rural Minnesota | Minnesota Prairie Roots

Light, oh glorious photographic light June 5, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: Faribault, historic buildings, light, Minnesota, Minnesota State Highway 60, photography, photos, rural Minnesota, the golden hour, travel

Corn sprouts along Minnesota Highway 60 east of Faribault. Photographed around 7:45 p.m.

Crops emerge in fields along Minnesota State Highway 60 east of Faribault. Photographed around 7:45 p.m.

LIGHT. Therein lies a factor that can make or break a photo.

Any student of photography covets the golden hour, that time around sunrise and sunset when light softens and sets a magical mood and tone.

A gravel road shoots off 220th Street East southeast of Faribault.

Monday evening, driving to and from a friend’s rural acreage east of Faribault to gather buckets of rhubarb, moody skies and light drew me to raise my camera, to fire off a few rapid shots of the landscape.

A decaying farm site along 220th Street East.

This windmill and decaying barn and silo caught my eye along 220th Street East.

There was no time to pause and compose, only snap through the rolled down passenger side window of the van.

Back in town, that sweet sweet light, although fading, still mingled with hovering grey skies that threatened more rain.

Several blocks from my home, Willow Street intersects with Minnesota State Highway 60. To the left is the home, now a museum, of founding father, Alexander Faribault.

Several blocks from my home, Willow Street intersects with Minnesota State Highway 60, right, and Division Street, left. To the left is the home, now a museum, of founding father, Alexander Faribault.

Again, I lifted my camera, this time shooting through the windshield, to capture a few images of this place I’ve called home for 32 years.

A portion of historic downtown Faribault in the fading light of day.

Historic buildings define downtown Faribault. I love this downtown for its quaintness, its history, its small town feel (although Faribault, in my opinion, is not a small town with nearly 30,000 residents).

Historic buildings define the downtown area.

Historic buildings define downtown Faribault.

I often wonder why locals and outsiders seem not to value this historic district with the same enthusiasm shown to similar historic Minnesota communities like Stillwater, Red Wing and Hastings, even neighboring Northfield.

Such were my thoughts during the golden hour of sunset.

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Delhi: Little town on the Minnesota prairie June 4, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: Delhi, farming community, photo essay, prairie, Redwood County, rural Minnesota, small towns, southwestern Minnesota, travel

UNLESS YOU’RE A LOCAL or a native, you likely bypass the small towns which sit off county roads, tucked away from trafficked highways that take time-pressed travelers from destination to destination.

Nearing Delhi at the intersections of Redwood County Road 9 and 6.

On a recent trip back to my native southwestern Minnesota prairie, my husband and I sidetracked off our usual route along State Highway 19 between Belview and Redwood Falls to follow Redwood County Road 9 to Delhi.

Decades have passed since I visited Delhi, at the intersection of county roads 9 and 6.

A sweet, well-cared for home in Delhi.

Most would surmise there’s not much in Delhi. That is until you look and consider that some 70 folks call this rural farming community home.

Another cute home with lovely landscaping that includes field rocks.

Home.

In need of a little TLC, both home and car.

While some residents care about their properties with well-tended houses, others show less interest in maintenance. That is not uncommon in small towns. Or perhaps such neglect is more noticeable with fewer houses.

Parked along the tracks just off Redwood County Road 6 west of Delhi.

Like so many small towns along the railroad line, this settlement once boomed. Information published in The History of Redwood County, Volume 1, states that Delhi was platted in 1884, shortly after the railroad came through the area. Alfred M. Cook, a builder and owner of a flour mill in neighboring Redwood Falls, named Delhi, according to Minnesota place name info on the Minnesota Historical Society website. He came to the area from Delhi, Ohio.

The front window of the 1910 Delhi State Bank is now mostly boarded with a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Delhi State Bank, built of brick in 1910, and now abandoned and apparently last used as a church, shows me that folks once believed in this place.

Driving toward downtown.

Not that they don’t anymore. But like all too many prairie communities, Delhi has mostly withered away.

Grain trucks parked near the grain bins.

Many other businesses once operated here, but they are no more, with the noticeable exception of a grain business. Delhi, in the late 1800s, housed general, drug, hardware and lumber stores, a hotel, a railroad and telegraph agent, a feed mill, a blacksmith shop, a farm implement business and more.

What a lovely church this must be inside as evidenced from the exterior.

What a lovely church this must be (or once was) inside as evidenced from the exterior.

The Presbyterian church today appears shuttered.

Evidence of faith in former bank and bin.

Despite all of this and the inclination to despair, I cannot help but admire the determination of Delhi to cling to the land. Prairie roots run deep.

