The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

A movement is underway to establish and enhance locally grown vegetables and other foods for the Northern Choteau County area. I spoke with Bob Quinn, who explained the concept and timeline to me. “This is an idea that Thomas and Heather Dilworth came up with. They asked if I could help them with designing and maybe helping find somebody that could run a greenhouse (a large hoop house) to raise as much local food as possible for the town… They were looking at getting a grant and building it and all that sort of stuff. I said, “I love that. It’s a great idea. Why don’t we start with what we already know we can do and some people are already doing it, like Charlie Overbay and the Faltree guys down in Loma. We could start with some vegetables people are growing and selling. The idea is having a food production program from Northern Choteau county. That’s just about a thousand people. So, Big Sandy and our county commissioner district…”

Locals who sell food were excited about the idea when Bob began polling local business to establish interest: “I have been interviewing everybody in town who sells food or prepares food, even clubs like Rotary, the Senior Center, the hospital, The Mint, Peps, The Grocery Store, the Bakery. Everybody that has food and serves people. I’ll tell you what, there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t interested. Everyone was enthused. The level of enthusiasm leveled greatly, but they were still all positive. I didn’t have anyone who was discouraging saying: that is a dumb idea.”

In particular, the medical center expressed significant enthusiasm over the concept. Bob explained that they saw it as a piece of the larger healthy living initiative they are launching in our community.

The plan is to start with basic produce and expand over the coming years: “Now that I have a list of basics, like potatoes, onions, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, basic things that people would use. We’re not going to start with everything. We’re just going to start with basic stuff. Next, we’ll go to the growers. I have an estimate as to what we will use month by month, and in the beginning we are just going to do fresh. We know we can store potatoes for a year if we had a root cellar, but we’re not going to start with that. We’re going to start with fresh fruit for the first couple of months and just build on that. The idea is that with the growers they’ll see what they think they can do, what prices they can do it for. We want to end up with prices as close to what people are paying now as possible. Although, for the school there are programs, Covid money, and there might be some other money to supplement the local produce so we can still be fairly close to what people are used to paying and still get local. That’s the beginning. That is year one. When that is successful, we’ll expand it. The second and third year, we’ll look at the high tunnels and expanding our growing season with tomatoes or cucumbers or something like that and lettuce and greens over a longer period of time.”

At this point, they are only talking to two local growers, but the hope is to expand to include any local farmers and food producers who want to try it out. “There are only two we are talking to, but they certainly will not probably supply the whole town for a whole year. We would welcome others. The Yirsas are one family that are already doing honey and stuff like that. If they’re already doing something, we want to include them. Everybody would be welcome that wanted to try something and do something. We want to see agriculture diversified as much as possible and for local food to produce as much as possible.” The long term vision involves building a greenhouse, but planning for that stage is still in the future.

Bob got visibly excited discussing the plan and explaining the various advantages to expanding the local food resources. First, he pointed out that expanded food security means that locals aren’t dependent on truckers in southern California to transport goods to our area. This example is particularly poignant in a time when supply chain issues are resulting in empty shelves across the nation. Second, he explained that establishing local produce resources ensures that money stays in our community longer. This defies the extractive nature of modern agribusiness, protecting small farming operations and towns. Finally, he emphasized the improved nutrition and freshness associated with local foods. Eating vegetables that were picked the same day is a significantly better choice over chemically treated produce that has to be trucked in from South America. These three major advantages are more than enough reason to support the larger movement through our buying choices. Locally produced food has the potential to be a boon for our town and local growers.