Our Farm Blog

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