Melstone and Musselshell, MT

Community quilters displayed their handiwork as well as treasured heritage quilts at the Community Center during the Melstone Centennial Celebration on June 21, 2008. An old brass bed and other props served as a showcase for the beautiful quilts. Volunteer coordinators were on hand to describe the patterns and history of the pieces. The quilting show was one of many popular activities during the day. The Community Center is the location for our new Youth Center, city offices, the new Melstone Area Chamber office, weekly senior dinners, and other activities. It got a facelift in November 2007 when the Renovation Committee undertook the huge job of painting the interior.

We are pleased to announce that Along with Melstone public school we will be developing a super fantastic program for our local kids. These grant is $50,000 for 5 years that is a huge amount coming into our little town. Many parnerships are being developed to make this work. From OPI, our school, chamber, local gardeners and citizens, FFA, BPA and the list goes on. Watch for more news on this as things progress.

Melstone Area Chamber is pleased to announce they will be receiving a VISTA worker. Her name is Abbey Brewer and is the youngest daughter of Dan Brewer .Abbey recently graduated New Mexico State and is excited to be back in Montana. Abbey will be working in the community in the arena of community development and is available to all local organizations to assist in developing their programs. We will be hosting a open house to introduce Abbey to the community during the Melstone Mania in August. Abbey will be sworn in July 15th in Helena and then will be to Melstone to get to work.

Kim Walker and her committee have been very busy keeping the community busy. Starting with a very successful membership drive dinner. The next huge undertaking was the centennial celebration held June 21st with much success.

Fun was held by all the day.The day started with a softball game, kids carnival, quilt show and train display.Fallowed by a  historical program with door prizes just as they did at Melstone Market days in 1927. As written about in the Melstone Messenger. There then was a fantastic parade. Much effort was put in by the parade entries. Dinner  was the Fireman’s BBQ ending with a dance sponcered by both the Firemen and the Chamber with music by Bent Willow. Silent and live auctions were held along with a wonderful bake sale by the EMTs. Pictures and more stories will be posted on the web site. melstonechamber.com

THE BIG GIVE in the LITTLE TOWN THAT COULD

We’re known as the Little Town That Could. Melstone, Mt established 1908 

Our ball started rolling in 2006 when our Boys bb team took the state Championship with a team of 12 boys with 6 of  whom were freshman. With only 19 kids in the High School, Melstone became the smallest school to ever take a state championship. The pride in our community was contagious. We knew we had something and that we could use it to improve our community. We started by holding the first annual Melstone Mania. It was a community celebration with a petting zoo and games for the kids, horse drawn wagon rides, community garage sale, splash bash dinner, ending with a karaoke dance. This was a success and lots of fun. Although we wanted it to be something to bring outsiders in,it ended up being mostly locals. However we held it again last year and will do it again this year hoping to expand and bring in people to share in the fun of small town life.

Since that first year we have been working on leadership training, learning to recognize   our assets and how to use them to display our community strengths. We have started The Melstone area Chamber with several sub-committees. Our youth committee has been very active in getting a youth center up and running with much success.  

We have worked very hard at figuring out how can we bring in jobs for those already living here and how can we bring our youth back to the community. By looking within we feel that we have many talents in the area and it would be to our best interest to capitalize on these, By encouraging residents to market what they know.  By Implementing a Business Incubator, providing the administrative and technical support we can get several home based businesses get up and running. We are already working with our school’s FFA program to develop a steer manure packaging plant. This is a business they are   researching and putting together to get it up and running and then sell it to someone within the community to run. They then will take those profits and work on another business to the same with. These kids just competed at the State Marketing contest this last Friday with this plan and won First place and will be competing Nationally in Oct at the National FFA Convention. We feel our youth are our eyes to the future and by them having a say in what the community represents they are more apt to come back after college .

 We have brain stormed with several individuals and have lots of good ideas and just need something to pull it all together. By having this Business Incubator operating we can be of the assistance to making everyone a success .

By being part of the Billings Big Give the money raised would give us the opportunity to implement this Business Incubator. This would make such a difference in our community.

The Big Give in Melstone,MT

By receiving this opportunity to be part of the BIG GIVE we will take the $1,000 seed money and invest it in promoting a Live and Silent Auction featuring donated big ticket items  along with local items and helping hand services. We hope to acquire a celebrity auctioneer.

