Bowdon, ND

               Entertained by 2/3 of the always wonderful but now disbanded Pea Pickers band, filled with a large variety of potluck dishes reflecting the use of local foods, and superbly informed about the local economy by Lance Brower, NDSU Extension Agent for Stutsman County, residents of the Bowdon area enjoyed the Bowdon Development Center, Inc. (BDCI) Annual Meeting held Monday evening in the Bowdon City Park.

Board secretary Freida Tebelius reported that BDCI has a record number of memberships, spurred by the quarterly issuance of a local newspaper, The Bowdon Guardian. Along with many new members, elections also brought new faces to the board. Two three-year terms were filled by newcomers Pam Stewart and Ellis La Porte, Jr. Vivian Miller was elected to fill the remaining one year term vacated by Mike Weihemuller, while Wayne Fuhrman was reelected to another three year term. Outgoing members LeAnn Hart and Linda Schander were praised for their hard work and outstanding service to the community. The board will be very busy in the coming year with expanding Bowdon’s economic base and serving as the umbrella for grants applications and other programs.

President Patti Patrie outlined the past year’s activities, many of which centered on the Horizons Program sponsored by the North West Area Foundation. The last portion of Horizons consists of applying for an $8500 grant, due by the end of June. Patrie also praised the Campground Board for their ongoing efforts and reported a substantial increase in campground usage resulting in higher net revenues.

A real highlight of the evening was the PowerPoint™ presentation and talk by Lance Brower. Using a sophisticated data analysis tool called IMPLAN and data gathered from BDCI, as well as governmental and other sources, Brower illustrated how each local business impacts other businesses and the local economy. He showed the attentive crowd how the addition of one employee, or better yet, a new business would increase the community’s economic base and have an overall impact. He also explained how shopping at home has multiple benefits for the community and its residents.

 The final—and fun—activity was the passing of the Bowdon Duck and the drawing for door prizes. To the applause of the crowd, Pam Stewart passed the duck to Freida Tebelius for her participation on many boards and leadership in community activities. The lucky winner of the grand prize—one share of equity stock in the Bowdon Community Cooperative—was Lyle Hettledvedt, who now has a stake in the future of the Bowdon community! 

Today was election day in North Dakota–statewide primaries, county and municipal–and the local election judges reported a turnout of over 130 voters by 6:00 p.m. They anticipated that those people who commute for work would be in to vote before the polls close at 7:00.

Bowdon Community Center serves as a polling for an area stretching west towards Hurdsfield, so it’s not just a quick walk down the block to vote for many people. That’s why it’s so heartening to see many voters exercising their rights.

We also have to be grateful to the poll workers who are at the polls all day instructing voters on procedures and overseeing our traditional North Dakota clean-as-a-whistle elections.

Thank you, ladies!

And let’s not forget that leadership, community building, and alleviating hardship and poverty are not just in the hands of our elected officials; each of us has a role to play in our democracy and the first and foremost is to vote.

Thank you, voters!

The Tuesday, June 3^rd meeting at the Bowdon Community Center to form the Bowdon Community Cooperative (BCC) was a huge success.  Initiated by Bowdon Development Center, Incorporated (BDCI) in response to the possibility of the closing of the Bowdon Locker and Grocery, the meeting drew 90 people to hear and respond to BDCI’s proposals.

With the state of the economy and the high price of fuel to consider, the community has come together to address the very basic issue of assuring that all community members can continue to afford to feed themselves. We have many elderly and other people on fixed incomes in the Bowdon-Chaseley-Heaton area who would find traveling 35 to 70 miles round trip to purchase groceries prohibitively expensive. The need of Ruth Reberg to sell the meat plant and grocery store following the untimely death of her husband Tim has proved to be a catalyst for the community to step up to the plate to ensure that Bowdon Locker and Grocery remains open to serve the community. 

Patti Patrie, president of BDCI, and Wayne Fuhrman, board member, presented the crowd with the steps the board has taken and the progress made since the impending closing came to light. So far, BDCI has assisted Ruth Reberg, the current owner, with marketing the business. In addition, the board has consulted Don Frye of Otter Tail and Pat Downs of NDAREC about possible ownership models and possible outside funding sources to help with the purchase and renovations of the business.  BDCI has also retained the services of Jim Lees of SBDC to formulate a business plan and attorney Steve Noack to guide BDCI through the legal steps to forming a coop. Finally, Patti, Wayne, Arlene Furhman, and Laurel Jones toured three communities—Tuttle, Wimbledon, and Binford—who have community owned grocery stores to research what works and what doesn’t work.

