Left to right in the photo above are Becky Day, Houlton Rotarian with her guest speaker Dale Flewelling and Jane Torres, president of Houston Rotary Club. The meeting on Monday, July 6, 2015 was the first of the month and July birthdays were acknowledged and dollars collected. Guests were Karen and Walter Thompson, spending time at their camp on Drews Lake and currently living in Tennessee and also, from Sarasota, Florida, Frank Gouch. A more local guest was Frank Thompson’s grandson Caleb.

The Board of Directors will meet on Thursday, July 9th at noon at TDBank. Jane read a letter from Dollars for Scholars in which they acknowledged the students supported by the Rotary donation and their gratitude for Rotary’s contribution.

Dale’s talk centered on his organization “Friends of Aroostook”. He spoke of being a former Rotarian and that he might return. He addressed the concept of credibility and the long standing existence of his non-profit, Friends of Aroostook which provides fresh produce and other foods to the hungry people in Maine. When in 2007 the Power of Life Center opened its doors it became evident that better communication was needed when food was available. With Dale’s passion to help the outer man and his wife Lois’s passion to help the inner man Friends of Aroostook was founded. No other model was available so they created their own. Dale farms the Holland Taylor farm on the Ludlow Road to produce food for the hungry. He is able to use inmates who volunteer as farm hands thanks to efforts made by Darrell Crandall to organize this program from the jail to the farm. Dale has 60 tillable acres to manage. He does not like redundancy so he also has a farm to food panty program which serves 17 pantries  in Aroostook County alone and 5 food pantries in Washington County. There was no infrastructure to do what they are doing. He will be a state wide provider and probably the largest in Maine.

Also, Nature Trails are a passion for Dale. With funds from the Quinby Family he has hired Brian Stewart of Stewart Engineering to design a trail system on the Ivey farm which is 160 acres along the B Stream, now called the Captain Ambrose Bear Stream. The trail will be about 4 and 1/2 miles and will require hiking boots. Dale wants to create an open environment for people to use any time of day and for wildlife to live on unmolested. He would love to have a structure 16 feet by 21 feet on the property and would love Rotary’s assistance with this building. It would be a duo purpose building with an office and a center for information. He needs volunteers for trail work. His goal is to make the smallest footprint possible in this Nature Trail.