IN THE SEA OF CORN which defines southwestern Minnesota, an island emerges.
Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
On the cusp of harvest in southwestern Minnesota October 4, 2013
Grey skies and rain create a moody scene along U.S. Highway 14 between Sleepy Eye and Lamberton.
RAIN DRIZZLES, SOMETIMES SPLATTERS, across the windshield of our van as my husband and I aim toward the southwestern Minnesota prairie, driving toward Lamberton for a day of making horseradish with my extended family. It is a time-honored tradition, started by my father, dead 10 years now.
For me, this 120-mile trip from our Faribault home is not as much about the horseradish as it is about family and memories and spending a weekend in my beloved native prairie, the place that shaped me in to the person/writer/photographer I’ve become.
This section of U.S. Highway 14 between Sleepy Eye and Lamberton features many stately and well-kept barns like this brick one.
Even after 40 years away from this place of big skies and flat open spaces, of small towns and family farms, of corn and soybean fields stretching into forever, I still miss this land.
Especially at harvest time.
A cheery smile on a barn off U.S. Highway 14 serves as a backdrop to a ripened soybean field on a grey Saturday morning.
As we journey, my head pivots toward the corn and the beans, ripened mostly to muted gold.
I can almost hear the corn leaves rustling in the bendy wind under moody grey skies.
I can almost smell the intoxicating scent of earth that prevails only at harvest time.
I can almost hear the chomping combines and rumbling grain trucks, the roaring tractors and the lumbering grain wagons, parked and silent now as rain sweeps across the acres.
A serene country scene just north of Lamberton in southern Redwood County.
Later that day, after we’ve reached our rural destination and dug, washed, peeled, chopped, blended and bottled the horseradish, the heaviest of the clouds lift and shift east.
The skies have cleared along Redwood County Road 6 north of Lamberton where corn fields await harvest.
By Sunday morning we awaken to the clear and crisp skies of autumn in rural Minnesota.
Driving U.S. Highway 14 back to Faribault Sunday morning.
It’s a perfect morning.
Barns and ripening crops define the landscape of southwestern Minnesota this time of year.
Sunshine upon fields.
Grain bins await the harvest on a southwestern Minnesota farm.
Sunshine pooling upon my lap as we aim east, past bins and barns and bountiful fields, back home.
Rounding the curve eastbound into Sleepy Eye.
Past the ripening crops. Through the small towns, like Lamberton and Springfield and Sleepy Eye.
And when we reach the western outskirts of New Ulm, I feel as if we’ve crossed a line. Menards and Walmart loom to the left. U.S. Highway 14, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway, is now a four-lane through this German community, busy with traffic and drivers racing to get ahead before the roadway once again narrows to two lanes en route to Mankato.
Barns, like this one, rise above the soon-to-be-harvested corn fields.
My mood shifts. I’ve left the peace of the prairie, the one place on this earth that holds my soul in solace.
FYI: This post was previously published on streets.mn. The above photos were taken on Saturday, September 28, and Sunday, September 29. Conditions change rapidly during harvest time, so I expect harvest is well underway, although delayed now due to the rain.
A post will be forthcoming on making horseradish.
Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Oh, the things you see & hear at a vintage farm show September 6, 2013
WHENEVER I ATTEND the Rice County Steam and Gas Engines Show in rural Dundas, I never quite know what I will discover, or hear. Look and listen.
Displayed at the Friends of Minnesota Barns booth.
I noted the above sign at the Friends of Minnesota Barns booth. Then the guy manning the display shared a story from the Le Sueur County Pioneer Power Show a week earlier. A man and his wife read the sign. The husband asked, “Will you take my wife in trade?”
She shot back, “You’re the INSERT SLANG WORD FOR MULE in the family.”
The Friends of Minnesota Barns guy and I laughed, oh, how we laughed.
Speaking of INSERT SLANG WORD FOR MULE HERE, EXCEPT IN PLURAL, look at this lawn art by opinionated Bob Michniewicz of Madelia. You never quite know what Bob is going to say or create.
“Quality Lawn Ornaments” from Michniewicz Sales.
I did a double take on this potty humor:
Brand loyalty and potty humor. Seriously, I could not believe I was seeing this. I grew up with John Deere farm equipment.