Pat Downs then presented the crowd with information about coops in general and how the BCC would work. People had many insightful and probing questions, and it was clear to all that this is a very important process for the community. Don Frye and Pat were extremely helpful in clarifying the issues. It was heartening to hear that other communities hold the opinion that Bowdon has what it takes to make this happen. Pam Stewart reported that people in Harvey are saying, “If it can be done, Bowdon can do it.” Other people from other communities have echoed that sentiment.

Following the clarification of some points and more discussion, over 45 households/individuals signed up on the spot to become cooperative members, with the rest of the people taking their membership applications home to their checkbooks to send back in the mail. In addition, Wayne Fuhrman, Gary Heintz, Allen Hoff, Pam Hoff, Laurel Jones, Cory Kunz, Bob Martin, Patti Patrie and Vinnie Stoen signed on as the steering committee/interim board of the coop to see the process through the next three to six months until coop board elections. They will be coordinating the equity drive that will come soon. They will be assisted by Pat Downs and Don Frye.

 Membership in the BCC is $10.00 per household or individual. Each family may join as a unit for $10.00, or if any person in the family over the age of 18 wishes to hold an individual vote in the coop, he/she may join separately. Membership applications are at the Bowdon Locker and Grocery, the Bowdon Café, First International Bank and Trust, and Bank Forward. If you’re out of town, you may also call Laurel Jones at 701-341-0400 to have an application mailed to you.

What a kick! I was wandering around the house this morning getting ready for church and I started thinking about our situation with the grocery store and locker. I thought to myself, “You know, if people need to invest as a community to keep our store going, would that be so bad?” I calculated that if I had to drive to Fessenden, Carrington, or Harvey once a week to buy groceries, it would cost between $5.00 to $10.00 a trip, and that’s at today’s prices for gas. At that rate, including the 00ps-I-forgot trips, I’d get back a $1,000.00 investment in two years just in fuel savings.

Then, lo and behold, I opened today’s Bismarck Tribune and read an article that was reprinted from the Grant County News. It confirmed in a very vivid and factual way what many of us have been saying all along:  shopping at home makes sense. There is very little price difference in town and out of town, and the cost of fuel negates any savings. In fact, it makes out-of-town groceries prohibitively expensive. If we want to make sure that people on fixed or limited incomes–and I’m one of the fixed–can afford to feed themselves with healthy and nutritious foods, we must work to keep our local grocery store and locker plant open and thriving. 

Be sure to attend the 7:30 p.m. June 3rd meeting at the Community Center to see how you can be involved.

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.

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. 

This past week or so I have had several medical tests that I know will all end up being paid by my deductible. I had put off one test for 5 years because I didn’t feel I had money to pay for it. I say all this because it is not fair that I can have the tests and someone else won’t because they don’t have insurance or money to pay for the tests. Part of the Bowdon Horizons plan is to try and find health insurance for small business owners–those who fall between medicaid and medicare. I’m hoping we can rally the troops and work for univeral health care–a North Dakota plan for all–with preventive medicine incentives and early testing. There are Presidential candidates who support this idea. I believe there is a ND governor candidate who believes the same and District 14 may have a few legislative candidates as well. Lobbying and working for law changes is a way to deal with the poverty of medical availability for all. The US should not be “twenty something” in the world’s advanced nations to offer health care to its citizens. We all feel helpless to make an impact on such a huge issue. Let’s start talking about it and voting for candidates who want to make the changes in this country where all people are treated equally. We can start by providing health care to everyone.

As a direct result of a Horizons Program based initiative–publication of the Bowdon Guardian–BDCI is the recipient of 200 sturdy, new folding chairs for the Bowdon Auditorium. After receiving the first issue of the newspaper, a generous former Bowdonite gave a challenge grant that was matched by other local groups and people for the purchase of chairs. This means that there will be no more moving of chairs to and from the Community Center or borrowing them from the local churches for large occasions. How nice and convenient for our next All School Reunion!

Thank You!