Minnesota Prairie Roots

Faribault Farmers' Market

The arrow on the battered yellow sign at the corner of Second Avenue Northwest and Sixth Street Northwest points west, directing traffic on this Saturday morning toward the Faribault Farmers’ Market in Central Park. Here vendors have unfolded the legs of card tables and banquet tables and spread the bounties of the land and of their handiwork in this temporary marketplace.

I have arrived here late this morning because I slept in. But the choices remain plentiful.

Piles of prolific pale summer squash and zucchini.  Bundles of beets. Hefty heads of purple and green cabbage. Ruby red jams and jellies. Raspberries. Slender pickled beans crammed inside glass jars. Onions, stripped of their papery skins. Baby potatoes. And more.

Amber-colored maple syrup and golden honey.

Packages of cookies and kolacky. Apple and zucchini breads. Seven layer bars.

A jumble of beaded bling splayed on a silver tray. Knit caps in vibrant hues. Woven rugs. Homemade clothespin bags swaying in the gentle breeze. Birdhouses.

They have come here, these crafters and bakers and tenders of the earth, to sell that which they’ve reaped, that which they’ve created.

(The Faribault Farmers’ Market is open seasonally from 1:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and from 7 a.m. – noon on Saturdays at Central Park. Watch for a follow-up blog featuring individual vendors.)

Cabbage

Caps

Onions

Rugs

Chocolate covered jalapenos

“Chocolet covered jalapenos” the sign attached to the side of the cooler reads. Dennis flips open the lid, pulls out a tray of chocolet covered jalapeno peppers and places them on the table before me.

“You spelled chocolate wrong,” I blurt, explaining that I am an English minor and I can’t overlook the misspelling.

“It’s French. Choc-o-LET,” emphasizes Lois, who’s stepped across the sidewalk to see what all the fuss is about at Dennis’ table.

We laugh. I don’t bother to correct Dennis on the spelling of the “Pickeled eggs” he’s selling for a quarter at the Faribault Farmers’ Market. He’s more interested in getting me to try an egg after my refusal to try a chocolet jalapeno. I love chocolate but…

Dennis dips into the wide-mouth container he stores inside another cooler and fishes out a hard-boiled egg the color of pale mustard. The pungent sting of vinegar nips at my nostrils. I’m not so sure about this, especially when an audience awaits my reaction. I cautiously bite into the cold, slippery egg.

“It’s OK.” I pause. “It’s different. How Minnesotan is that?”

Again, laughter. I ask Dennis how he came up with chocolet covered jalapenos. He saw them on a television food show.

“It’s kind of a buzz down here, what I’m doing,” Dennis says, explaining how he strives to offer unusual foods to customers. He also peddles horseradish. And this Saturday morning, he’s sold 27 loaves of apple and zucchini bread he’s baked.

As for those jalapenos, I suppose some brave souls will plunk down two bits for one of Dennis’ chocolet sensations.

I, however, prefer my chocolate without jalapenos, please. And my jalapenos without chocolet.

(Check back for more blogs about the Faribault Farmers’ Market this week. This Central Park market proved a hotbed for photos and stories.)

Once every few years, I go to a movie because that’s how often I feel one worthy of viewing on the big screen.

So on Saturday, an unseasonably cold and cloudy day here in southeastern Minnesota, I propose to my husband, Randy, that we meet our three-year movie quota. We should see The Proposal, I suggest, while our teenaged son, Caleb, attends the latest Harry Potter flick.

I check the daily newspaper ad for show times, which are within a half hour of each other. This will work.

Fast forward a few hours and we are pulling into the parking lot of the Faribo West Mall Cinema Six.

“Are you sure The Proposal is showing?” Caleb asks as we approach the theater entrance. “I didn’t see it on the sign.”

“Yes, it was in the ad,” I assure him.

We are nearly to the door. I stop. My mouth drops open in disbelief as I read: “The Proposal is no longer showing. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

“What? The one time I want to see a movie!” I am mad.

Our son laughs.

I may have heard my husband chuckle too. Or maybe he was heaving a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to sit through a “girl movie” with his wife.

We return to the car, drive across the highway and down the service road to HyVee. Randy goes inside the grocery store to purchase softener salt.

Caleb and I wait in the car. I am still stewing. I suggest bowling.

“Come on, bowling, Mom. I want to go to the Harry Potter movie.”

Thirty minutes later, when we drop our son off at the theater, he is still snickering.

Rice County Fair

Lilas struggles to get out the words, her voice raspy and fading, barely audible above the deafening roar of souped-up tractors and trucks competing in the grandstand near the old church.

She concedes momentary defeat, then continues. In this church, she was baptized and confirmed, she says, and married, 65 years ago yesterday. I can see the sadness in this aged widow’s eyes.

But she is proud of this place, this historic 1869 Holy Innocents Episcopal Church that her great grandfather helped build in Cannon City. Today the building stands on the Rice County Fairgrounds. I am here this Thursday night of the county fair listening to Lilas talk about the separated floor boards that allowed heat to rise into the sanctuary, about the stained glass window given in memory of a young girl who died. Lilas recites by rote. She’s shared these stories so many times.

This fair holds chapters of interesting stories.

Standing outside a booth brimming with bling, I overhear another.

“You don’t want my dog. You don’t want my stuff. I’m outta here,” the vendor spews into her cell phone, repeating her tragic tale to a friend.

A peace sign pendant dangles inches away from her on a silver chain. She doesn’t even notice me, oblivious to the fact that I am there with my camera snapping pictures of Bazooka bubble gum flip flops.

On the opposite side of the fairgrounds, I pause before a pink Visi-Matic washing machine in a Rice County Historical Society building. There is no one here to tell the stories this machine has washed away.

A free admission sign draws me into the Reptile and Amphibian Discovery Zoo tent. I recoil at the curled up pythons, coo at the cute leopard gecko. Rounding the corner, I spot another python rising up against the plexi-glass, tongue flicking in and out. I am a bit freaked out by the silent, slender tongue that seems to taunt, without words, without stories.

A circle of mini-trampolines, the kind I’ve seen floating in a lake, catch my attention. Attendants, dressed in safari garb, tether and secure kids in harnesses. Soon these fearless acrobats bounce high, under the watchful eyes of parents. I can only imagine the exaggerated stories retold to friends of great heights jumped.

And what, I wonder, will the young man sitting hunched in the tattoo trailer tell his son some day? Will he tell him the truth, that he got his tattoo at the fair, needles piercing ink into his skin while kids walked by stuffing tufts of cotton candy into their mouths?

Special thanks to Caleb Helbling for using his extraordinary technological skills to take my vision for this blog from paper to reality.

For years now, I’ve tried to tame my backyard hillside, an open area edged by woods, leading to a nearby park.

Trees once grew here until we cut them down, fearing that someday, during a strong storm, the precariously leaning box elders would crash on to our garage and house.

Phlox

Now, I think, the earth is rebelling, revolting against this onslaught of humanity upon nature.

I tried to tame this land with plantings of hostas, purple coneflowers, black-eyed susans, daisies and whatever other plants I might pick up at a local greenhouse. And for awhile, my efforts worked.

But then, slowly, the wild orange daylilies began creeping back, subtly gaining ground.

Then the raspberry bushes bullied their way in, and I found I kind of liked them.

And, most recently, wild phlox marched onto the hill, setting up camp, marking the land with their, admittedly, beautiful purple flags.

I have surrendered to all but the invading buckthorn, the charging sumac and the warring weeds.

Let the lilies linger, the raspberries reign, the phlox pilfer.

This once wooded land was meant to be theirs, not mine.

Southwestern Minnesota prairie

After 18 months of blogging for Minnesota Moments magazine, my personal blog debuts.

You won’t see any changes here in writing style and topics.

I will continue to write from my heart—about everyday life, about places I visit, things I do, observations I make about the world around me.

My writing reflects my down-to-earth personality and my appreciation for the simple things in life.

I’m the woman who hangs clothes on a clothesline, relishes a good book, shops garage sales,  savors the tart tang of rhubarb crisp, breathes in the intoxicating scent of freshly-cut alfalfa and appreciates Minnesota, the place I call home.

So, in choosing my blog name, I turned to my roots, which reach deep into the southwestern Minnesota prairie. I haven’t lived there for decades, but this place of big skies, wide open spaces and unceasing wind shaped the person I became and the writer who evolved.

Today I write from southeastern Minnesota, my work still influenced by my native prairie. There, in stark surroundings, I learned to not just hear, but listen to, the land, for it truly does speak.

It made me a better writer.

So, welcome to my blog, Minnesota Prairie Roots.

Return often.

Share your thoughts.

But mostly, learn to appreciate your world.  All of it.