Bowdon, ND

Patti is having trouble getting onto the blog site, so she sent this to me to post. We should be able to get her back on line soon. Until then…

It’s great when a dream comes into reality.  At Marketplace for
Entrepreneurs in 2007 the ND Nature and Rural Tourism Association had Lance
Brower from Napolean share about “Geocaching”. Geocache hobbiests coming to
Bowdon would be a great thing!!  We introduced the idea during our 2007
Duckfest but the youth didn’t seem to get too excited about coming to the
session.  Then we saw in the Harvey Herald where the Fessenden 5 and 6
grades received GPS units as part of a grant .  We shared our geocache
information with their teacher, Janice Kanwischer, and she jumped at the
chance to have Lance Brower come to Fessenden and teach her class about this
fun pasttime. The result was a geocache box buried at a rural Bowdon farm.
There are all kinds of fun items in the box including Duckfest items,
freebies to be used in town, and trinkets.  The coordinates for the sight
can be found by going to www.geocaching.com.  Be sure to check out this and
another Bowdon set of coordinates when you head this way.  Six Bowdon
students in total have been involved and I’m excited for them.  They now
have become leaders in the planning for Bowdon’s future.

Be sure to check out the geocaching site at http://www.geocaching.com/

I can’t believe the month is almost over–we’ve been so busy that there has been very little time to keep up with the blogging. We’ve been working on a complete recycling program; the Beautification Task Force organized and ran Join Hands Day with over 25 volunteers; the ecumenical Vacation Bible School hosted over 25 children for a fun-filled, spiritual week; a task force is working on making sure that we keep a grocery store and locker plant in the community; and the Community Garden is growing, growing, growing!

The best part of all of this is that more people are becoming involved and new leaders are stepping forth. Anne Patrie organized the Community Garden, Vinnie Stoen is teaching us how to garden organically, Maria Weis and the Girl Scouts have become involved in community activities and are eager for more, students from Fessenden-Bowdon have gotten us into the geocaching world, and summertime resident Joyce McKee has waded in knee deep to take part in Horizons projects. What fun!

The Beautification Task Force that came out of the Bowdon Horizons Community Visioning applied for and received a $500 grant from the Sheridan-Wells Chapter of Thrivent for Join Hands Day, and what a day it was! Twenty-five hardy souls gathered together to beautify Bowdon’s Main Street with barrels of flowers, a complete relandscaping of the front of the Community Center and the planting of four memorial dogwood trees to the south of the Community Center.

We had children, students, young mothers, contractors, retired people, and the “able elderly” out digging, scraping away old soil, cleaning rocks, and planting perennials and annuals up and down the street.

Still to come is the relocation of the “Welcome to Bowdon” sign from the highway to the edge of town (a larger sign which will be easier to see from a distance will be erected by the highway); flowerboxes for the old grain wagon located between Jones’ and the Cafe (thank yous to Brian Tebelius for loaning the wagon to us); and the relighting of the school evergreen in seasonal lights.  We’re also on the lookout for more wagons, manure spreaders, or other antique farm implements to grace Main Street.

The final activity of the day was the planting of four dogwood trees in memory of Tim Reberg, Wade Unterseher, Jim Fike, and Dick Martin, who are missed greatly by the community.

It’s that time of year again when schools let out and Vacation Bible School begins.  I was fortunate to take a small helping part in our community VBS this year.  It’s been a few years since I was involved with VBS and it brought back all the fun and learning that it has to offer.  As is in many smaller communities, our population gets less & less and so the churches combine to put on the VBS.  Different denominations come together to bring to the children a program that is both fun & yet teaches them about Jesus and the word.  Hopefully leaving positive & fresh awareness that will stay with them their whole lives.

Kathy Tebelius did a wonderful job of putting the program together and leading the way with her puppeteer sidekick, Sarah.  Lots of music, storytelling, and activities that not only kept the children entertained, but was very much enjoyed by us adults also.  This year we were in the Rain Forest and the correlation between the rain making everything grow and how learning God’s word helps us to grow in our faith was easy to understand for even the smallest of children.

As part of Bowdon’s Community Vision, we’ve started a community garden. One of our goals is to provide low-cost, healthy food for our residents. What better way than to grow healthy fruits and vegetables right here in our own town? Anne Patrie took on the task of organizing site selection, plowing, compost spreading, and measuring plots. Vinnie Stoen began raising seedlings early in the spring, and in spite of the unusually cold and dry weather we’ve been having, the gardens are off to a good start. As usual, I’m a little behind everyone else, so tomorrow I plant!

We plan for the community garden to be just the start of good, local foods becoming the cornerstone of a program that keeps us healthy and attracts visitors to see where their food comes from aand how it is grown.