News from rural America.

It's grass-cutting season and with it, rural lawn mower races, Montana's drive-thru blood project is easing shortages, rural Americans spend more on food when transportation costs are tallied and a lack of good childcare is thwarting rural business owners.

TRANSCRIPT

♪♪ For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

Many American families face a meal gap, where there's more month than grocery money.

Add in transportation, and many rural families are even more stretched.

Groceries typically cost less in rural areas, so federal benefits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, should cover more at the checkout.

But Salam Bhatti, with the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center, found a modest meal costs 5 percent more outside the city.

Once you add in travel.

It's not just about the transportation to and from a grocery store, but also to and from your agency that's handling SNAP.

That not only eats up your car, gas, but it also eats up your time.

Households with low income don't have time to spare.

High child care costs in rural America create challenges for small business owners and their employees.

Ilana Newman has more.

Rural small businesses want to grow, but they struggle to hire and retain workers, in part because affordable, high-quality child care is sparse in these communities.

Sarah Rittling, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, says studies show it's part of a serious national problem.

So we have a lack of availability, and that what is theirs tends to be incredibly expensive and unaffordable.

Potential solutions include more Head Start programs and better child care tax credits.

Plus, Rittling points to one recently introduced federal bill called Expanding Child Care in Rural America.

We have to come together and come up with some solutions because it's affecting everybody.

I'm Ilana Newman.

There's a blood shortage in rural Montana, but a drive-thru program is helping.

The state's Interfacility Blood Network was started after a critical patient taken by ambulance from tiny lame deer, 2 1/2 hours to a Billings Trauma Center, nearly died from blood loss along the way.

Trauma system manager Alyssa Johnson says the ambulance passed by several hospitals with blood banks, which sparked a new idea.

What if you could just stop by a hospital, pick up blood, and keep going and keep moving forward?

It may be low-tech, but Billings doctor Gordon Rhea has seen the system at work when a hemorrhaging patient was driven 80 miles by ambulance to the city's trauma center.

Blood was handed off by Montana State troopers at the off-ramp of the highway into an ambulance.

The patient was able to get to us and survive.

Speaking of driving, check out this summer's lawnmower races.

The sport, said to have started in England 60 years ago, was quickly embraced by U.S. states from Virginia to New Mexico.

These days, there are even leagues, like the Rebels and Redneck Mower Racing Association.

Start your engines.

For the "Daily Yonder" and public news service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.

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