Original site in English

LaLonde Ranch

Farm Connect Montana recently acquired the historic LaLonde Homestead through a partnership lease agreement with Missoula County. We will have office space in the original homestead, a barn for a Farmer Tool Library, a small orchard site, and approximately two acres of tillable land for demonstration and training purposes as a working farm incubator and hands-on training center.

Missoula County will develop an additional five acres as an historic agriculture walking self-guided tour park. Farm Connect will partner with the County to provide historic information about the site as a place for food gathering and growing, both before and after white settler use. Community planning determined a partnership with a nonprofit such as Farm Connect would enhance the property, highlight the region’s Native American food gathering, and farm and ranch heritage, and help promote a vision of a sustainable and just food and farm community within Missoula.

The homestead is believed to be one of the first homesteads in the Missoula Valley, with a small cabin that was constructed in the late 1870s. The property is owned by Missoula County, and they have already renovated the homestead to modernize it while keeping the historic character intact. The original homesteader built the cabin while proofing his cattle operation.

Upon getting married, he then built the two-story brick house, and ranched up to 1800 acres. There is a historic orchard remnant that still produces a bounty of fruit each year, even though there has been little care of the property since the County acquired the land in 1991.

The LaLonde Historic Homestead Project builds long-term community food security by cultivating new farm businesses that are economically viable, generate social and community support, and promote ecologically sound land management.