Rex Calloway juggles phone calls and selling corn before heading to his seed cutting operation on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway's seed cutting operation is seen on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway shows potatoes waiting to be cut into seeds during a tour on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway shows the sizes of potatoes waiting to be cut into seeds during a tour on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. Getting the spuds cut into uniform shapes and sizes is essential to planting efficiency and crop yield. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Workers manually cut potatoes into uniform sizes after they pass through a cutting machine on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. Getting the spuds cut into uniform shapes and sizes is essential to planting efficiency and crop yield. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway chats with workers during a tour on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway chats his father Damon during seed cutting on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Potatoes cut to seed are seen on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway holds seed potatoes on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. Getting the spuds cut into uniform shapes and sizes is essential to planting efficiency and crop yield. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway chats with workers during a tour of his seed cutting operation on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway chats with workers during a tour on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. Getting the spuds cut into uniform shapes and sizes is essential to planting efficiency and crop yield. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway chats with workers during a safety meeting at his seed cutting operation on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Rex Calloway checks on a truckload of potato seeds on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Quincy, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland / The Spokesman-Review)
Potato farmer Rex Calloway gives a tour of the farm his grandfather started 70 years ago as he and his staff gear up to plant potatoes.
Rex Calloway looked west through the large windows of his 1950s-era farmhouse near Quincy and talked about the time, nearly 70 years ago, that his grandfather first arrived on this land. Back then, the Columbia Basin was dry. A rugged landscape of sagebrush and rolling hills. Rattlesnakes. Scorching summer days. Cold nights. Quincy, the nearest town, was a speck, homesteaders and dry-land farmers eking out an existence on an average of 6 to 8 inches of rain a year.