Volunteers keep Spring City potato harvest going despite difficult growing season

SPRING CITY—One volunteer in her 80s couldn’t do much of the heavy lifting during this year’s community potato harvest. Her hands made physical work difficult, but she could still open bags and hand them to the people filling them.

It was a small contribution to an enormous undertaking, but to Neil Sorensen, the Spring City farmer who started the annual harvest with his brother, Mark, 11 years ago, it illustrated what has kept the project going.

“She was so happy to be part of something,” Sorensen said.

That willingness to contribute, regardless of age or ability, has become the foundation of a community tradition that provides thousands of pounds of locally grown potatoes to families, food banks, churches and charitable organizations throughout Sanpete County and beyond.

Despite drought, unusually hot weather and a difficult growing season, Sorensen and his family, supported by dozens of volunteers, completed another substantial harvest this fall.

The group planted eight acres of potatoes this year, beginning May 7, and spent several days harvesting, sorting and bagging the crop in October.

Sorensen said the results were encouraging considering the growing conditions.

“The drought kicked our butt something fierce,” he said.

The shortage of irrigation water forced the family to make difficult decisions. Rather than spread the available water across all their crops, they diverted irrigation water from hundreds of acres of alfalfa and concentrated resources on the potatoes.

That decision came at a substantial cost.

“We lost our alfalfa, and a lot of it,” Sorensen said.

But the value of the potatoes to the community made the sacrifice worthwhile, he said.

“But to me, this is helping so many people,” he said.

The challenges continued into harvest season, when rain complicated the schedule and left portions of the potato fields too muddy for equipment.

Organizers canceled and rescheduled potato harvesting as conditions changed. By the final scheduled workday, they believed a truckload of potatoes might remain in the field, with wet ground preventing its recovery.

Even with those setbacks, the volunteers kept the operation moving.

Cory Madsen, Sorensen’s brother-in-law and a longtime contributor to the project, tallied 2,857 bags. The crew had filled more than 1,100 bags on one of the final workdays alone.

Sorensen estimated that at least 30 volunteers participated each day, with approximately 30 to 40 people gathered during the final day’s activities.

Among those providing assistance was a crew from Alder Construction, a Salt Lake-area company that has supported the harvest for the past two years.

Sorensen said approximately 10 or 11 members of the construction crew brought much-needed additional labor to the operation.

He repeatedly emphasized that the event depends on people willing to donate their time, whether they operate equipment, sort potatoes, fill bags or help in smaller ways.

The harvest began more than a decade ago as Sorensen’s effort to encourage local food production and greater self-sufficiency.

The first year, he invested in seed potatoes and the equipment needed to plant and harvest the crop. The project gradually expanded as additional volunteers and community organizations became involved.

Sorensen established a system in which volunteers could take home potatoes for their own families while helping provide food for others.

That approach continues today.

Sorensen said the farm transports potatoes to participating food banks, where the donations are unloaded for distribution. Those contributions include both marketable potatoes and smaller or imperfect potatoes that might otherwise be discarded. Various religious denominations benefit from the effort.

This year’s crop included four potato varieties: Russet, Huckleberry Gold, Yukon and Purple Viking.

Sorensen said limited seed availability affected which varieties the family could plant. Popular varieties such as Pontiac Red and Purple Majesty were not available this year.

The family plans to address that problem by purchasing seed earlier for next season, with hopes of expanding production to five varieties, including additional red and purple potatoes.

Despite the difficulties of 2026, the Sorensen family has decided to continue the community harvest for at least another year.

“We contemplate it at the end of every year, whether or not we want to do it again,” Sorensen said. “It is a lot of work, even with all the great volunteers.”

For now, preparations for next year’s crop are already on the horizon. Sorensen hopes improved winter snowfall will help replenish water supplies.

The farm itself has been in the family for generations. Sorensen said he and his brother, Mark, took over the operation from their father, and he hopes future generations will have the opportunity to continue farming in Sanpete County.

As another potato harvest came to a close, volunteers continued encouraging people to take potatoes home, sometimes offering more bags than recipients initially requested.

The spirit of the event was perhaps best summarized in one simple suggestion:

“If you can’t use them, give them to someone that will,” Sorensen said.