Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

One grand winery & pizza place in the Minnesota River Valley June 6, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
A vineyard at Grandview Valley Winery, rural Belview, Minnesota.

A vineyard at Grandview Valley Winery, rural Belview, Minnesota.

TWO YEARS AGO TOMORROW, in the scenic Minnesota River Valley north of Belview, a winery opened.

Folks have raved to me repeatedly about Grandview Valley Winery, located on land that’s been in a family (Wayne and Kari Rigge and John and Laura Rigge) for four generations.

Now, after visiting this winery, I understand their enthusiasm.

The winery and its vineyard.

The winery and its vineyard.

But it’s not just the great homemade pizza and the wine that appeal to me. It is the geographic surroundings, the pronounced pastoral loveliness of this peaceful place positioned within the southwestern Minnesota prairie.

Entering Belview from the north.

Entering Belview from the north upon returning from the winery. Grandview is nearly six miles north of this small town.

Pause to read the Boiling Spring historic marker.

Pause to read the Boiling Spring historic marker.

Another marker notes the Knutson family farm.

Another marker notes the Knutson family farm.

To get there from nearby Belview, follow Redwood County Road 7 north, winding past farm places, past historical markers for Boiling Spring and the Knutson family farm, where my Aunt Iylene grew up.

Turn onto this gravel road just off Redwood County Road 7.

Turn onto this gravel road just off Redwood County Road 7.

This is good pasture land.

This is good pasture land.

Incredible aged bedrock.

Inpressive aged bedrock.

And then, shortly after the markers, turn east, your vehicle kicking up dust as you pass more farms, cattle grazing in pastures and mammoth bedrock heaped in hills along tree-hugged gravel roads leading to Grandview.

Almost there.

Almost there.

Arriving at Grandview Valley Winery.

Arriving at Grandview Valley Winery.

Nearly six miles from Belview, you reach vineyard and winery.

Dine inside or outside on the patio to the left.

Dine inside or outside on the patio to the left.

Solitude embraces with the type of comfort that comes from being in a locale where you feel cocooned from the world, sheltered from the worries and stresses and rush of everyday life. For me, it was the “I could live here” thought. Or at least escape here for a few hours. This marks the perfect place to sip a glass of valley made wine with delicious homemade pizza.

The nearly full parking lot.

The nearly full parking lot.

Not that Grandview offers quiet dining. Quite the opposite. The gravel parking lot on this late May evening, is already nearly full. Inside the winery, diners pack tables while several groups gather on the patio. It’s almost a surprise to see so many here in this rural location, although I’ve been warned about the busyness and sometimes long wait for pizza.

The bacon cheeseburger and BBQ pulled pork pizza.

The bacon cheeseburger and BBQ pulled pork pizza.

But on this Saturday evening, probably because of area high school graduation parties, my husband, a sister, my older brother and his wife, and I need not wait all that long for our two pizzas—halves of German, BBQ pulled pork, buffalo chicken and bacon cheeseburger. To my surprise, I find the sauerkraut-topped German pizza to be especially tasty and my favorite of the four.

The guys order beer, my brother choosing  Goosetown, a German craft beer from August Schell Brewing Company in New Ulm. Goosetown is an historic nod to an ethnic New Ulm neighborhood where primarily Catholic, German-Bohemian immigrants began settling in the late 1800s. They kept gaggles of geese. My husband opts for Grain Belt’s Nordeast, another Schell’s made beer, because Goosetown is not on the beer list he’s been handed and he doesn’t hear my brother’s order.

I failed to photograph the wine. But I did photograph the wine list.

I failed to photograph the wine. But I did photograph the wine list.

I choose a semi-sweet white wine made from Frontenac Gris grapes and finished with hints of peach, apricot and green apple. Rockin’ Coyote holds the promise of summer and the wild side of this land where I’m certain more than a few coyotes range.

Our conversation flows with the ease that comes from dining among those you love, those who know your history and your quirks and don’t care.

We laugh. And I am teased mercilessly for my gullibility as my sister-in-law reveals that crawdads will not be served at her daughter’s wedding as she previously told me.

Grandview feels like home to me, my connectedness as solid as the aged bedrock lodged in this land.

FYI: Click here for more information about Grandview Valley Winery.

© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Rural driveway May 8, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: , , , , , ,

I KEEP FLIPPING between the three photos.

Pick-up, unedited

Original.

Pick-up between Sleepy Eye and Morgan

Edited.

Pick-up between Sleepy Eye and Morgan 2

Or edited.

But I can’t choose a favorite.

I like them all.

I like the lines of the field and drive, how my eyes are drawn to follow that pick-up into the farmyard.

I like the muted tones of grey and blue and those splashes of red in truck and outbuildings.

I like the ribbons of greening grass trimming the driveway, the bare trees edging the farm site.

This rural scene, along Brown County Road 29 southeast of Morgan, pleases me for the memories it holds. Not of this farm, but of my childhood on the farm. My heart is happy every time I travel back to southwestern Minnesota, past the fields and farms, gravel roads and grain elevators…through small towns…

© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Transforming the winter landscape February 17, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

LACKING COLOR; colorless.

White dominates the Minnesota landscape this time of year. I don’t need to tell you that if you live here. Just look outside right now. Snow. More snow today. Like me, you’ve probably had enough of winter.

It’s easy to become visually depressed, eye weary of the mostly colorless landscape. You yearn for pops of color to brighten this drab environment, to lift your spirits.

Via the magic of photo editing, I’ve transformed some rather ordinary winter scenes into works of art. Oz they’re not. But the simple act of manipulating these photos into watercolor or paint-by-number style images shifted my mood. I hope they do yours, too.

A ridge of plowed snow edges a country road near Montgomery, Minnesota.

A ridge of plowed and drifted snow edges a country road near Montgomery, Minnesota.

A farm site near Montgomery lost in a sea of snow.

A farm site near Montgomery in a sea of snow.

Love this sturdy barn, also near Montgomery.

Love this sturdy barn and silos, also near Montgomery.

Machinery, seemingly abandoned in the snow.

Machinery, snowed-in.

© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Reflecting on Minnesota’s rural landscape November 5, 2013

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Expansive sky and land inspire the poet in me. Photographed, as are all photos here, along Minnesota State Highway 60 between Faribault and Kenyon.

Expansive sky and land inspire the poet in me.

WHAT DRAWS YOUR EYE in a rural landscape?

Strong lines pull me in, lead me to wonder where that gravel road would take me.

Strong lines pull me in, lead me to wonder, “Where would that rugged gravel road take me?”

Or do you even notice your environment as you travel from point A to point B?

Noticing the geometry in these buildings clustered on a farm site.

I notice the geometry in these buildings, how they cluster and fit together on this farm site.

I challenge you, the next time you drive through rural Minnesota, or rural Anywhere, to truly see your surroundings. Don’t just look with glazed eyes. See. Once you see, you will appreciate.

A sense of history defines this farm in that strong barn which dominates.

A sense of history defines this farm in that strong barn which dominates and in the mishmash roof lines of the farmhouse. Both cause me to reflect upon my rural upbringing, upon my forefathers who settled 150 miles from here on the southwestern Minnesota prairie.

History, point in life, memories, even your mood on a given day, will influence how you view the rural landscape, what draws your focus.

I see here trees huddled, protecting and sheltering that house from the elements. My thoughts turn introspective at this scene.

I see trees huddled, protecting and sheltering that house from the elements, from that threatening sky. My thoughts turn introspective as I consider how we are all sometimes vulnerable and huddled, drawn into ourselves.

Whether a writer or photographer, architect or historian, teacher or retiree, stay-at-home mom (or dad), a farmer or someone in between, you will lock onto a setting that inspires creativity or prompts thought or perhaps soothes your soul.

There is much to be said for noticing details, for understanding that the miles between small towns are more than space to be traveled.

FYI: These edited images were photographed nine days ago while traveling along Minnesota State Highway 60 between Faribault and Kenyon. In just that short time, the landscape has evolved with crops harvested, trees stripped of their leaves by strong winds and now, today, snow in the forecast.

© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Country song March 11, 2013

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:48 AM
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Somewhere along Minnesota Highway 19 west of Red Wing, Minnesota.

Somewhere along Minnesota Highway 19 west of Red Wing, Minnesota.

THERE’S SOMETHING about a pick-up truck on a gravel road and high-line wires (as I termed power lines in my youth) that stretch seemingly into infinity, and how the two mimic each other—the road and the wires—in strong horizontal lines.