 We will also have a Wild game meat cook off. This will be open to anyone wishing to showcase their cooking abilities using wild meat. There will charge to be in the cook off and we will charge spectators a nominal fee to sample food items.  We intend to contact returning hunters to participate with either donations or cooking in the cook off. We will also be contacting an area chef to be featured.

A Coyote Derby is also in the works. There will be fee to enter both as individuals and as teams. Prizes will be awarded in several categories.

 We are known for our extensive hunting opportunities in the area and by doing these feature events we can high light our community.

Week One will be spent letting the community know what is going on and how they can help in being part of the BIG GIVE. We would challenge them all to raise as much cash as they could individually. We will offer some prize for the most cash raised.  We will ask everyone to contact any hunters they know to participate in any way that they can. 

Week Two would be spent gathering donated items for the auction. These items could include a stay at a Guest Ranch, a Cattle Drive Vacation, a Elk Hunt, a Handmade Quilt,

Local Artist Painting, Branding help, Night watch during Lambing, Babysitting, ect…

We will be collecting prizes from both in and out of the area.

Again we will offer a prize for the most auction items collected.

Week Three will be spent gathering participants for both the cook off and coyote derby. Again the person with the most participants registered will receive a prize for their efforts.

Week Four will be spent collecting and putting it all together for the Big Event.

Friday April 11^th registration for the Coyote Derby will be at 6pm with the hunt going until Saturday at 3pm. Categories are still to be determined.

Saturday April 12^th Cook off will begin in the morning with tasting starting at 3 pm

Judging will be by extension homemakers and people’s choice.

Silent Auction will be open at 3 pm with live auction starting at 6pm

We will feature this contest on our web site, registration forms will be on the site also.

We hope by doing these types of events we will both raise a lot of money and recognition for our community.

Melstone is very fortunate to have a public pool. Blessings always come  after the storm. Following the hail storm last June 19 th the liner of the pool was severely damaged but with insurance money a new one will replace the old one. However with the rain of this spring we are still waiting to have it installed. Friends of the pool are still working hard to fund raise for this years operations. They are holding their Monday night dinners on the first and third Mondays at the cafe. Chamber will also be holding their farmer’s market on these evenings. We understand it’s to early for produce but this venue is open to anyone wanting to sell anything homemade. Please contact Beth Spears if you have any questions on this matter. Sylvia Metzger can answer any questions on the pool.

Melstone Chamber and Melstone Public Schools are partnering to bring computer/business classes to community members interested in furthering their knowledge in computer skills and business pratices. Classes will be taught by business professionals in word processing and desk top publishing, quickbooks acoounting programs, web design, along with basic computer skills. Classes will start the late summer. For more information contact the chamber office or check the Melstone area Chamber office web site Melstonechamber.com

Our journey to becoming The Little Town That Could   began in 2006 with our High School becoming the smallest school to ever become the Class C Basketball Champs. The frenzy was contagious we knew we had a spirit that had to be capitalized on.

We decided to hold a celebration to share our small town way of life. The first Melstone Mania was held in August of 2006.  This was a town event that included the annual Splash Bash, Wagon Rides, Garage Sale, Petting Zoo and Kids games finishing up with a Karaoke Dance. With much success we celebrated.

Not knowing what to do next we just waited to see what would happen. We were contacted about the Horizon project and sent 8 people to Billings to a facilitator training. We then started the Horizons process which has turned out to be very beneficial. We started with a community dinner attended by 56 with 48 signing up for the study circles.

A Study Circle is a small group of residents talking about what the strengths of the community are and how we use those strengths to alleviate poverty. After meeting 6

Times we held a community dinner to see what each group came up with. We had 4 study circles 8 facilitators and 36 members.  We identified 5 major area that we needed to address 1 being Beautification, 2  Melstone Area Chamber, 3 Renovation & Maintenance,  4 New Business and 5 Teen Center.