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The death of a barn June 3, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: agriculture, barns, Delhi, farming, rural Minnesota

I’VE VIEWED PLENTY of time-worn, dilapidated barns in my travels through rural regions.

But never have I spotted one quite like this mammoth barn along Redwood County Road 6 south of Delhi. For those of you unfamiliar with Delhi, a community of some 70 residents in southwestern Minnesota, the name is pronounced Dell-hi. Not (New) Delly, as in the capital city of India.

The state of this barn struck me for its final fortitude, its seeming determination to hang on even with bones exposed, its very soul ripped away.

One can only imagine the previous condition of this barn, the proud farmer who walked through her doors, the cows, and perhaps swine, once housed inside.

Now, instead, a black hole marks a side doorway, a front doorway is barricaded by wood, the hay mow door hangs like a loose tooth.

Heaps of hay still remain, heaved there years ago by some hardworking farmer.

I am always saddened by this decay of an agrarian structure.

What stories does this building hold? Who labored here? What brought about this barn’s demise, marked now by a grain truck gravestone?

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Seeding the harvest in southern Minnesota May 30, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: agriculture, Belview, Delhi, farming, Mankato, rural Minnesota, spring planting

Between Morgan and New Ulm, Minnesota.

AS MOODY GREY SKIES—the kind that inspire a poet to pen poetry—loomed in southern Minnesota on Sunday afternoon, farmers hastened in the fields.

Near Mankato, Minnesota.

You could almost sense the urgency so late in the planting season.

Near Mankato.

It was as if time pressed above the earth, folded in the fabric of draping clouds.

Near Mankato.

Below, farmers stitched seeds into soil.

Near Delhi.

Hope of harvest in the prairie land.

Between Belview and Delhi.

The promise of spring fulfilled.

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Planting season in southern Minnesota May 28, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: agriculture, farming, Mankato, New Ulm, rural Minnesota, southern Minnesota, spring planting

IF THEY WEREN’T WORKING the land, farmers along a stretch between Mankato and west of New Ulm were preparing to plant on Saturday.

Everywhere, these tenders of the earth steered tractors along roadways and through fields, hurrying to prep the soil and seed crops during this year’s delayed planting season.

Seed bags topped wagons and pick-up trucks.

Mammoth tractors pulling equally mammoth implements crept along rural roadways.

Sky and land swallowed small scale tractors.

On a rare occasion dust flew in the field.

And I took it all in, savoring this sweet time in the growing cycle as only one born and raised on a farm can.

This place, this land, still claims my heart each spring, each summer, each fall, through the seasons of planting and growing and harvest.

Photos were taken along U.S. Highway 14 and along Brown County Road 29.
© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

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Observing Memorial Day at a rural Minnesota cemetery May 27, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:40 AM
Tags: Cannon City, Cannon City Cemetery, holiday, life, Memorial Day, Memorial Day program, patriotism, rural Minnesota, veterans

Folks begin arriving for the 2 p.m. Memorial Day program at the Cannon City Cemetery.

NEARLY 100 YEARS AGO, students paraded with lilac wreaths from their country school a short distance to the Cannon City Cemetery to honor the war dead.

The cemetery fence decorated for Memorial Day.

Song sheets are distributed to those in attendance and then collected at the end of the program.

Cannon City resident Bob Lewis, a veteran, arrives for the service. Later Bob will share info about the Rice County Drum and Bugle Corps.

Cannon City resident Bob Lewis, a veteran, arrives for the service. Later Bob, a former bugler, will share info about the Rice County Drum and Bugle Corps.

Today there is no “Death March” music, only patriotic songs. There is no school picnic like that after the long ago Memorial Day parade to this rural Rice County, Minnesota, cemetery on the edge of Cannon City some five miles northeast of Faribault.

Off to pick dandelions among tombstones.

But the children still come, some attentive to the ceremony led by Mel Sanborn, others darting, this Memorial Day, among tombstones to gather bouquets of dandelions. Later, they will toss dandelions into a flower bed ringing the American flag and carry other clutches home. It is a sweet moment to witness.

The program opens with singing of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Steve Bonde is on the bugle.

Musicians’ song sheets.

Jean Pederson listens after reciting “In Flanders Fields.”

I am here, an observer and a participant in this grassroots patriotic ceremony which, year after year, remains mostly the same—singing of “The Star Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee;” names of the war dead buried here read; recitation of “In Flanders Fields” and “The Pledge of Allegiance;” and reading of “The Gettysburg Address; and the bugler sounding “Taps.”

Kathleen Kanne reads Walt Whitman’s poem, “Reconciliation.”

This year, the presentation of Walt Whitman’s “Reconciliation,” the reading of a patriotic-themed newspaper clipping, singing of “Fightin’ Side of Me,” a brief history given of Rice County’s Drum and Bugle Corps and the bugling of “Revelry” are added to the semi formal ceremony.

A soldier’s grave, flagged for Memorial Day.

Musician Don Chester leads the musical selections along with his wife, Judy.

Between the tombstones, below the flag…

Steve Bonde ends the program by playing “Revelry.”

This all presented on the grassy space between aged tombstones in the shadow of the American flag audibly flapping in the breeze. The comparison is not lost on me as Jean Pederson tells of poppies gently swaying in the wind of Flanders Fields.

FYI: To read previous posts on Memorial Day observances at the Cannon City Cemetery, click here and then click here.

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Working the land May 20, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: agriculture, farming, photo essay, rural Minnesota, spring planting, travel

A farmer in the field Sunday evening along Minnesota State Highway 60 between Zumbrota and Faribault.

THE EARTHY SCENT of freshly-turned soil wafted through the vents of the van Sunday afternoon as my husband and I traveled through southeastern Minnesota after a weekend trek to eastern Wisconsin.

A ribbon of grass runs through a field along Interstate 90 in southeastern Minnesota.

I love that smell of spring, of cold earth warming to the sun after a long winter.

Heading to or from the field on a frontage road along Interstate 90 in southeastern Minnesota on Sunday afternoon.

Planting’s been delayed because of excessive rainfall, as noted by muddy fields, water in road ditches, and by high water in streams, rivers and lakes in many areas. We drove 600 miles round trip along Minnesota State Highway 60, US Highway 52, a lengthy stretch of Interstate 90, onto a few miles of Interstate 94 and then across central Wisconsin on State Highway 21 from Tomah to Oshkosh and finally onto US Highway 41 north on Saturday and then back the next day.

Doing field work the old fashioned way in Amish country near Coloma, Wisconsin.

On Saturday morning, except for a team of horses working the land in central Wisconsin, in the heart of Amish country, we noticed little movement in fields. In extreme southeastern Minnesota, though, farmers had already been out working the ground.

Working the land somewhere along Interstate 90 in southeastern Minnesota.

In the field somewhere along Interstate 90 in southeastern Minnesota.

By Sunday, with a day of sunshine and warmer temps, we noticed more earth turned, the blackness distinguishable from soil exposed to harsh winter weather.

Working the land in southeastern Minnesota.

In the field in southeastern Minnesota on Sunday.

Our farmer fathers would be proud of my husband and me for, after all these years away from the farm, still noticing the progress, or lack thereof, of field work.

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Rural patriotism May 19, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:46 AM
Tags: agriculture, Brown County Minnesota, farm buildings, farm sites, farming, Morgan, New Ulm, patriotism, photo essay, rural life, rural Minnesota

Along Brown County Road 29 between New Ulm and Morgan, Minnesota.

Along Brown County Road 29 between New Ulm and Morgan, MN.

RED

Along U.S. Highway 14 between Mankato and Nicollet, MN.

WHITE

Along Brown County Road 29 west of New Ulm, MN.

AND (touches of) BLUE.

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The changing prairie view May 14, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: Cap X2020 transmission line, Harvestore silos, opinion, power lines, rural landscape, rural Minnesota, southwestern Minnesota, thoughts

Newly-erected power lines, part of the Cap X2020 transmission line project northwest of Morgan along Minnesota State Highway 67, run seemingly into forever.

I FEEL ABOUT MONSTROSITY power lines as I do about wind turbines. I don’t appreciate their visual impact upon the land.

These towering giants, in my opinion, mar the landscape, distract and detract, cause me to feel small, unsettled and insignificant in their presence.

A farm site along Minnesota Highway 67 seems so small in comparison to the new transmission power poles.

A farm site along Minnesota State Highway 67 dwarfed by a new transmission power pole.

Perhaps it’s just the southwestern Minnesota prairie rooted girl in me who values her horizon wide and broad and vertically interrupted only by grain elevators, water towers, silos and groves of trees.

Old style power lines still run along Brown County Road 29 between New Ulm and Morgan.

I wonder if my grandparents felt the same about the early rural electric co-op posts and lines strung along gravel township roads, the cement stave silos popping up on farms…old water-pumping windmills abandoned.

A cluster of Harvestore silos define a farm northeast of Vesta along Minnesota State Highway 19.

I felt a certain discontent when blue Harvestore silos began soldiering into southwestern Minnesota decades ago. They lacked personality and represented, to me, the demise of the small family farm.