The Spring Creek Kitchen is in the process of becoming a reality thanks to a 2024 Montana Department of Commerce grant for $100,000, according to Jan Tusick, executive director of Mission West Community Development Partners.

The current kitchen, located at Mission West’s Food Enterprise Center in Ronan, is small, and it’s used mainly by food trucks for prep work, Tusick said. The funding will be used to convert the east wing into one big open space and to add a side entrance. They’ll be adding more kitchen equipment, including a fryer and a mason oven.

Tusick’s “down the road vision” includes food trucks taking turns cooking for a night, with an interactive web presence so people can call in orders or eat in the space.

Funding still frozen

The shake-up in federal government funding has impacted MWCDP, Tusick said, although future ramifications are hard to assess.

“It’s definitely affected us, since a lot of things were frozen and have yet to be released,” she said.

The USDA Rural Co-op Development Program grants have been a big piece of MWCDP’s infrastructure; those grants are usually released in May and still have not arrived, she said.

But the food processing center is buzzing right now, putting previous grants dollars to work. The “cherry crew” rolled out the vintage cherry pitter, and they are three-weeks into a six-week stretch of pitting cherries for Flathead growers.

The pitted cherries are frozen in 14-pound buckets for the farmers. Some are processed an extra step and are put on trays and dehydrated.

Also the Food Enterprise Center's users have been making seasonal jams and jellies, and Orchards of the Flathead is preparing their products at the facility, utilizing the huge kettles in the existing kitchen.