RONAN – At Lake Seed last Friday, rivers of potatoes were unloaded by the truckload and sent up and down a series of conveyer belts, sorted by size along the way as they bounced through rolling sieves and passed inspection by a team of workers.

The set-up was reminiscent of a giant Rube Goldberg project, but instead of lighting a match or triggering a mousetrap, this complex series of machinery extended into a dark warehouse and blanketed the summit of a 20-foot high mountain of potatoes with layer upon layer of fresh spuds, where the towering mass will be stored until next May.

At one point, a few mechanical groans and rumbles brought the system to a stop, but Dan Lake quickly identified the problem and soon produced a 9-volt battery to remedy the situation.

“$1.5 million worth of equipment, and it runs on a stupid 9-volt battery,” said Lake, as things got up and running once more.

Battery hiccup aside, everything else seemed to be running smoothly, as the area’s potato harvest got into full swing. Lake County is Montana’s second largest producer of seed potatoes – a fact that was easy to believe while staring up at the 300,000-pounds-and-counting heap of taters that had been harvested that morning, alone.

Lake Seed is a “family-owned, third generation, irrigated agricultural operation,” Lake says. He runs the 35-year-old company with the help of his brothers, David, Pat and Tim, and a dozen employees. A team of mostly local temporary workers are brought in to assist with the harvest.

“Statewide, we’re a more than $25 million industry,” Lake says of Montana’s highly productive seed potato growers, who pride themselves on supplying the famed potato farmers of Idaho and the Columbia River basin with clean, disease-free seed.

Lake Seed produces approximately 140 million pounds of potatoes annually on roughly 400 acres. Just under a tenth of the crop is kept as next year’s seed, while the remaining spuds are eventually distributed to growers throughout the Northwest.

The harvest season usually lasts for only a fortnight, but ensuring a healthy crop is a process that keeps Lake busy all year long.

“You don’t get potatoes like this because you got lucky. This is because of spot-on management,” Lake says proudly, observing this year’s strong crop.

Lake pulls out a thermometer to check the temperature of the potatoes making their way along the conveyor belt. His aim is to keep the potatoes close to a nice, cool, 55 degrees. The day’s harvest will have to stop before the potatoes get too warm, at which point they won’t store properly.

Lake is not the only busy body on the premises. Though typically tethered to a desk in the Lake Seed offices, on this day, Neal Bocksnick of Charlo is busy shuttling a truck between the fields and the processing machinery at the company storage facility. Bocksnick and four other truck drivers are frantically trying to keep pace with the voracious combine tearing across the potato fields, tailed like a dragon by a billowing cloud of dust.

Stopped only by the occasional rock, the harvester fills Bocksnick’s truck with a staggering 15 tons of potatoes in only 8-10 minutes, before another rig swoops in for a refill.

Lake also attributes some of the harvest’s success to cooperation from gardeners in the community, who have responded strongly to a public outreach campaign seeking to stop late bright from affecting local potato growers. Blight wiped out the 2010 crop, but has not been a problem in the seasons since, thanks in part to heightened awareness and improved management techniques by commercial growers and members of the public.