VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – 200 Valley City State University first-year students and their upper class mentors harvested more than 50,000 pounds of produce on a farm northwest of Valley City on Thursday, September 28, for distribution by the Great Plains Food Bank.

Mostly squash, the 25 tons of produce also included corn, tomatoes, peppers and onions. The VCSU students picked the produce as a community service project stemming from their Learning to Live, Living to Learn course.

The squash and vegetables had been raised by Dan Faust, a retired Lutheran pastor in Valley City, on his family farm. Faust donates his harvest to the Great Plains Food Bank in Fargo, which then distributes the produce to more than 215 feeding programs run by community partners throughout North Dakota and Clay County, Minnesota.