Campaign supports local food banks

Campaign supports local food banks

Greetings from the Ronan Bread Basket, your Ronan-Pablo-Charlo food bank.

It is September again and time for the annual “Be a Friend Indeed, Help a Friend in Need” campaign from Montana’s Town Pump Corporation.

The Town Pump will match all of our monetary donations from September through November up to $7,500 and we need your help to make our $7,500 goal this year. Please think of the 180 or so families that we serve each month with food and the cost of that food.

If you can help, please send a check to The Ronan Bread Basket at P.O. Box 346 in Ronan 59864 or drop it by the Bread Basket during our regular hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Every dollar helps us reach our goal and continue to provide healthy food for our neighbors.

In addition, our Bread Basket has committed to provide backpack meals for children at our local schools so they will have easy to fix food for the weekend. Currently, the backpack program has added another $15,000 to our expenses and we have to rely on our generous community to help pay for these meals.

We are so grateful to a large number of local folks who step up to help with monthly, yearly, or periodical financial help and with donations of fresh vegetables, eggs, fruit, 4-H beef and pork, and harvested game.

We are also grateful for the weekly donations from the West Shore Food Bank in Lakeside and the Polson Loaves and Fishes Food Bank.

A big Thank You goes out to Harvest Food from whom we receive countless pounds of food each week.

For those of you who hunt, we are still willing to take harvested game animals and will pay for the processing if you will let us know which packing house will process your deer, elk or bison.

We have so many “Friends Indeed” to thank in our community. Join them and help your local Food Bank serve our community.

­—Nancy Williams, Treasurer Ronan Bread Basket Board

Dayton Daze a huge success

The Chief Cliff Volunteer Fire Department and QRU would like to thank everyone who contributed prizes and goods, purchased raffle tickets, and gave of their time and energy to help make Dayton Daze another huge success! Once again, the event raised more than $16,000 —money that is earmarked for an expansion to our Lake Mary Ronan Fire Hall to help house our growing fleet of vehicles.

While our fire department receives a fixed amount of taxpayer revenue each year based on the numbers of homeowners in our Fire Service Area, that money barely covers costs of operation, maintenance, and insurance. Our community fundraising is responsible for enabling us to grow and expand our services, and update firefighting and personal protective equipment.

We sincerely appreciate all the support we have received by way of contributions and participation, and will continue to do our very best to serve our community and surrounding areas.

­—Zoe Lilja, Dayton