Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1332463
WWW.POTATOGROWER.COM 21 A decade ago, nobody probably would have said Travis Stuber was meant to me a potato farmer, either. Sure, his young bride, the former Melissa Sales, was a rancher's daughter from the Gallatin Valley, Montana's seed potato nirvana. And sure, he and his young family loved the area. And, yeah, he could even drive a tractor with passable skill. But running a potato farm? That was a little beyond his expertise. Travis and Melissa's young married life was spent largely on the road in a fifth-wheel camper with their two young kids as Travis crisscrossed the country in his job doing heli-portable seismic drilling. It was a good gig, and they genuinely enjoyed it. But in 2016, when Melissa's father, Walt Sales, was elected to the Montana state legislature around the same time Travis suffered a neck and back injury on a job in Oklahoma, they made the decision to come back to the ranch full-time. For years, Walt had partnered with Gene Cole, a local seed potato grower, and the Stubers' decision would involve working for him as well. "We were in the thick of another life," says Melissa. "But we said we'd think about it separately and then decide together. Travis got home one night and just said, 'I think we should.'" "That was literally it," says Travis. "I came the next day and started working for Gene. We learned really quickly how to calve. It was all very sudden, but it always felt right." For a year, Travis worked for both Gene and Walt, slowly transitioning this new life. But in the winter of 2017, Gene unexpectedly asked if Travis and Melissa would be interested in buying him out. "It was much sooner than we were anticipating," says Travis, "but we just said, 'Okay.' Looking back now, the timing was perfect. It's hard to explain, but we were just ready. We kind of just stepped right into Gene's shoes, and in 2017 we grew and harvested our first crop." At first, the Stubers ran the farm as closely as they could to the pattern Gene had set. But with a lot of input from Gene, they have implemented some changes of their own, most notably a switch from wheel line irrigation to almost exclusively pivots. And they love the life they've chosen. "This has been a great fit for our family," says Melissa. Travis and Melissa Stuber have heeded to core tenets that made their predecessor Gene Cole successful, while also implementing ideas of their own, such as installing nine new pivots in the last four years.