This article appears in the November 2015 issue of Potato Grower.
Northwestern Montana isn’t exactly an area of the world one would use the word “urban” to describe. It’s a land of soaring mountains, sweeping valleys and, of course, that famous big sky. People come from all over the world to enjoy the area’s abundant fishing, hunting and mountaineering opportunities—opportunities that can only exist in a place decidedly off the proverbial beaten path.
Ironically enough, it’s the area’s reputation as a wilderness that has precipitated the urban sprawl that Kalispell seed potato grower Steve Streich says has been his biggest challenge as a grower. Some 2 million tourists visit nearby Glacier National Park annually, and the city of Kalispell has grown to accommodate them—the town’s population has doubled in the past 25 years. Every potato grower in the valley has pulled out—except Streich.
Steve Streich’s father, Orrin Streich, got into the seed potato business in North Dakota in the mid-1940s, shortly after World War II ended. He had a solid customer base of commercial growers in Washington’s Columbia Basin, and business was good for 30 years. When Orrin decided to retire in 1975, he headed west, to a place where he had spent countless hours over the years fishing, relaxing and taking in the beauty of God’s creations—Montana’s Flathead Valley.
“He was not a good retirer,” Steve says now with a smile. “He did not retire well. He started a really small potato operation, like it was going to be a hobby, but it just kind of expanded.”
It expanded to about 250 acres. On graduating from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., Steve brought his young wife, Jill, back to Kalispell to help carry the farm into the future. Orrin passed away in 1993, but his fingerprints remain all over the operation. In fact, some of the Streichs’ current relationships with customers in the Columbia Basin date back to Orrin’s time as a seed grower in the Red River Valley.
In 2006, the Streichs faced a crossroads. One by one, their potato-growing neighbors on the west side of the valley had either retired or sold out to developers. They finally had to make the inevitable choice: quit farming, or move the whole operation. They chose the latter, moving the farm and family several miles to the east, near Creston, and they have never regretted it.
“Literally, every acre we farmed over there is gone,” says Steve. “You’ve got high schools and Home Depots; everything got built where we used to farm.”
But the Streichs have found a home on the east side of the valley, where they own 300 acres of some of the best farm ground in the state. The family grows nothing but seed potatoes (Burbank, Norkotah and Umatilla), share-cropping and renting ground to rotate land and crops.
“It’s really good ground out here,” says Steve. “You ask any farmer in Montana about the Creston area, and they’ll know what you’re talking about. We’ve got feet of topsoil, and it is incredible farm ground. The circumstances that made us relocate weren’t that good, but we’re in a great spot.”
“We’re really isolated here, which is great for seed potatoes,” says Steve’s son, Paul. (The closest potato grower is in Ronan, nearly 60 miles away.) “There’s no source for potential infections close to us.”
It’s plain to see the Streichs are in a good spot, in more than one sense of the expression. And they don’t plan on leaving any time soon.
“By moving out here,” says Steve, “we’ve secured our future for quite a while.”