Let me show you something sweet and endearing:
Family time at the playground on vintage playground equipment.
And patriotic:
Flags abound at the show.
This reminds me of my growing up years on the farm and the Farmalls my dad owned and I drove (a B Farmall to be exact):
Vintage Farmalls.
Loren Fossum’s corn picker. That is not Loren driving, though.
I was just plain giddy when I saw this vintage 1960s corn picker, similar to one my Dad used but not a Ford. Loren Fossum of Northfield recently purchased the combo tractor and corn picker for a bargain price, which I won’t reveal because maybe Loren doesn’t want that publicized. He told a little story about overhearing a conversation among several young men trying to figure out what type of equipment they were viewing. They finally concluded that the blue monstrosity was designed to take down trees. Wrong. That would be corn, boys.
Another reminder of life on the farm, spotted at the flea market:
Oh, how I loved to twirl the handle on my dad’s vise grip until I tightened something, maybe a block of wood, in place.
And just because I found this Cropgard Farm Dryer interesting:
Apparently not just an ordinary vintage farm wagon.
This quartet was so engrossed in viewing photos of the homemade John Deere tractor that they didn’t even notice me. Sweet. I love capturing moments like this that tell a story:
Immersed in tractor talk.
Tractors everywhere:
Rows and rows and rows of vintage tractors define this show. For me the interest lies in the artsy aspect of these machines. Just look at the front of this Massey Ferguson–the font, the grill…
More cool vintage:
Anything rustic and vintage appeals to me visually.
My parting shot, taken through the fence on the back of bleachers, says it all: Passing a love of tractors along to the next generation.
To future generations of John Deere tractor lovers…
AFTER VIEWING THESE IMAGES, let’s hear from you. Do any of these photos spark memories or thoughts? Please share.
Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
More photos from “A Day on the Farm,” Rice County, Minnesota June 24, 2013
BECAUSE I APPRECIATE family dairy farms and because I am grateful to Ron and Diane Wegner and their daughters, Brianna and Kaylee, for opening their farm to area residents, here are more photos from “A Day on the Farm.” The Wegners hosted this event on Saturday in rural Rice County, Minnesota. Click here to see additional photos from my first post.
The beautiful old barn on the Wegners’ third-generation family farm.
The Wegners milk 50 registered Holsteins.
This scene inside the barn caught my farm girl eye.
Fence leaning and wagon towing.
Twins Kelly and Emily, almost two, visit the farm with their dad.
Rice County Dairy Maid Kelsey Kuball applies a temporary tattoo to a young visitor’s arm.
A farm cat that was just a wee skittish with about 600 strangers wandering around the farm.
Rice County Dairy Princess Kaylee Wegner waits for kids to arrive for a photo shoot with the calf.
A trio of silos next to the Wegners’ barn.
My favorite outbuilding, to the left.
Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Reconnecting with my rural roots at “A Day on the Farm” June 23, 2013
NEARLY FORTY YEARS AGO I left the family farm in southwestern Minnesota bound for college in Mankato.
All these decades later I still miss the farm, yearn for those days of country quiet, the soothing pulse of the milking machine, the bellow of a cow, the nudge of a calf, the unmistakable scent of freshly-baled alfalfa.
My first glimpse of the Wegners’ farm south of Faribault.
Saturday afternoon I reconnected with my rural roots at “A Day on the Farm” hosted by Ron and Diane Wegner and their daughters, Brianna and Kaylee, and sponsored by the Rice County American Dairy Association and the Minnesota Beef Council.
Vehicles lined both sides of Appleton Avenue near the Wegners’ farm.
The free meal was provided by the Minnesota Beef Council, the Rice County American Dairy Association and Hastings Co-op Creamery (to which the Wegners sell their milk).
Vehicles lined the gravel road leading to the Wegners’ dairy and crop farm south of Faribault as skies cleared and almost 600 visitors lined up for free cheeseburgers, malts and milk and then wandered the farm site.
Visitors toured the barn to see the cows and calves.
It was a near perfect day—albeit a bit sultry—to check out this dairy operation, which, with 50 registered Holstein milk cows, 50 head of young stock and 15 springing heifers, still fits the definition of a family farm.
