The Luxury of the Grocery Store...

It’s hard to recognize how much we take grocery stores for granted. Even growing up on my ‘isolated’ farm five miles from the nearest store, I was always within easy driving distance of whatever food I needed or craved.

Serving in Forsyth and working to bring the Hysham community a grocery store introduced me to the challenges of living in a food desert. Food can’t be spontaneous when it must be purchased thirty miles away which is a major obstacle to consistently eating fresh, healthy food. 

Even though I spent a great deal of time learning about the challenges that food desert communities face, it’s an issue which is hard to grasp unless you’re living with it. Although Lame Deer has a grocery store stocked with essentials, it doesn't have much in the way of quality fresh produce. If I were to do all of my shopping in Lame Deer, I would face real challenges preparing meals from fresh food that I wanted to eat. Like much of eastern Montana, it is very hard for grocery stores to procure fresh produce because of their small scale and the high transportation costs. As such, my weekends now tend to include a round trip of 40-200 miles to buy food for the coming week (40 miles for the basics, 200 if I’m craving kale or to treat myself to a white chocolate mocha and pastry).

The nearest grocery store outside of Lame Deer is in Colstrip, 22 miles away. Forsyth’s grocery store is 60 miles. Wal-Mart is 100 miles east in Miles City, and the Good Earth Market in Billings is 100 miles west. With gas costing about 20 cents more here on the Reservation than the rest of the region, there are high costs to accessing fresh produce. These can only be averted by bringing good quality food into town or producing our own. There are serious challenges to each, but it is going to take a combination of both to produce real change in how food is treated here. 

Businesses won’t stock a product unless they are confident that consumers will buy it. There are few people here willing or able to pay the high price it takes to ship fresh food here. I’ve had suggestions to bring in programs like Bountiful Baskets, which offers weekly or bi-monthly produce and is touted as a pseudo-CSA, although the food is not necessarily local, organic, in season, or purchased directly from the farmer. However, the main challenge to any of these suggestions is that this community is not ready to change their purchasing habits. How do they know that there are any advantages to buying fresh food, that it can fit into their budget or that their families will eat it? This is why education comes first. 

This week the Boys & Girls Club built a garden out of shipping pallets, and we already have over 30 strawberry plants coming to life. Along the fence line, the garden is easily visible to pedestrians and passing drivers. A brightly-painted sign will make it even more visible, along with sunflowers and other flowers. The opportunity for club members to eat fresh-off-the-vine cherry tomatoes or peas or strawberries will hopefully spread the word that fresh food is well worth the effort it takes.

Success in Rosebud!

Sometimes I’m not convinced that I’ve had any influence on the communities I’ve been working in. Tangible results have been few and far between, so I’ve tried to take on faith that the relationships and ideas I’m building are just as meaningful. The many obstacles I’ve dealt with haven’t always left me convinced. This Friday, however, marked my last day of teaching and acting as ‘Compost Lady’ at Rosebud School, and showed me how much of a difference I’ve actually made.

To celebrate our final lesson, I wrote a song on my guitar to review some of the lessons we’ve done this spring, and asked students to help me fill in the blanks, which they joyously did.

“We’ve been going to school for a long time so

I’m about ready for summer to let us go

But before we run out of here for break

Let’s take a minute to review what we ate

We saved leftover food to make into compost

Pieces of fruit, veggies and scraps of cold toast

It goes in a garden, for plants to grow strong

The one thing we don’t compost is meat ‘cause that’s wrong

We like to eat parts of plants and we share it

Broccoli’s a flower and a root is a carrot

We tried a new food; it was green and called kale

We ate it up raw, and cooked in a pail

So now we know how to eat healthy food at school

We know that eating this way is cool

Eat your veggies to grow up smart/strong

And food will be fun even after I’m gone!”

I watched one of my kindergarteners hold back tears as I explained that with the school year almost over, it’s time for me to move on to a new job and for them to take over composting and teaching each other about healthy eating. She took a deep breath, and reached for another piece of kale. They gobbled down all of the raw kale I brought, which has become an overwhelming favorite. Then they grudgingly moved on to the kale chips. I was chastised at full volume by a kindergartener when I said to throw any scraps in the garbage, who shrieked, “No! They go in the compost!” One student told me about how she got her own garden plot this year and that she intends to grow kale. Another actually got kale seeds in her Easter basket. Three weeks ago none of these students had ever eaten kale, and now it has become a school-wide phenomenon!

When I went out to fetch the compost bin from the greenhouse, I was shocked to see four beautiful raised garden beds laid out on our garden site. I’ve been working to get this garden built for months, and hadn’t expected it to ever happen. In the greenhouse, pepper sprouts peeked out of their pots, and everything was ready for tomato planting that afternoon. During composting at lunch, I was deluged by new helpers supervising their peers as they disposed of lunch trays. Older students were overwhelmed as first and second graders harassed them like a flock of crows when they dropped food scraps in the wrong bin. Their enthusiasm left me feeling like this project may very well continue into the next school year.

I worked in Rosebud for nearly 8 months, and in that time I struggled to tell if I was making a difference. On this final day, I realized that in less than a year the entire student body learned how to compost, the elementary kids became kale-eating fiends, and started a school garden. What a huge, unexpected success!

I’m suddenly vastly more confident of what awaits me in Lame Deer. We’re well on the way to getting a garden built, and I’ve already concocted a myriad of schemes for making healthy food accessible here. This will certainly be a challenging and frustrating experience, but I’m boosted by the knowledge that a healthy food movement can actually emerge in eastern Montana.

Deep Water

I thought moving to Forsyth was hard, but that was just the shallow end of the kiddie pool. Now I’m treading water over the Mariana Trench.

This week I moved to Lame Deer. Lame Deer is a town of 2,000 people located about sixty miles south of Forsyth on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. I will be working with the Boys & Girls Club to start a garden, develop healthy snacks and meals and offer nutrition education. Though the work itself should be fun, I am completely overwhelmed by the transition to living on the reservation in the midst of a foreign culture.

My new home is a trailer owned by the Boys & Girls Club, where I have yet to enjoy the amenities of running water or a working furnace. There is no internet and no cell reception, which enforces such isolation that I am not confident I can handle it. To make a phone call I walk or drive to the Boys & Girls Club parking lot. There is a level of poverty here I don’t even associate with the United States. It looks like rural Mexico to me, with stray dogs roaming the streets and houses held together with tarps and duct tape.

Obesity and diet-related disease rates are astronomical in this community. I’ve been told to not even bother with the grocery store here if I want to eat “fresh” produce, which means I will be driving twenty miles to Colstrip to do my shopping (remember, “fresh” in this region is a relative term.) Drinking several sodas a day alongside multiple servings of processed food is the norm, as is dealing with diabetes. Although there is a desperate need for change, I’m not at all sure that this is something that I can do. The limited time I've already spent here has required all of my willpower to not jump in the car and drive straight home.

This upcoming week, I’ll see if I can find a place for myself in this new community, and pray that the next 105 days are easier.