Big Sandy's own Farmerlicious, Inc. received a $75,000 planning grant from the Department of Agriculture to launch a line of organic lentil snacks. The new snack will be manufactured by the Big Sandy Organics and be will be in stores locally by April 15th. The plan is currently to release in the River Market in Fort Benton and the Grocery Store in Big Sandy. Donna Cook, who came up with the snack idea, explained the lentil snack business: "I am always looking for a heart healthy snack, due to there's a lot of people in my family with heart issues. And lentils are great. My husband has had heart issues and myself."

Their product development has taken place over the past two years, and with the awarding of the grant, they are able to begin the marketing, packaging, and a launch to retailers. "The name of our snack is not Farmerlicious. It's 'Le-Love.' It's 'LE' with a heart behind it. Right now, we have our packaging, we just need to get our nutrition panels done and hopefully, that will be done in the next couple weeks." After experimenting with different ways to cook lentils and testing the product with a small sample of potential consumers, they selected their flavor options "Our three flavors will be signature blend, then sea salt and black garlic, and a smokey barbecue."

Farmerlicious is currently preparing to launch a website to facilitate online sales: "We are setting up a website, that is not up and going yet. We are working with a marketing company. They're helping with the branding and everything, which is the purpose of the planning grant, so we could do marketing and see where it would fit to market." LeLoveSnacks.com will be online in the middle April, in time for their first appearances in local grocery stores.

The transition from selling specialty grains to snack foods came about as a necessity resulting from the difficulties their farm faced over the last couple of years. "We've been certified organic since around 2014. We've grown different crops from lentils and chickpeas for a time to purple prairie barley. We've grown Ethiopian barley for some other companies. Kamut, winter wheat and spring wheat. We've grown a lot of crops organically. When 2020 hit and all the Covid restrictions, we lost a lot of our markets, due to shut downs because most of our crop goes to food. Directly to food source. So when the restaurants aren't running, we have no place to sell. I was trying to find an alternate market, and I filed for this value added producer grant to do a lentil snack... "

"I'm friends with Thomas and Heather Dilworth that have Big Sandy Organics. Actually, Thomas is the one who helped me write the grant. They'll be manufacturing the snack for me."

"This was a value added producer grant through department of agriculture," Donna explained "There are two different kinds of grants. This was a planning grant to get us started. It helps with marketing and testing and all of that. Because there are a plethora of things we have to do. I did not have Farmerlicious as a brand. I had not branded it. We just used it for our organic farm in the past. We had not branded it. To do a snack food was outside the comfort zone. But Mammoth Marketing has been great with helping us build our brand. They are a Montana based marketing firm out of Bozeman. So they're from Montana, and they understand our values and what we were looking at."

The Cooks are hopeful that their business will grow and be a source of new economic stimulation to the community. "I am hoping that it can help Big Sandy Organics to provide more jobs and create more stability. The job market in Big Sandy is not a large market unless you are a farmer or rancher. My hope is that the ones who want to stay around Big Sandy and live in the community, that we will be able to provide jobs and a means to be able to stay here and not have to move to a larger community."

When I asked if Le-Love would have happened without the lockdowns, Donna responded: "I want to say probably not, because we had been marketing our lentils to a