A trio of Potato Head toys dwells atop the office desk at Bausch Potato. Darth Tater is one of the spuds.
It seems the force was with the potato farm south of Whitehall when five sharp and savvy engineering students embraced a technical challenge identified by farm owners Mark and Denise Bausch.
Problem: Temperatures often fluctuated in the steam cooker that blanched potatoes as a step in producing food products. The Bausches hoped to find a way to regulate temperature so the heat was more consistent to provide the optimum blanching for the potatoes passing through.
Enter the five Montana Technological University students, all seniors, during the fall of 2020. Their faculty advisor was Bryce Hill, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Montana Tech.
The students needed a two-semester design project to graduate. Hill said the Bausch Potato farm challenge differed from many such senior projects because it demanded a real-world fix that would cost real-world money.
“There’s a fear factor because if it doesn’t work out, you’ve spent a lot of money,” he said.
The quintet of seniors from Montana Tech included Kaleb Bausch, a software engineering student and son of Mark and Denise. COVID-19 sank Kaleb’s engineering internship last summer. So, he stayed home on the farm. He heard his father describe several potential engineering projects for Kaleb and his classmates.
The other students were Jake Michelotti, also studying software engineering; Max Erickson, mechanical engineering; Rayce McCord, electrical engineering; and Jaime Rodriguez, electrical engineering.
As the project unfolded, Mark Bausch said he was deeply impressed both by the intelligence of the young men and by their work ethic when the time came to fine tune their high-tech intervention.
“These guys had finals coming up and spent some 12-hour days out here,” he said.
The process began in the fall. The students proposed three possible concepts and presented them and their estimated costs to Mark and Denise Bausch in December.
Once the preferred design was selected, the real work began.
A key component was a “programmable logic controller,” or PLC, which essentially is a rugged computer employed in industrial automation. According to one definition, “the PLC receives information from connected sensors or input devices, processes the data, and triggers outputs based on pre-programmed parameters.”
On May 10, McCord, now in graduate school at Montana Tech, returned to the Bausch Potato Farm to talk about the students’ work and to check on how their engineering fix was performing. He was accompanied by Hill, making his first trip to the farm in Waterloo.
The Bausch family started farming potatoes at the site in 1946 and the agricultural enterprise has been in the family since. The farm occupies about 400 acres in the scenic Jefferson River Valley. The Tobacco Root Mountains loom close by.
About 50 to 60 acres are devoted to potatoes. The farm typically harvests about 1,600 tons of spuds each fall.
Bausch Potato farm grows russet and Yukon potatoes. The farm’s value-added products include French fries, hash browns, diced potatoes and sliced potatoes. Customers include institutions like Montana State University, Montana Tech, the University of Montana and restaurants like Lydia’s, Gamers Café and Hanging Five.
Denise Bausch said the M&M Cigar Store in Butte was a good customer.
“We’re very sad,” she said.
After the October harvest, spuds are stored in cold and ventilated conditions that keep them dormant until they are gathered for food production.
On May 10, McCord and Hill were glad to hear from Mark Bausch that the students’ work has improved temperature consistency in the blancher, especially as the potatoes enter and exit the cooker.
In addition to the PLC, the students had installed temperature sensors and rotary valve controllers to help regulate the temperature of the cooking potatoes.
McCord and Hill readily acknowledged that the automation system will require some fine tuning. McCord is back in school as a graduate student and could be available for that work, Hill said.
The cost to Bausch Potatoes of automating the temperature controls for the blancher totaled about $16,000.
Hill said he was impressed by the quality of the students’ work and said their senior design project was one of the best he’s supervised during his tenure at Montana Tech.
“This would be one of the top five,” Hill said.
On a recent work day, Megan Bausch, daughter of Mark and Denise and sister of Kaleb, worked with other staff cutting up potatoes before they entered the blancher. Everybody wore a stylish white hairnet.
Megan is studying business management and accounting at the University of Montana Western. Kaleb has numerous interviews set up, his mother said.
Mark Bausch met Denise when she was working at a restaurant in the Four Corners near Bozeman and he was delivering potatoes.
He said running the family farm together is “a pretty good gig,” even when life is complicated by an occasionally sub-par harvest, by a bankrupt customer or other challenges.
Denise Bausch laughed when asked whether potatoes are a frequent menu item for family meals.
A small sign attached to an office wall reads, “A Potato A Day Keeps the Doctor Away.”