Local Food Flourishes in Glendive

Bruce towers over his tarragon and mint plants and ducks under the doorway of the Prairie Development Center as he lets us in to a world of ideas and shows us the realities that will make them happen. Bruce is Glendive’s food man. He has organized farming and garden aficionados to partake in a community garden in Glendive. Located in an unlikely spot beside the Albertson’s Grocery store parking lot, the gardens are a maze of rows. Organic and conventional fruits and veggies grow behind a deer proof fence, with water from an onsite well and the care and persistence of it’s 15 dedicated members. Produce from the garden is sold each Saturday morning at the market situated set before the Prairie Development Center.
The Prairie Development Center is the future home of a local foods restaurant and micro-brewery, and currently houses packaging and distribution center for ‘Prairie Home Cuisine’: a homegrown label for locally produced products such as hulled barley and chokecherry sauce sold in Missoula, Bozeman and Billings at food co-ops and health food stores.
Though Bruce towers over his garden greens, his roots in food production have helped to foster a community-based model of development which has gained support in Glendive. This small-scale local foods movement has helped to create a community of people that extend outside of the Development Center.