There is something poetic and lonely and haunting in this rural winter scene, almost like the plaintive lyrics of a country western song or strings strung taut upon an acoustic guitar.

Is he destined to break her heart or has he already broken it?

© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Sunday sunset February 24, 2013

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:39 PM
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

ON THE WAY HOME from Montgomery, Minnesota, not Alabama, late this afternoon, the sun danced with the clouds:

Sunset - Copy

Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Claiming a prairie sunset February 8, 2013

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:10 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

MY HEART BELONGS to my native prairie. Always has, always will.

Even after three decades away from southwestern Minnesota, I remain connected to the sky and to the land, to the place that shaped me as a person, a writer, a photographer.

In an environment as stark as the prairie, you notice details.

Even in southeastern Minnesota, where I've lived for three decades, expanses of prairie exist like this sunset scene.

Even in southeastern Minnesota, where I’ve lived for three decades, expanses of prairie exist like this sunset scene.

And so, on a recent Saturday, as my husband and I traveled south and east from Cleveland to Kilkenny (that’s in southeastern Minnesota, not Ohio and Ireland), I observed daylight evolve into evening, the sun slipping in a slim band of rosy peach across the horizon.

In that moment my soul yearned for the land I left at age 17, the prairie, the place of my heart.

© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Thoughts on a weekend journey to Fargo and back under grey November skies November 7, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:52 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Westbound for Fargo on Interstate 94 near the West Union exit on Saturday morning.

NEARLY 10 HOURS in a vehicle traveling almost 600 miles round trip to Fargo, North Dakota, under the gloomiest of grey November skies can test one’s endurance.

The eyes began to wander, to lock onto the slightest patches of color in an otherwise dull and monotone landscape.

Billboards offer a diversion as do the semis which follow Interstate 94, some forking north toward Canada, others continuing even farther west into the endless grey expanse.

A section of the journey where there are still hills. My eyes focus on the brilliant red hue of the barn.

Near Barnesville, a short distance east of Fargo and Moorhead, piles of corn brighten the muted landscape.

Hunters in bright orange roam fields during the opening weekend of firearms deer hunting in Minnesota.

Red barns and piles of golden corn and deer hunters in blaze orange distract me from the barren greyness of this journey to the Red River valley. I wonder at that use of the word “valley,” for I see no indentations in the earth to suggest a valley.

This quaint country church in the distance somewhere east of Fargo/Moorhead always calms my spirits.

I am a prairie native. But even for me, the flat land west of Fergus Falls and into Fargo/Moorhead challenges my spirit. I feel insecure and diminished in this place and that unsettles me.

How can a place seem so flat that I feel as if I will step off the earth should I journey any further than the northwestern fringes of Fargo?

Downtown Fargo late Saturday afternoon under sullen skies with a light mist falling.

More gloomy skies on the return trip from Fargo to Faribault on Sunday afternoon.

Spots of orange (slow moving vehicle signs) provide a respite for my eyes on Sunday’s drive home.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Prairie prose & photos during the season of harvest October 29, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:54 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Just west of Shieldsville, not far from our Faribault home in southeastern Minnesota, my husband and I began our 120-mile journey to southwestern Minnesota on a foggy Saturday morning.

I NEVER TIRE of the big sky and infinite land that stretch far before me as I travel back to my native southwestern Minnesota. I wonder sometimes how I ever could have left this place that brings such solace to my soul, such respite to my heart, such peace to my mind.

A farm site somewhere along the route which took us through or past Shieldsville, LeCenter, Cleveland, St. Peter, Nicollet, Courtland, New Ulm, Essig, Sleepy Eye, Cobden, Springfield and Sanborn corners, ending in rural Lamberton.

When I see this land, walk this land, the longing to be back here, permanently rooted again, tugs at my very core. I miss the prairie that much and the older I get, the more I appreciate this rural place from whence I came.

This image, among all those I took, emphasizes the expanse of sky and land which define the prairie.

It is that early-life connection, that growing up as a child of the prairie, that intimate familiarity with the land and the seasons and life cycles, the dirt under fingernails, the rocks lifted from fields, the cockleburs yanked from bean rows, the roar of the combine and the distinct putt-putt of the John Deere tractor, the calf shit clinging to buckle overshoes, the fireball of a sunset, the sights and sounds and smell and feel of this prairie place that shaped who I became as a person, a writer, a photographer.