The first thing we could do was improve the aesthetics of the community we started with the first of many community pride days aka clean up days we were successful in getting several abandoned cars removed and tons of scrape metal removed. We were also able to purchase flower boxes and barrels to place around town with a community action grant provide thru Horizons. At the completion of this we had a set back with the Father’s Day Hail Storm. This but a damper on many plans and thing took a turn. We now had a new vision. We needed to help those who needed immediate help and we did what we could and are still looking to do some more. Montana Community Foundation was in the process of processing a $500 community action grant and they increased it to $2000 to let us do what we felt we could. This committee also applied for and received a $3000 grant from Musselshell Valley Community Foundation for a Beautification project. This will include a Community Garden, Farmer’s Market, Canopy over a public picnic table along with a tree program to get more trees planted around town.

 We also decided that we needed a center hub in the form of a Chamber Group to be the central group for all other small groups. This has been started and we are in the process of attaining our own 501c3 Status. We just held a membership dinner in March and now have 26 paid members. We meet monthly to take care of business and keep things moving ahead. Our next meeting is Monday April 28^th .

 The largest project that has come from this is our Teen center. It is being housed in our community center with top of the line equipment from Pool Tables to Big Screen TV everything a kid could want.  This is open at various hours that work for the kids all staff is being manned by volunteers. They even have their own concessions., Close to $20000 has been raised through donations to make this happen. The kids have responded favorably to this.

We also formed a maintaince and renovation committee to take care of our community center and to look at what we had available in the housing arena. We have painted the inside of the building and are looking into new windows and upgrading the kitchen to a

commercial grade so that it could be used by community members for food based businesses.

We also have a new business committee that is working on The Lazy JC Co-Op and into the possibility of have a Small Business Incubator and Area Grants Library. We feel by providing the administrative and technical assistance to area residents we can help them develop their own businesses to help to alleviate poverty within the area.  We hope to have this available to all people within the whole Musselshell Valley.

We have since formed A Events Committee that is currently working on the 100^th Anniversary to be held in June, they hosted the Membership dinner and will be planning the 3^rd Annual Melstone Mania.

After identifying and implementing these committees we held a series of nine Leadership Plenty classes. This training was provided by Horizons, it taught effective leadership skills. We had 32 people complete this training. I feel this was excellent training and can see many differences in leadership styles.

Upon the completion of many thresholds we were eligible for a $7000 sustainability grant. With this money we were able to apply to be a VISTA site and have been approved. This person will be able to work in the Chamber Office and be a visible person in the community working on our goals. We were also able to purchase office equipment such as a Laptop computer for the office along with a printer. We also have worked with the city office to provide wireless internet into the community center to be used by all residents no charge.  We have also purchase 3 other laptops to be used by the Teen Center and are available to be used by residents.

 In October we held a visioning evening and kids carnival. This was a time to look at where we’ve been and where do we want to go. This was the time we decided we are

The Little Town that Could. We can be what ever we want to and that is a thriving community.

Since being involved in this process we have had several community members attend many different workshops and seminars on Rural Community Development. Including

The Rural Community Conference, Asset Based Community Development, Bootstrapping Montana, will be attending a Ecommerce Training in Bozeman and The Grassroots and Groundwork’s seminar in MPLS at the end of May.

I really feel the training and opportunities that the Horizons Project has provided us with is and will continue to make a difference that will have a huge impact on our community.

Tammy Brewer

Horizons Community Coordinator and Melstone Area Chamber President

We are a small rural community in south central Montana. Our community center is our only public building other than our school. This building is in dire need of some maintenance and repair. This building houses our city office, Sr Center, Youth Center and Chamber Office. As you can see by the use of this building it is used by everyone in the community. With the help of this grant we will be upgrading the kitchen so that it can be used both for community functions and for commercial use. By having a community commercial kitchen will be able to encourage local residents to develop their own food based business with the help of our local business incubator. We will also use the kitchen for SR Meals, Concessions for the Youth Center , with the addition of Dinner Theatres, Cooking and Nutrition Classes. Other things being done to this building are new windows, replacement of divider curtains, handicap accessible bathrooms, and improvements to the stage for plays. We are working with several other partners to accomplish these improvements. With your help we can affect every citizen in the community. With community pride self esteem improves. 

Melstone Beautification committee received the MVCF grant for $3000 money will be used for a picnic table canopy, town entrance park, community garden, tree program, along with planting of town planters. This is a very intense project that will be on going for some time. This is a huge boost to improving the looks of our community.