GERALDINE — Governor Greg Gianforte visited the Diamond D Bar Processing business in Geraldine on Thursday; the business was a recent recipient of a grant, and Gianforte came to congratulate the owners on the success.
Diamond D Bar Processing is a family-owned custom butcher shop operated by Jade McGriff and David Martin.
Martin is no stranger to the meat processing industry which is exactly why he saw the need and decided to do something about it: “When I was younger there were meat processing plants in a lot of other places, and now the closest one is about 75 miles away from here, which just seems so hard for our community. I’ve been around meat processing pretty much my entire life so I figured why not?”
The grant enabled them to buy an upgraded and larger freezer, an automatic vacuum-pack sealer, and a high-powered saw.
“It used to take us about six hours to hand-wrap one steer. Now we can have it done in barely any time at all,” said McGriff.
“Originally we didn’t want the grant, we were afraid it was going to be more like a hand-out, but after a few weeks we realized that it seemed like we were taking five steps forward and as soon as something would break, like a saw or a freezer, we were just going ten steps back, and we knew that without this grant we wouldn’t be able to serve the community in the way we wanted,” said McGriff.
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