Totally tuber-lar

PALMER — The gym at Sherrod Elementary School turned into a miniature farm processing center Friday as students reaped the rewards of their potato harvest.

After digging up spuds that have spent the past few months ripening in the school’s garden, eager students proudly weighed and displayed their tubers to a man they call Farmer Austin.

“Mine’s almost a pound,” one student yelled out.

“This one’s dirty,” another opined.

Farmer Austin is really Austin Harless, an AmeriCorps member who works at Spring Creek Farm. Harless spends 15 hours a week helping the garden grow at Sherrod and teaching students what it means to harvest their own food.

But it’s not just the elementary kids who benefit from the potato harvest, since nearly everything the children pull from the ground is donated to the Palmer Food Bank.

By Friday afternoon, Harless and his pint-sized pickers had pulled nearly 50 pounds of potatoes. The day was crucial, Harless said, because freeze-up is looming in Alaska.

“I figure we’ll have between 50 and 70 pounds when we’re done today,” Harless said.

A steady stream of students kept the gym full of temporary potato farmers all day Friday. Each student weighed his or her potato, then told Harless, who recorded the weight for a final tally. After putting their potatoes in a bag, students were treated to a lettuce and potato snack.

The lesson Harless was teaching seems pertinent at a school located where farming is the reason for the area’s population, he said. The Matanuska Valley was settled when the U.S. government relocated farmers living in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to the area. The Valley’s rich glacial soil is great for growing produce and many fully operational farms exist in the area today.

That means what Harless’ students were learning about takes place all the time on real farms around the Valley.

Just before he went back to teaching a group of spellbound children about the joys of farming, Harless said teaching kids about what he’s doing is a labor of love. Besides giving them an insight into the process of growing produce, Harless said he’s the catalyst allowing students a break from the classroom.

“Every kid in the school has a chance to put their hands in soil,” he said.

Contact Michael Rovito at michael.rovito@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.