When is spud day in shelley idaho

This site has features that require javascript. Follow these simple instructions to enable JavaScript in your web browser. Shelley, arrived in a bare area nestled within the Snake River Valley with the intention to start a store.

A group of five businessmen and members of the Chamber of Commerce gathered together and finalized the plans for the first annual Spud Day. Some his earliest memories are winning quarters after gathering the most potatoes in the Spud-Picking Contest or his lips freezing to his trumpet mouthpiece while marching in the parade back when the celebration was in November at the end of potato harvest alongside his middle school and high school bands.

His hard work is paid off each year when he sees smiles of old friends and family coming together to party and eat potatoes. Searle said one year the Chamber of Commerce wanted to try something new by passing out potato chips instead of the baked potato. Well, that only lasted one year. Searle said the traditions and festivities represent the spirit of Shelley. With a bucket brigade, a crew of five scoop out the flakes, trucked to the park in two man-tall boxes, into the cement truck.

The scooping takes about fifteen minutes, the mixing, about five. The margarine-yellow liquid gushes down the chute, splattering on the compacted dirt at the bottom of the pit. The crowd — blond-haired children, salt-and-peppered old men, high school students, farmers, teachers, mothers and fathers — screams. To the east, lightning bolts from the clouds. The rain starts. The margarine-yellow liquid still gushes, splashing now in the pit, with lumps of mashed potatoes plopping into the guck.

The rain comes. Harder, pelting the liquid in the pit, making it appear to boil as if it were an emanation from the nether regions below this arena. The rain comes harder. Hailstones fall. The crowd flees.

Inside tents brought to the park for the selling of scrapbook supplies and cinnamon almonds, the crowd waits. The rain passes. Miss Russet does her seasoning and tasting, and the first teams come out — celebrities, from local television stations.

Not quite chivalrous, the teams place ladies first; first to go into the pit. The teams grab the rope — two-inch-thick hemp, bumpy, good for gripping, with a knot tied at each horsetail end. Channel Eight pulls Channel Three into the muck with a splash. One teammate submerges completely, arises spitting out potatoes, her clothing soaked and covered with a wake of soggy flakes.

She grabs the rope and pulls her teammates in, leaving only the smug cameraman on the shore of this sea of goo, film at six. Next up: two teams of children. Not worried about the cool weather. This is Spud Day. What is a Russet? Miss Russet, OK. King Russet, mascot of Shelley High School, fine. A russet is part of the proper name for the potato most commonly grown in Idaho, the Russet Burbank. This potato variety owes its genesis to Luther Burbank, a 19th century botanist and horticulturist who developed more than strains and varieties of plants, including a spineless cactus used for cattle feed and the plumcot, a cross between the plum and the apricot.

Family in rural Shelley, Idaho. Portrait of people in an apple orchard with harvested apples. Beth Madsen Clawson gives history of library. Pages from the past. Various citizens of Shelley, Idaho.

Shelley Library Board of Directors. A fire destroyed seven buildings on State Street. All that was saved was the Shelley Mercantile building. Grain elevators were also destroyed by fire. Shelley First Ward Chapel, N. Just and Heber Child. Shelley Stake Tabernacle, 2nd. Ward Chapel and the Relief Society. Tourist Sight Seeing Bus. Charles Lindberg and Elmer Beckstead in The Shelley Study and Culture Club. Shelley Community, Shelley Chamber of Commerce. Residents gear up for Idaho Spud Day.

Shelley Power Plant, Shelley, Idaho. History moves to Shelley. Shelley Merchantile Co. Shelley and log cabin school. Dean Goodsell and Lynn Spence Barker. John F.