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22 POTATO GROWER | DECEMBER 2017 moved their young family to Ellis to build Parkinson Foundation Seed Farm, far from the reaches of metropolitan USA. Bob Parkinson died in 1996 when the small plane he was piloting crashed in St. Anthony. It shook the family, and Doug admits now that he's surprised the foundation farm survived. But survive it did, thanks in large part to Bob's chosen location. Prior to the Parkinsons' purchase of the farm, no potatoes had been grown in the Pahsimeroi Valley for at least 20 years. To this day, there isn't another potato field within 40 miles of Parkinson Foundation Seed Farm. Surrounded by the high peaks of the Lemhi and Lost River Ranges, the farm is about as isolated as you'd like a seed farm to be, probably its most important attribute. "We've probably got as good of isolation as anybody in the state of Idaho for raising seed potatoes," says Doug. That isolation comes with its challenges. There are, after all, reasons nobody was growing potatoes in the area at the time Parkinson Foundation Seed Farm sprung up there. "Our biggest asset is probably our isolation. It can be our biggest liability at times, too," Doug says. "There's no potato soil out here unless you make it. We've got one field where we picked 1,100 ten-wheeler loads of rock off 90 acres so we could grow spuds in it. I joke that I should have called my farm Parkinson Sand and Gravel." Overall, though, he says, the land has been good to the family, and the farm has grown. These days, Doug's farm is a completely separate entity from his brother Dirk's, though the two companies remain core business partners. Nearly all of Doug's customers are seed growers in eastern and southern Idaho. Parkinson Foundation Seed Farm is home to 13 greenhouses, which produce the seed for the farm's 40-acre nuclear plot. Beyond that, Parkinson grows about 500 acres of Generation 1 and 2 seed on a three-year rotation with wheat. Varieties for the 2017 season included Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet, Lamoka, Waneta, Chipeta, Clearwater and Yukon Gem. Though he has raised some 65 varieties over the years, Parkinson says he prefers "My husband and every one of my kids are waiting for them to come out with a car freshener that smells like fresh, moist dirt." —Janiel Parkinson 22 POTATO GROWER | DECEMBER 2017