Rice County Dairy Princess Tracie Korbel takes photos while Dairy Princess Kaylee Wegner tends the calf.
Turning the calf/kid photos into buttons.
I felt comfortably at home here, remembering my years of feeding calves as I watched Rice County Dairy Princess Kaylee Wegner tend a calf while Princess Tracie Korbel photographed youngsters with the baby animal. The photos were then adhered to buttons.
Two-year-old Benjamin points out his “Got milk?” tattoo.
Simple country pleasures: swinging and playing cow bean bag toss.
The hay bale maze between the barn and the house. The scent of freshly baled alfalfa caused me to linger here for awhile.
Other kids’ activities included a hay bale maze, cow bean bag toss, temporary tattoo applications and a ride on a swing tied to a tree. Fun stuff on a rare stunning summer afternoon.
Ava, 2 1/2, lives in the Twin Cities. Her grandparents, who live near Dundas, brought her to the farm because she loves animals. My husband and I dined with Ava and her grandparents.
Familiarizing kids with a farm seemed a common thread among many for coming to the farm, according to host Ron Wegner. He heard on Saturday from many grandparents who grew up on farms and brought their grandkids because “they don’t know what a cow is.”
Inside the Wegners’ dairy barn.
But Ron was hoping to educate more than the younger generation. When I asked why he agreed to open his farm to strangers for three hours, he explained that he wanted “the town people to come to a dairy farm and see where milk products come from.”
Benjamin, 2, lives on a buffalo farm near Lonsdale. His mom brought him to see a dairy farm. She was posing him for a photo on the tractor when I happened by.
And that seemed as good a reason as any to someone like me, who grew up on a Minnesota dairy farm.
Several calves inside the barn were a hit among visitors.
CHECK BACK for more photos from “A Day on the Farm” in rural Faribault.
© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
An on-the-road field report May 13, 2013
Near St. Cloud Thursday afternoon on a day that seemed more November-like than May.
IN TYPICAL FORMER farm girl and farm boy fashion, my husband and I watched for farmers in the fields during our 600-mile round trip between Faribault and Fargo on Thursday and Friday to retrieve our youngest from North Dakota State University.
We traveled the interstate to Fargo, but took the back roads south and east (mostly Minnesota Highways 15 and 19) on the way home to avoid the road construction and traffic snarls near Clearwater and in the metro Friday evening.
Working the field near the Sabin exit Friday.
Digging, also near Exit 15 to Sabin.
East of Moorhead, draft horses seed small grain.
Based on our observations from Interstate 94, farmers between Fergus Falls and Moorhead, a distance of about 50 miles, are the most advanced in spring field work within the region we traveled.
Photographed near Collegeville on Thursday afternoon.
A Freeport area farm with an, as of Thursday afternoon, unworked field.
Field work before then rates as spotty and really only begins in the St. Cloud area.
As the sun begins to set along Minnesota Highway 15, a John Deere works the land.
North of Winthrop Friday evening, dust flies in the field.
Driving south on Minnesota 15 between I-94 and Winthrop Friday evening, we noticed lots of farmers out and about.
But then, heading east on State Highway 19, we saw fields basically untouched since last fall.
I expect, at least in southern Minnesota where we had those monumental late spring snowfalls, farmers are getting a wee worried about getting corn in the ground.
The sun sets across the prairie north of Winthrop on Friday.
© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Where the men & boys shop: At a rural Minnesota farm toy show January 31, 2013
OH, TO BE A FARM KID again, steering toy tractors through imaginary fields, corralling cattle into a replica barn, pretending to be a farmer just like Dad.
A trio of brothers dressed in John Deere attire wait while their dad signs up for a Massey Harris tractor raffle from Rice County Steam & Gas Engines, Inc. The youngest was camera shy.
I imagine many of the kids tagging along with Grandpa or Dad to Louie’s Toy Box Farm Toy Show at the Nicollet County Fairgrounds in St. Peter last weekend were farm kids wishing for a new toy tractor or other piece of farm equipment to role-play their futures, or their ancestral pasts.
Masses of shoppers among a mass of merchandise.
Shouldering my way through packed aisles Saturday morning, I couldn’t determine who seemed more excited—the men or the boys. And they had every reason to thrill in the mass of ag-related merchandise displayed by 43 vendors from Minnesota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois.
Johnson Hall, site of Louie’s Toy Box Farm Toy Show.
I didn’t know quite what to expect when I entered the unassuming pole-shed style Johnson Hall at the fairgrounds. But I didn’t expect to find so many people (an estimated 2,000 weekend attendees), so many vendors and so much merchandise crammed into such a tight space. This venue is definitely too uncomfortably small for a toy show of this size.
Vending toy John Deere tractors.
That aside, I managed to wiggle my way through mostly throngs of men sporting caps and sweatshirts advertising ag companies. John Deere, which marked its 175th anniversary in 2012, showed a dominating presence in apparel.
But when it came to merchandise, I expect every line was represented.
My first look at the farm toy show left me feeling overwhelmed.
Upon first entering the toy show, I just stood there, overwhelmed by the stacks and stacks and stacks of boxed tractors and other toys stretching out before me. Honestly, I thought I’d made a mistake suggesting to my husband that we come here. I may have played with toy farm equipment as a kid, but it doesn’t especially interest me as an adult.
Maneuvering the aisles proved challenging, especially with a camera bag on my hip and a camera in hand.
I wandered for awhile like a lost sheep, wondering where to focus, how to best work my way through the crowd. Arrows taped to the floor to direct traffic flow would have helped. But eventually I figured it out and backtracked the other direction, easing into the line of shoppers (which did include some women and girls).
An edited photo of vintage matchbooks. Love those graphics.
Another edited photo, of a 1950 calendar.
Eventually I found my niche, not in the toys, but in graphics gracing vintage matchbooks, calendars, literature and other advertising items. When I examined a 1950s vintage calendar and balked aloud at the $98 price tag, the vendor informed me that 10 years ago he would have asked even more. I couldn’t bring myself to shell out that kind of money or even $10 for a teeny tiny matchbook. I’d need to be a serious collector to justify such expenditures.
Shortly thereafter I met a serious collector, Wendell Bakker of Renville, whom I observed filing through stacks of magazines, about a half-dozen notebooks stuffed in a back pants pocket and another open notebook in his hand. Because I’m nosy, and I admitted that to Wendell, I initiated a conversation. This former crop, dairy and hog farmer and recently-retired field rep for the Minnesota Farmers Union has been collecting issues of the Allis Chalmers Landhandler and other farm magazines for 50 years.
One of Wendell’s notebooks, noting which magazines he already has in his collection.
“Everybody has a bad habit,” Wendell surmised, not that I would term collecting magazines a bad habit.
I didn’t question any of the other shoppers about their reasons for attending the farm toy show. But, based on the bulging bags most carried out of Johnson Hall, I’d guess many are collectors. As for me, I didn’t purchase anything, just added 94 images to my photo collection in 1 ½ hours. Total cost: the $3 admittance fee.
BONUS PHOTOS:
A vendor’s sign.
A vendor in training.
I don’t smoke and don’t like smoking. But I sure do I like vintage ash trays like this one from my husband’s town of birth.
We were tempted to buy this lighter from Faribault, for a business we’d not heard of, but the $18 price was more than we wanted to pay.
FOR MORE INFORMATION about show organizer, Louie’s Toy Box, click here.
Check back for more photos from the toy show.
© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Missing the farm during a Minnesota harvest September 30, 2012
An elevator just outside of Vermillion, MN., near Hastings on Saturday morning.
DECADES HAVE PASSED since I’ve been home on the farm for harvest. My middle brother quit farming years ago and the home place is now rented out.
A harvested cornfield between Hastings and Cannon Falls.
I miss being on the farm, anticipating the bringing in of the crop, then watching the combines chomp through rows of brittle cornstalks and brown fields of ripened soybeans.
Between Hastings and Cannon Falls.
I miss the undeniable scent of earth and plant residue.
Harvesting corn just south of Hastings on Saturday afternoon.
I miss the grain wagons brimming with golden kernels.
The Vermillion Elevator, in the small town of Vermillion.
