Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Ice cream with a kindergartner after the first day of school September 5, 2024

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The Betty, a mint-flavored Oreo ice cream treat, one of my favorites at The S’Cream. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

AN ICE CREAM TREAT seemed in order after walking through Owatonna’s beautifully-redone, pedestrian-friendly downtown Tuesday afternoon. The sun shone bright on a day as ideal as they come in southern Minnesota. Yes, I could go for ice cream to cool off, not that I ever really need a reason.

So Randy and I headed to our favorite home-grown ice cream shop, The S’Cream.

But our stop at this busy walk-up shop turned out to be more than a pause in our day for a peanut butter sundae and a monster cookie dough Flurry. I struck up a conversation with Paisley and her grandpa (mostly Paisley) while Randy waited for our order.

A bus photographed near Morgan, Minnesota, and used here for illustration only. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

I didn’t know the two. But I like to engage in conversation, even with strangers. I’ve met many interesting individuals this way. Paisley is no exception. She had just finished her first day of kindergarten and was celebrating with a vanilla/strawberry twist ice cream cone.

As Paisley licked her cone and I spooned cookie dough-flavored ice cream, we talked. First off, I asked about school, a day she summarized as “good and fun.” That led to my next question, “What made it fun?”

Well, Paisley explained, she brought a Barbie book home from school. That prompted me to stress the importance of reading. If you can read, you can learn anything, I told my new friend who is turning six in September. I shared that I also have a September birthday. To which Paisley shared that she’s celebrating her birthday all month long. True or not, I don’t know. But I do know this. Paisley doesn’t like spiders, including the one hanging out in her kindergarten classroom on Tuesday.

But that didn’t quell her spirit. Paisley was happy and animated and not one bit shy. I learned a lot in the time we ate our treats. Her backpack is purple and sports a “P.” She lives in the country, had three cats (one’s gone; I didn’t ask), has three semi trucks (one is “hers”; again, I didn’t ask) and has a loose tooth. Paisley wiggled a bottom front tooth to verify her claim.

The Blast, with locations in Owatonna and Northfield, is another popular ice cream spot. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

This kindergartner was all wiggles. Understandable given her first full school day. She moved constantly while licking the melting ice cream that soon ran onto her hands. A few drips fell onto her shirt, a sparkly pink tee emblazoned with the word LOVE.

What a great message Paisley took to school. She exudes love. That gives me hope. Here’s a little girl who loves school and life and birthdays, especially birthdays. I felt absolute joy in her presence.

Forty-five miles away, my 5-year-old grandson also started kindergarten. He’s much different than Paisley. Quiet. Reserved. But he is no less enthusiastic about school. His mom, my eldest, shared this upon his return home: “Isaac said the school day felt like 3 minutes!” So, yes, he, too, had a good day, a fun day, summarized in that creative response to his mom.

Oh, the joy these kindergartners—one a stranger, the other a dear one—brought me on a beautiful September day in southern Minnesota.

© Copyright 2024 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

 

A walk in a garden as autumn approaches September 4, 2024

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Sunflowers are drooping, like this one in the Rice County Master Gardeners’ Teaching Gardens, Faribault. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

I’M BEGINNING TO FEEL this sense of urgency, as if I need to spend more time outdoors taking in the natural world. It’s not a new feeling, but rather one which rolls into my thoughts at August’s end. When the calendar flips to September, everything shifts. I see it, hear it, smell it, feel it.

A dried oak leaf floats in a pond at the teaching gardens. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

Outside my front door, massive mophead hydrangeas are drying, morphing from green to brown. Once lush phlox are less full. Maple leaves, in hues of orange and yellow, litter the lawn. All over town, trees are beginning to change color.

Golden grasses sway in the gentle wind of early evening. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
Jolts of color still fill the garden. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
Prolific black-eyed susans. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

Crickets chirp. Cicadas buzz. School buses roll past my house. Everything is shifting. And nowhere is that more noticeable than in a garden.

This shows only a section of the teaching gardens. That’s an historic church, on the grounds of the Rice County Historical Society, in the background. The gardens are next to the RCHS museum. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

And so I encourage you, if you live in a place that will soon change to cold and colorless, to enjoy the flowers while they are still blooming, as I did recently at the Rice County Master Gardeners Teaching Gardens.

A mass of coneflowers. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
A rain garden flourishes here. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
A few clematis were still blooming when I walked the gardens. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

Come, walk with me through this space with its beds of blooms, its textured perennials, its overall loveliness.

An array of flowers fill the gardens. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
A muted hue that leans into autumn. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
The gardens include rock art, this one in the Rock Art Snake. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

Or find your own garden in your place. Walk. Sit. Take it all in. And when the season shifts, when the flowers are long gone, when the trees have dropped their leaves, then remember this time, these days. Remember the beauty of it all. Remind yourself in the depths of winter how you paused to appreciate these days of summer transitioning into autumn.

© Copyright 2024 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Look to Books on Central as “We Look West” September 3, 2024

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(Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2024)

THEY ARE SEASONED WRITERS, also well-seasoned in life. They are Becky Boling, Heather Candels, D.E. Green, Steve McCown and Julie A. Ryan, collectively The Poets of the Northfield Public Library. And at 6 p.m. Thursday, September 5, they will gather at Books on Central, 227 Central Avenue North, Faribault for a poetry reading followed by a Q & A.

If you happen to be one of those people who claim a dislike of poetry, I encourage you to reconsider and come to this literary event. The poetry this group will read comes from their recently-published anthology, We Look West. Their poems are down-to-earth relatable. Trust me. I’ve read this 116-page book, loved it and reviewed it. (Click here to read my review.)

The writing within the pages of this volume are stories of life, in poetry form. Poems that transition from east to west, from the sunrise to the sunset of our lives.

They’re written by poets with extensive publishing credentials. Four have taught at the high school or college level. The fifth comes from a strong literary and visual arts background. Two are Pushcart nominees.

I’ve met Boling and Green and read poetry with them at an event at Mercado Local in Northfield. They are a wonderful married couple, comfortable and friendly. No stuffy poets here. And no stuffy poems. Just plain good writing that moves the spirit, fills the soul, imprints upon the heart.

I look forward to hearing The Poets of the Northfield Public Library read selected poems and then share the stories behind their poetry. As a poet, I’m always interested in learning what inspired a particular poem.

And if you have questions, ask away. Writers welcome engagement as they share their passion for poetry, the craft of writing.

FYI: Books on Central is a second-hand book shop run by the Rice County Area United Way and staffed by volunteers. Proceeds from the bookstore benefit organizations and nonprofits throughout the county.

 

Rural living history & threshing memories

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A wagonload of oats awaits threshing at the Rice County Steam & Gas Engines Fall Show. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

MEMORIES. A HISTORY LESSON. A step back in time. The Rice County Steam & Gas Engines Fall Show is that and more. It’s also entertainment, a coming together of friends and families and neighbors. A reason to focus on farming of yesteryear.

Oats drape over the edge of the wagon. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

I was among the crowds gathered over the Labor Day weekend at the showgrounds south of Dundas. This show features demos, rows and rows and rows of vintage tractors and aged farm machinery, a tractor pull, flea market, music, petting zoo, mini train rides and a whole lot more.

The scene is set to resume threshing with thresher, tractor, baler and manpower. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

For me, a highlight was watching a crew of men threshing oats. The work is hard, labor intensive, even dangerous with exposed belts and pullies. It’s no wonder farmers lost digits and limbs back in the day.

This part of the threshing crew pitches oats bundles into the threshing machine. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

While my observations are not connected to memories, my husband’s are as he recalls threshing on his childhood farm in rural Buckman, Morrison County, Minnesota. After Randy moved with his family from rural St. Anthony, North Dakota (southwest of Mandan), his dad returned to threshing oats. In North Dakota, he used a combine. But his father before him, Randy’s grandfather Alfred, threshed small grains.

Hard at work forking bundles into the thresher. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
Lots of exposed pullies and belts line the threshing machine. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)
The workhorse of the operation, the threshing machine. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

As I watched in Dundas, men forked bundles of oats into a McCormick-Deering thresher. The threshing machine separated the grain from the stalk, the oats shooting one direction into a wagon, the straw the other way into a growing pile. I stood mostly clear of the threshing operation with dust and chafe thick in the air.

Feeding the loose straw into the baler. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

From the straw pile, a volunteer stuffed the stalks into the shoot of an aged baler. An arm tamped the straw, feeding it into the baler. Another guy stood nearby, feeding wire into the baler to wrap the rectangular bales. A slow, tedious process that requires attentiveness and caution.

Watching and waiting for the straw to compact in the baler. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

The entire time I watched, I thought how easy it would be to lose focus, to look away for a moment, to get distracted and then, in an instant, to experience the unthinkable. Farming is, and always has been, a dangerous occupation.

Carefully guiding wire into the baler to wrap each bale. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

Randy understands that firsthand as he witnessed his father get his hand caught in a corn chopper. Tom lost his left hand and part of his forearm. But Randy saved his life, running across fields and pasture to summon help. It is a traumatic memory he still carries with him 57 years later.

Threshing at Sunnybrook Farm, St. Anthony, North Dakota, as painted by Tom Helbling. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

But memories of threshing are good memories, preserved today in an oil painting from the farm in North Dakota, Sunnybrook Farm. My father-in-law took up painting later in life. Among the art he created was a circa 1920s threshing scene. We have that painting, currently displayed in our living room. I treasure it not only for the hands that painted it, but also for the history held in each brush stroke.

Threshing grain, living history in 2024. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2024)

The painted scene differs some from the threshing scene I saw in Dundas. In North Dakota, horses were part of the work team, the tractor steam powered. In Dundas, there were no horses, no steam engine at the threshing site. Still, the threshing machine is the star, performing the same work. And men are still there, laboring under the sun on a late summer afternoon.

© Copyright 2024 Audrey Kletscher Helbling