Folks in Bowdon are doing all they can to keep their grocery shelves from going bare.

They're trying to raise money to buy the grocery and run it as a community cooperative, rather than see it close and people in town have to travel elsewhere to buy food.

Bowdon, population 139, is on Highway 200 in Wells County.

Meetings to raise equity will be held at 8 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. Thursday - that's morning, for busy farmers - at the Bowdon Community Center.

Laurel Jones of Bowdon said an interim cooperative board wants to raise $62,500 at $50 a share to purchase the store, an adjoining locker plant and the inventory.

The co-op took over the store operation last month on a lease arrangement from owner Ruth Reberg. Her husband, Tim Reberg, died unexpectedly this spring, leaving her with young children and the store and meat processing locker plant to run.

Jones said the interim co-op board intends to buy, rather than lease, the grocery and locker from Reberg and then make the co-op a formal enterprise.

She said the equity drive will run through the end of the month. For now, the co-op is selling locally grown and frozen bison and beef that's processed at an inspected facility, and Jones said the co-op plans to hold a second equity drive early next year and use that money to upgrade the Bowdon locker so meat processed there can be sold both wholesale and retail.

In the meantime, the locker plant will be open for fall deer processing, she said.

Anyone with questions can call Jones at 341-0400.