I miss living in a rural community where tractors and aged grain trucks line up at the local co-op elevator.
I miss the hum of grain dryers drying corn.
A grain truck waits on a gravel road near Cannon City, east of Faribault.
Now I view the harvest from a distance, as an observer passing by.
© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Meet Bob, the opinionated farmer from Madelia September 10, 2012
I met Bob Michniewicz and his wife, Judy, selling their woodcrafts at the recent Rice County Steam and Gas Engine Show. He wouldn’t allow me to photograph his art, except for a single sign and a single cow, not wanting others to steal his ideas. However, a few other crafts got into the photo when Bob obliged my request for a portrait.
OCCASIONALLY YOU MEET a character, and you know it just looking at the person, before lips even part to utter a single syllable.
I knew, just knew, Bob Michniewicz was a character when I saw him and his set-up at the Rice County Steam and Gas Engine Show in rural Dundas. With kitschy wooden lawn ornaments—you know the kind—and wind chimes and eye-catching messages defining his space, Bob was bound to be interesting.
Just look at the poster Bob leaned front and center against a support post for the tent under which he and his wife of 50 years, Judy, were peddling their wares.
Bob was gauging interest in this sign with plans to print it on vinyl and sell it should interest run high.
Naturally, I asked Bob about that message. Seems he’s a bit worked up about all the non-farm folks moving onto farms in his area and then complaining about noise or smell or dust and such from working farms.
“Farmers were here first,” he emphasizes. And that, in this retired farmer’s opinion, should settle any matters of dispute.
All around him, Bob views the ever-changing rural Minnesota landscape. Within a three-mile radius of his farm (the home place) 3 ½ miles from Madelia, only four farmers remain. The rest are people living on the building sites.
Therein, according to Bob, lies the problem. “People don’t know where farm stuff comes from.” I’m not sure I understand what he means, but I think I do and Bob doesn’t allow me to interrupt this rather one-sided conversation.
Bob just steamrolls forward, asking if I know that potatoes in stores are sprayed to keep them from sprouting. (I don’t know this and check later to see if Bob, who is a gardener, is right, and apparently he is, although I’m not saying all potato growers, all stores, follow this practice.)
He looks me directly in the eye and says: “Next time you eat mashed potatoes, you may as well take a shot glass of Round-up with a beer chaser.”
Like I said, Bob’s a character, and an outspoken one at that.
Bob certainly possesses a sense of humor, as seen in this bovine lawn art.
© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Threshing oats at the Rice County Steam & Gas Engine Show September 4, 2012
Grayden Moorhouse of Randolph holds freshly-threshed oats.
GRAYDEN MOORHOUSE unfurls his palm, revealing some two dozen oat kernels before dropping several into my hand.
He wants me to try them, to separate the meat from the hull with my teeth and spit the shell onto the ground.
I try, without success, and then he hands me a single kernel already hulled.
All the while I am thinking this:
I shoveled plenty of oats in my day growing up on a dairy and crop farm. And why would I want to eat raw oats, which I associate with cattle feed?
But Grayden is one of those guys who seems convincing and I like the strong sound of his name and, heck, what’s life without trying something new occasionally?
So I eat the single oat kernel and that is enough for me. I’d rather eat my oats in oatmeal.
Now that I’ve ended that introductory narrative, let’s follow the path of how those oat kernels ended up in Grayden’s hand via this photo essay from the Rice County Steam and Gas Engine Show this past weekend in rural Dundas.
Shoveling the raw oats into the conveyor system.
An overview of the threshing equipment and process of separating the oats kernels from the stem.
Bill Becker of rural Northfield mans the Minneapolis Moline which powers the threshing operation.
More shoveling of oat bundles, a dusty, dirty job.
The dust flies as men and machine work.
Plenty of farmers and retired farmers watch, remembering…
While horses plow a nearby field (left), the threshing crew continues working.
And the straw pile grows.
Finally, meet Grayden Moorhouse, whose strong name, it seems to me, belongs in a western.
FYI: Please check back for more posts from the steam and gas engine show. You’ll meet one interesting character and an incredible teen, plus ride along with me on the back of a truck.
© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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