INSIDE THE MERTON TOWN HALL, Audrey Klukas, who lives a few miles away in rural Owatonna, is hosting a May plant sale. She’s hauled plants and canned goods, homemade apple pies and woven rugs from her trailer, up the steps into this aged building.
Marigolds, geraniums, petunias, tomatoes, succulents, peppers, hostas, sedum, coneflowers and more cover tables and sections of the old wooden floor. Tree seedlings sit on a painted church pew.
Klukas has grown most of the plants in her rural greenhouse. She’s a woman of many talents, an entrepreneur, a student of horticulture. In 1973, she graduated with the first class of horticulture students completing their two-year degree at the University of Minnesota, Waseca. That technical college closed in 1992.
It’s clear that Klukas put her education to good use—planting seeds, then watering and nurturing the growing plants. She’s shared the fruits of her labors in this month-long sale, held every Friday through Sunday in May. The final weekend sale is from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. May 29-31.
As I wandered among the plant-filled tables, bright sunshine streamed through the windows, Asian beetles clinging to the warm glass.
I admired the jars of canned goods. The pickles. Jam in assorted varieties like rhubarb with strawberry, raspberry and cherry. And then something I’d never seen, pickled kohlrabi and kohlrabi with pepper flakes and jalapeno. I should have bought a jar.
Instead, I meandered, taking it all in. I stopped to run my hands across the woven rugs crafted by Klukas and displayed on a table below a flyswatter, a clock and an American flag bannered on the wall above a printed copy of “The Pledge of Allegiance.” I noticed a handprinted sign: Needed old jeans for rugs. It takes a lot of jeans to make a rug, Klukas told me.
I asked some questions about the building, which she probably uses more than anyone, Klukas said. A 4-H club once met here. And when I looked closer, I saw that verified in an over-sized green clover, a discarded banner and more in and above a trophy case.
A trophy caught my eye. Klukas stepped around her plant tables and onto a stage to remove the trophy from the cabinet. A silver horse topped the Steele County 4-H Club Herdsman Award sponsored by the Sheriff’s Mounted Posse and Auxiliary of Steele County, 1975. I admired the 51-year-old trophy, as much a piece of history as a piece of art.
Since this is the Merton Town Hall, the center of township government, this is also a meeting and polling place. I wiggled my way to the voting booths, divided and cordoned off with blue fabric for privacy. Here locals exercise their right to vote. This is about as grassroots as it gets in a democracy.
Klukas and I didn’t talk much. But she shared that a church once used this building, too, which was originally a school. No more details known. School, church, town hall, 4-H club meeting place and now, in the month of May, this simple structure in the middle of farm fields is a space to sell plants, rugs, homemade preserves, pies…the fruits of Klukas’ labors.
When I stepped outside the town hall, I considered the feet that have climbed the front steps into this building. To learn. To worship. To discuss township governance. To vote. To commit to the 4 tenets of 4-H: head, heart, hands and health. To gather. And on this May day to shop as farm fields green, as robins tend their young inside an on-site weathered gray outhouse that leans into the land.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
Westward bound deep into Minnesota farm country May 28, 2026
Tags: agriculture, barns, Brown County, commentary, farm fields, farm sites, farming, land, landscape, Mankato, memories, Morgan, New Ulm, Owatonna, photography, Redwood County, rural Minnesota, sky, southern Minnesota, travel, Vesta
THROUGH SEVEN SOUTHERN MINNESOTA counties we traveled—Rice, Steele, Waseca, Blue Earth, Nicollet, Brown and, then, home to Redwood. Westward bound.
Only occasionally now, mostly for the annual family reunion and on this day a beloved aunt’s funeral, do Randy and I follow this 125-mile route back to my native Redwood County.
Every trip, I see the immensity of sky and land as the landscape unfolds before me. The farther west we drive, the more rural the look, the feel, with the exception of Mankato and New Ulm.
We bypass the small towns along four-lane U.S. Highway 14 while passing endless farm sites and fields.
I have my eye on the view from the passenger side of our van, scanning the land, watching for photo ops. Photography can be a challenge while traveling at highway speeds. Still, I try, managing to capture images that document the ruralness of this place.
Barns, especially red ones, always grab my attention. They symbolize agriculture more than any other building. Yet, most no longer center a farming operation. Absent of animals, many barns have been repurposed or have fallen into heaps of rotting wood. I always appreciate a well-kept barn still standing strong against elements and the passage of time.
This trip I’m also cognizant of crops at the beginning of the growing season. Corn is popping up in rows across the land, green shoots reaching toward the sun, the sky. Green is good. When my next trip this direction comes in late July, that corn will stand towering and dense across acres of fields.
I may not be a farmer, but my connection to the land more than 50 decades removed from my childhood farm remains strong. I still look at the crops. I still hope to spot a herd of Holsteins. I still see a silo and mentally climb the interior ladder to throw down silage. I still eye a grove of trees with the playfulness of youth.
While nostalgia runs high on trips like this deep into Minnesota farm country, reality is that farming remains as challenging as ever with ever-rising expenses, low commodity prices and the uncertainties of weather. Will rain fall when needed? Will storms come with devastating wind and hail? Always, always, the risks exist from planting to growing to harvest.
But on this day, mile after mile after mile, I see the hope of a farmer. I see a way of life. I see dreams.
And I feel small in this place where land and sky dwarf farm sites, where fields stretch across endless acres, where the highway ribbons ahead of us across seven rural southern Minnesota counties, westward bound.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling