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 
Barns, an enduring symbol of farming June 25, 2026
Tags: agricultural symbol, agriculture, barns, childhood memories, commentary, cosmos, farm sites, farming, Hutchinson, Mantorville, Minnesota, photography, road trip, rural life, rural Minnesota, southern Minnesota, travel
IF A SINGLE BUILDING symbolizes agriculture in Minnesota, it is a barn.
Barns hold the history of farming within their walls. They hold the stories of farm families who labored therein. They hold memories—the heat of cattle, the lingering scent of manure, the pulse of milking machines, the scurrying of barn cats and much more.
Barns also hold heartaches and challenges and the satisfaction and rewards that come with farming.
To step inside a barn, or even to observe one from a distance as I did on recent trips out and about in rural Minnesota, is to understand the importance agriculture plays in this state.
Sure, farming has changed. Many barns no longer house animals, once a farm staple, as ag has shifted to crop farming. But at its core, this profession, this way of life, still centers rural parts of Minnesota, keeps small towns going. I saw that, from Mantorville to Faribault and from Faribault to Morris and back home.
Barns dominate farm sites just like grain elevators landmark many small rural communities.
While I see too many dilapidated barns fallen into heaps of rotting wood, I also see those that are well-cared for, still standing strong against the ravages of time and weather. I know that comes at a cost to the landowner. Keeping a barn properly roofed and painted is a major expense. I appreciate efforts to preserve barns built by generations past.
My ancestry traces to farming, to German immigrants who arrived in America, eventually making their way to southwestern Minnesota. There they found rich dark soil in which to plant seeds. Land upon which to build farmhouses, barns and other buildings necessary to the operation of a farm.
I am rooted in farming. I worked inside the barn my father built. I shoveled manure, scooped silage, pushed a wheelbarrow heaping with ground feed, carried pails brimming with milk, bedded straw, tossed hay bales from the hayloft, fed calves… I worked the land, too, picking rock and pulling cockleburrs. I carried lunch to my dad and uncles on hot summer days of baling hay.
There is nothing romantic about farming. It is hard work. It is a risky business affected by weather, markets, prices, too many factors out of a farmer’s control.
Yet, I will unequivocally state that I am incredibly thankful I grew up on a working farm. The lessons learned there about working together, about forging forward despite setbacks, about standing independent and strong are ingrained in me.
My dad laughed when I told him I wanted to be a farmer when I grew up. He knew better. There was nothing to keep me on the farm. And so I left, went to college, became a journalist. But even though physically-removed from the farm, I’ve always carried my ruralness within me, reflected in my writing and photography.
I find myself still drawn to rural scenes. A farm site. A grain elevator. A gravel road. Cattle grazing. Farm machinery, especially tractors, traversing fields. These all define agriculture. But it is the barn which symbolizes farming and the enduring strength and hope of a farmer.
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NOTE: I took these photos from the front passenger seat, either through the windshield or side window while traveling at highway speeds. Locations of several photos are not noted as I don’t recall the exact locations.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling