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!

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 really isn’t about politics but about what it is that makes the Horizons Program so successful in our rural areas. That said, I’m very excited about being a delegate to the ND Democratic-NPL state convention this coming weekend and hearing two of the three major presidential contenders speak.

When I lived in Maryland, I voted, of course, and read about and listened to the candidates and the issues, but I didn’t feel that I–and other “little people” like me–could be easily heard or have much influence.  Here in North Dakota, however, our voices are heard, our legislators are friends and neighbors, and we only have one or two “degrees of separation” between us and those we elect to serve us. Horizons taps into that nearness of power and gives us tools to access programs, agencies, and people who can help us make a difference and move toward thriving communities.

No matter what our political affiliation, we are gaining the skills to make ourselves heard and to influence our own destinies. What a gift!

I am pumped up!! Laurel Jones and I attended the Miner County presentation at Gackle Thursday night. We saw old friends from Leadership Plenty training, were inspired by the story of dedicated people in Miner County who are reinventing their future, and Laurel sold 16 “Believe in Bowdon” Raffle Tickets at $20 a shot. She assured the good folks in Gackle that at least one would win and good enough our friend Mary Conrad did just that in our first drawing yesterday in Bowdon.

Two things really impressed my about Miner County. 1. Their original program was youth driven. 2. They focused on the impact that 10% increased purchasing would do to their community. Someone had suggested that very idea for increased patronage to our local grocery store. Now we have proof from our friends in South Dakota that buying local has great impact!

Lance Brower, NDSU Ext. agent with an emphasis on economic development, can help Bowdon do a similar assessment. I will be taking the idea to the marketing task force soon and with their approval will anticipate some very helpful feedback through Lance’s assessment.

By the way Kurt S.– thank you for your blog and the suggestion for our grocery store. I am looking forward to the day when the Bowdon community will be celebrating the outcome of its new found loyalty to present and new business entities.

Patti Patrie was just elected president of the ND Farmers Market and Grower Association at its 4th annual conference in Carrington, ND on February 15 and 16. Patti grew up in Michigan on a fruit farm and now raises red raspberries on the Patrie grain and cattle farm southeast of Bowdon. Raspberries are sold fresh and in processed products made in the Patries’ on-farm commerical kitchen. A fruit stand was built by Clayton Patrie (Patti’s oldest son) when a Junior at the Bowdon High School. It is located on the northwest corner of Highways 52 and 200 where they intersect just 1 mile north of the Patries’ berry patch.

For several years Patti has been encouraging others in Bowdon to grow produce and sell it along with the raspberries at the fruit stand. Now people are realizing that growing a few more vegetables in their gardens may be a good way to increase the amount of local foods available for purchase in ND. Local food production and a local foods diet are two ways to build upon the new trend of eating by health conscience consumers. Customers inquire about more choices. ND people are agricultural. So its a perfect fit to match the local skills with demand.

Patti and daughter, Anne, attended the conference session on high tunnel production by Terry Nennich of Bemidgi, MN. The tunnels serve as greenhouses but have no artifical heat. Temperature is controled by rolling up and down the plastic walls of the tunnel. Tunnels serve to extend the growing season of both fruit and vegetables which make them very popular in northern climates.

The farmers market group will work to bring Terry back again to speak in more detail on the tunnels and plan a tour of tunnels in the Fergus Falls area of MN this summer. For more information on the farmers market organization and events go to www.ndfarmersmarkets.com or call Patti at 701-962-3355.

Meanwhile the local foods interest is growing in Bowdon and the Horizons team has asked Dwight Duke of Hensler to do a presentation on raising organic fruit and vegetables and marketing at Farmers’ Markets. He will be in Bowdon at the school building library on Sunday, March 30 from 1 to 4 p.m. Everyone is invited.