Totally tubular: Trinity digs potato patch for Food Helpers
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Trinity High School students gather potatoes from a field in South Strabane Township.
Trinity Area School District Superintendent Donald Snoke plows potatoes while high school students harvest the spuds as part of a community service project to benefit Greater Washington County Food Bank & Food Helpers.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Trinity High School junior Matt Callahan dumps a bucketful of Kennebec potatoes into bins on Wednesday morning. High school students harvested more than 2,000 potatoes, which were donated to the Greater Washington County Food Bank & Food Helpers.
Trinity Area School District and Range Resources partnered on a potato harvest project to benefit the Greater Washington County Food Bank & Food Helpers. Among the high school students gathering potatoes Wednesday were, from left, Kelsey Snow, Caitlin McCullough and Maddi McClure.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Trinity High School student Chloe Wasalasky harvests Kennebec potatoes Wednesday morning.
Trinity High School student Corbin Likar bags Kennebec potatoes. The potatoes were grown by Trinity High School and donated to the Greater Washington County Food Bank & Food Helpers as part of a partnership between Trinity Area School District and Range Resources.
Trinity High School students bag potatoes during a potato harvest in South Strabane Township on Wednesday.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Trinity High School student Isabella Hull loads potatoes raised by high school students to benefit Greater Washington County Food Bank & Food Helpers.
A group of 40 Trinity High School students tromped through rows of dirt Wednesday morning lugging blue, 5-gallon buckets, in search of potatoes.
Their mission: to harvest spuds from the South Strabane Township property that they would donate to the Greater Washington County Food Bank & Food Helpers.
The students, from the vo-ag, life skills and autistic support classes, spent the next few hours filling their buckets with Kennebec and chieftain potatoes, dumping the potatoes into bins, filling 10-pound bags, and loading them onto a utility trailer.
Later that morning, they transferred the bounty to a Food Helpers box truck parked across the street.
The project is a partnership between the school district and Range Resources, which owns the 144-acre property on Davis School Road.
“This is the first year for it, and this is absolutely great. I think it applies a lot of our academic goals. This is practical application of academic skills and authentic learning, where the kids are using what they’ve learned in the classroom,” said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Donald Snoke.
The potato harvest also provides students the chance to learn about Food Helpers and the services it provides to the community.
And by harvesting the tubers, the students get to help others in the community and participate in a service project.
By the end of the morning, Trinity students had gathered 2,600 pounds of potatoes.
Food Helpers received 1,924 pounds of potatoes, and the rest of the potatoes were distributed to Trinity Area School District’s food pantries.
Food Helpers will disburse the potatoes through its Community Outreach program, which serves about 1,600 households a month.
“This is amazing. This is exactly what the Food Bank stands for, the community coming together and working to feed our neighbors,” said Cherise Sandrock, Chief Development and Programs Officer for Food Helpers. “It’s wonderful. We cannot possibly do the work we do without amazing partners like this.”
Trinity High School technology education teacher Cally Fleming brought one of the school’s drones to the site, where she and some of the students recorded footage of the harvest.
Students will create a video commercial from the footage, which will be linked to Trinity Area School District, Range Resources and Food Helpers websites.
The project began in the spring, when Snoke “rototillered the daylights” out of the five acres the school district used to grow the potatoes. The district planted 2,000 pounds of seed potatoes, and in recent days, Snoke plowed up the potatoes using his Massey Ferguson 165 Diesel tractor.
The students enjoyed roaming the field, carefully avoiding the English thistles to unearth the spuds.
“This is actually fun. It’s really soothing and enjoyable,” said high school student Caitlin McCullough.
Range Resources Community Relations Specialist Christina Kramer and Range employees also pitched in, plucking and bagging potatoes.
Kramer said the project is a productive way to use land owned by Range but not currently being used.
“We are super excited about this unique project that we’ve developed in partnership with Trinity School District,” said Kramer. “We are always looking for creative ways to give back and create mutually beneficial activities and partnerships, and we were so happy when (Snoke) agreed that this would be a great project for the school. And it makes it even more special because the potatoes are going straight to Food Helpers, so it’s benefiting not only Trinity and Range Resources, but the greater community.”