ULM — About $7.8 million in American Rescue Plan funds was recently secured for 30 small agriculture businesses in Montana. One of those businesses is Timeless Seeds in Ulm.
Timeless Seeds began in the 80s as one of the first organic food businesses in Montana.
CEO David Oien remembers when organic food was not as common as it now: “Over the years people have become a lot more aware of what they’re eating and how getting what they’re eating is affecting the environment, which is exactly why I think that organic food has been so popular.”
What started out in the small town of Conrad has grown into a business that Oien never could’ve imagined.
“Do you know when we first started out it was really focused on the farm at that point, but as we continue to grow we continue to learn a lot more about our market and a lot of it was outside of Montana.”
With large customers like Whole Foods and Blue Apron, Timeless Seeds has been sending out chickpeas and lentils to consumers all over the country.
This recent funding they have received is going toward upgrading their equipment in order to create the best food safety standards as possible.
Oien explained, “Being an organic business, there is a lot of restrictions and guidelines that go into it, so we really want to make sure equipment is state of the art and up-to-date with what we need.”
At the moment he is planning on purchasing two new pieces of equipment.
“The pieces of equipment that we had 35 years ago when we started, or are no longer state of the art, and with age, all machines run that risk of breaking, so if we can get a machine before it breaks that would be huge.”