These towering elevators and corn pile at Christensen Farms near Sleepy Eye break up the flat landscape.

In this season, as the earth shifts from growth to harvest to dormancy, I notice even more the details etched into the prairie. The sky seems bigger, the land wider and all of us, in comparison, but mere specks upon the earth.

MORE PHOTOS from that road trip to the prairie:

This is not a prairie scene because the prairie has no hills. Rather, I shot this near the beginning of our journey, west of Shieldsville.

Another scene from just west of Shieldsville. It is the muted colors of the landscape that I so appreciate in this photo.

Driving through Sleepy Eye, a strong agricultural community where I lived and worked briefly, decades ago, as a reporter and photographer for The Sleepy Eye Herald-Dispatch. Sleepy Eye is most definitely on the prairie.

Hills of corn at a grain complex east of Lamberton.

Fields are in all stages of harvest and tillage on the southwestern Minnesota prairie.

A grain truck parked at an elevator in Lamberton.

An important sign when trucks and tractors are lined up at the elevator in Lamberton.

I ended my Saturday by walking my middle brother’s acreage north of Lamberton as the sun set, my favorite time of day on my native southwestern Minnesota prairie. I grew up about 25 miles northwest of here near Vesta.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Flat Fargo August 24, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:47 AM
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This water tower is located in West Fargo, an area of shopping malls, restaurants, Big Box stores, hotels, etc. The tower is a rare vertical structure, breaking the flat, horizontal landscape of the Fargo area.

I THOUGHT I KNEW FLAT having grown up on the southwestern Minnesota prairie where the land seems to stretch far and unbroken into flat infinity.

But not until this year, when my family traveled thrice nearly 300 miles north and west to Fargo, North Dakota, and back did I truly understand the definition of flat.

A train rumbles through the northwest side of Fargo near the airport and the campus of North Dakota State University. No, this is not a hill. I simply did not have my horizon straight as I photographed this train while traveling along a city street.

I doubt I have ever seen a city as flat as Fargo. You know, when you spill a glass of milk on the table how the liquid flows fast and free over the edge of the table. Well, that table would be Fargo. The milk would be the Red River of the North. I totally understand now why this city is so prone to flooding each spring.

A herd of buffalo photographed along Interstate 94 east of Fargo, which places them in Minnesota.

I swear, if I had driven to the western edge of Fargo, I would see the world’s largest buffalo—26-foot tall, 60-ton concrete Dakota Thunder sculpted in 1959 by Elmer Petersen—90 miles away atop a hill in Jamestown’s Frontier Village. I saw the buffalo about 20 years ago while en route to a Helbling family reunion in Mandan/Bismarck, cities which actually do have hills. I think.

Inside the NDSU Memorial Union, I photographed this sculpture of a bison, the university’s mascot, in June.

About those buffalo… The flat and forever Dakota plains provide ideal grazing grounds for these massive creatures, or at least once did. Dakotans are proud of their native bison as evidenced in business names; art like “Herd About the Prairie” in Fargo; and even a bison mascot for North Dakota State University where my son is now a student.

A bus bench and sidewalk in West Fargo draw the eye west toward the horizon and the setting sun.

My apologies for momentarily edging away from that flat land issue. Even I, a girl of the prairie, find the Fargo flatness somewhat unsettling. I’d like a few more mature trees, especially on the sprawling growth west side of the city, upon which to rest my eyes. I’d like a few rises in the land, other than the rare man-made ones, to break the monotony of a straight horizontal line.

I expect that if I lived in Fargo, I’d adjust and think nothing of the flat landscape. But when you’re a visitor, you notice things like the lay of the land and the wind, oh, the winds of Fargo.

Just off Interstate 29 a flock of sheep graze pastureland as part of North Dakota State University’s Sheep Experiment Station.

Throughout West Fargo you’ll see open patches of land like this clover field next to the Fairfield Inn, where we’ve stayed twice. The hotel has strong horizontal lines like most structures in Fargo.

A fenceline and cornfield in Fargo, near (or part of, I’m not sure) the NDSU campus. More horizontal lines…

Paradise in Fargo, the Paradiso Mexican Restaurant, that is.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling