Balloons Travel From Washington To Benson Farm South of Scobey
On January 16, 2021 Kenny Benson, who farms and ranches south of Scobey, went out to the hay yard to get feed for the cattle and saw some balloons caught on a swather. Kenny brought them into the house to show his wife, Jodi, and she thought how cool, it’s probably a school from the western part of the Montana Hi-line, so she posted the picture on Facebook and asked whomever to let them know if they knew where it may have come from.
Medicine Lake’s Tina Wivholm had her sister-in-
Continued on page 5
OVER 1,000 MILE TRIP FOR THESE BALLOONS, from Redmond Washington to the Benson farm south of Scobey. With not much to go on and after recuiting some help, Jodi Benson found out the origin of the balloons and has started quite a repoire between the pre-school class that set them free and the Scobey community. Below is the tag that was attached to the balloons. Balloons . . .
From Page One
law look into it deeper and found the teacher’s name belonging to a Cedar Crest Academy in Redmond, Washington. Jodi sent the Senior Director an email: YES, these balloons came over the mountains, traveled just under 1000 miles, and were still full of helium! This was during the time when we in the Western U.S. were experiencing the horrible 40-70 miles per hour winds! So this may explain how the balloons got here! It’s a preschool class of 10 four-year-olds, and this was their Martin Luther King Day lesson based around kindness.
So the children’s teacher, Ms. Talibah sent Jodi an email with questions that the children asked of her.
Something that has always been dear to Jodi’s heart is to be able to educate children and people in general about agriculture and where this country’s food supply comes from. Jodi felt compelled to do that with this situation, thinking it was the perfect opportunity. So she put together a packet of quart ziplock bags of some of the most popular crops grown in northeast Montana (hard red spring wheat, durum, flax, oats, barley, lentils, canola, yellow peas, green peas and alfalfa hay) along with a write-up on what each crop is grown for and how it is used for food and for feed, along with a few of the local businesses that also were so generous.
Farver Farms donated lentil snackers for each child and teachers, Pro Co-op sent flashlights, the Daniels County Museum Association sent wonderful coloring books based on agriculture, plus pencils and postcards of the Daniels County area, and little cowboy hats. Jodi also sent Montana huckleberry licorice and gummi bears for them. Duane Hons was also generous, sending a copy of his book he wrote about northeast Montana called “Snow Blind” and also a Montana barnwood plaque.
Jodi also received a request from Hometown Hardware in Scobey to send them purple shirts with the logo “the last best place” and a star on Scobey. Kim Thievin is getting those ready and is also contributing to that package that will send at a later time.
This cool s...
