KINDNESS, NO MATTER how big or small, can make such a difference to the recipient. That includes me.
Recently, two friends extended kindness to me in the way of gifts. One gave me an Undeniably Dairy cow-themed tote bag, the other a quilted runner.
These gifts came at a time when I needed uplifting during a major exterior house repair. Re-shingling and re-siding of our 100-year-old house due to hail damage should have been a straight-forward project. But then the unexpected discovery of dry rot led to a larger, much more costly, lengthy and complicated fix.
So I’ve, quite often in past weeks, felt overwhelmed, stressed and cranky.
Enter Theresa and Barb and their acts of kindness. Let’s start with the cow tote bag. While attending the recent Passport to Agriculture event at the Rice County Fairgrounds, I noticed people carrying multi-hued, mostly orange, tote bags featuring the faces of three Holsteins. I instantly wanted one.
I grew up on a dairy farm with that particular breed of cows. I loved the colorful cow bag for all the memories it brought back of living and working on my childhood family farm.
I told my friend and table-mate Theresa, while we were dining on free food provided at the ag event, that I needed a cow tote bag. Not wanted, but needed. After finishing a strawberry shake, off I went to find a coveted cow bag. But I arrived at the dairy barn too late for the freebie.
Theresa later promised she would get a Holstein tote bag for me. And she did. I found the bag hanging on my back door the other day. Busy writing in my office on the opposite side of the house, I didn’t hear Theresa knock over the noises of construction and traffic. She delivered on her promise and made me one happy former dairy farm girl.
Then there’s my friend, Barb, who one Sunday after church showed me an in-progress quilted runner. Barb is a gifted seamstress and quilter, like her three sisters. When Barb finished the toilet tank top runner I admired, she gave it to me. I love it.
I love the varied fabric prints pieced together into 10 blocks by Barb’s oldest sister, Randine, who died in 2024 and who is named after their Norwegian grandmother. The block pattern, with pieces measuring less than two inches, was Randine’s favorite. She snipped pieces from her sisters’ fabric stashes to create many a block in this particular pattern. Barb eventually crafted the runner.
The assorted small fabric scraps remind me of my paternal grandmother. Ida, too, was a prolific quilter who used even the tiniest swatches of fabric to craft quilts. So, like the cow tote bag, this quilted runner brings back happy childhood memories. My grandma would take me to her spare bedroom and show me layer after layer of quilt tops she’d sewn. She’d often have a quilting frame set up in her living room, filling the space. I remember hiding under it.
Quilts hold stories and I was delighted to learn the story behind Barb’s quilted gift to me. Hers is a story about four sisters who, after learning to sew at home and in school, stitched their own clothes and went on to become avid quilters.
As a side story, Barb sewed a Pendleton jacket for her high school sweetheart, Don, whom she went on to marry. A photo of the jacket, worn by another classmate, was published in “The Echo,” the Faribault High School student newspaper. Barb didn’t want Don to know the jacket was really made for him. Her kindness didn’t end with that. While on a school band trip to Chicago in the late 1950s, Barb let a friend wear a bright yellow with orange smocked neckline dress she’d made. Even now some 70 years later, Barb recalls how beautiful her friend looked in that yellow dress.
I share these 1950s stories because they illustrate the kindness threading through Barb’s life.
Two friends. Two gifts—a cow tote bag and a quilted runner, both given to me at a time when I needed uplifting. I’m grateful for caring friends. And I’m grateful for kindness.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
Destructive ice, the help of community & more August 27, 2026
Tags: commentary, community, construction, Faribault, hail, hail damage, hailstorm, Hispanics, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge, opinion, storm, United States of America
IN THE FOUR-PLUS MONTHS since destructive hailstones pummeled Faribault and the surrounding area, my community has been the site of ongoing exterior construction. Drive nearly anywhere in town and you will see roofing and siding crews or newly-repaired houses.
Seven hail-damaged houses within sight of mine, including ours, have been repaired, or have yet to be fixed. That’s a lot in a single neighborhood.
Business is booming for local and out-of-town roofers and other construction companies. Local contractors can’t possibly meet the immediate demand for work.
EMPATHETIC OBSERVATIONS
But blocks from my house, an underway construction project seems a community undertaking. I know because I talked with the owner. He bought the house with the intention of fixing and flipping it. Good for him if he can improve a dilapidated house and make money by selling it.
This particular renovation caught my eye because, when I passed by, I saw a house with rafters totally exposed, loose insulation inside and workers busy sheeting. Similar work was done on our house with new sheeting laid over the existing, mostly-solid roof boards. Rafters were not exposed. I appreciate that we now have a sturdier, straighter roof.
When I saw the condition of the flip house, my first thought was “that looks worse than ours (looked).” At least on the roof. I felt instant empathy for the homeowner. So, although I don’t usually stop at construction sites, I did at this one. I felt bad for the owner.
He just happens to be Hispanic. I learned from him that the Hispanic community is deeply connected. He tapped into the strength and skills of community for his house renovation. This did not totally surprise me. I’ve seen how Hispanic/Latino communities care for one another, how they work together, how they value family, culture and community.
If not for Hispanic roofing crews, hail-damaged houses in Faribault would go mostly unrepaired. These crews work hard and fast, putting in long days, often finishing roofs in a single day.
THE VALUE OF COMMUNITY
My conversation with the flip house owner got me thinking about other communities which come together to help one another on construction endeavors. In the past, and maybe even still today, the Amish raise barns in a day. Habitat for Humanity brings volunteers together to build homes alongside professionals. Decades ago, friends came over to help shingle our roof. During this past year, volunteers rehabbed a rental house owned by my church.
And in 1967, extended family arrived at my childhood family farm to help my dad and a local carpenter build our new home with a walk-out basement. If not for helpful family, I don’t think my parents could have built new. The cost would have been out of reach. We needed a new house to replace the cramped, drafty 1 1/2-story aged farmhouse with a partial dirt cellar, no bathroom, three small bedrooms, and an oil-burning stove centered in the living room.
WORSE THAN A HAILSTORM
All of this came to mind when talking with my new Hispanic acquaintance. I praised him for improving the neighborhood by buying and fixing up a run-down home. I also told him I’m sorry for the aggressive and often illegal detainment of Hispanics, Latinos and others by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Operation Metro Surge (and beyond) in Minnesota. That includes right here in my city.
A recent media report states that the 5,000th immigrant detainee (since November 2025) was recently flown out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. That’s documented by a Minnesotan with boots on the ground at the airport video-taping departures of shackled detainees.
ICE has targeted Hispanic roofers. In December 2025, ICE arrived at a construction site in Chanhassen, southwest of Minneapolis, stranding two workers on a roof for hours during sub-zero temperatures resulting in hypothermia. In Bemidji in far northern Minnesota, roofing companies lost nearly all of their crews during ICE raids this summer. Many other such detainments have happened across the state and country and are ongoing.
Soon a new ICE detention center will open in a former abandoned private prison in Appleton in far western Minnesota. CoreCivic, a name familiar to anyone who has followed ICE actions, sold the prison to the federal government and is now contracted to run the detention center.
Suddenly that April hailstorm in Faribault doesn’t seem all that bad in comparison with what’s unfolding in this country. And I’m not talking only immigration. I’m also talking about government surveillance, an unnecessary war, tariffs, efforts to suppress voting rights (especially those of Black voters and of women), high gas and food prices, a failing economy and on and on. So much damage has been done to our country that will take years, if not decades, to recover, to repair the destruction hailed upon this nation.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling