southwestern Minnesota | Minnesota Prairie Roots

Winter storm on the prairie December 1, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 11:59 AM
Tags: childhood memories, family farm, Minnesota, photos, snow, snowstorm, southwestern Minnesota, storm, Vesta, weather, winter

Snow blows across the driveway on the farm where I grew up near Vesta.

WHEN I HEARD yesterday of five-foot snowdrifts in the Springfield area, west of New Ulm, I simply had to get my hands on some photos from southwestern Minnesota. Honestly, unless you’ve lived on the flat, open, wind-swept prairie, you really can’t comprehend the ferocity of a Minnesota winter.

In that part of the state, November exited with a strong winter storm that whipped snow into hard, sculpted drifts, made roads nearly impassable if not impassable and closed schools on Monday and Tuesday.

Snowdrifts, some six feet high, sculpted around the grove and bins on the home place.

Although I have not lived on the prairie for nearly four decades, memories of winters there are as fresh as the five, up to 10, inches of snow that fell there.

I won’t tell you that I walked uphill two miles to school in snowdrifts eight feet deep. But I will tell you that when I attended junior high school in Redwood Falls some 20 miles from my farm home, we had a difficult time getting to school one winter. Because of all the snow and poor road conditions, buses would not make their rural routes. One bus left the cafe in my hometown of Vesta each morning bound for Redwood Falls. If you could get into town, then you could go to school. For my brother and me, that journey into Vesta was via an open cab John Deere tractor driven one mile down a county road by our dad. After school he would drive back in to town and bring us home.

I also recall during high school once riding home on a single school bus crammed with students who would normally fill two buses. The driver opted to take all of the Vesta area kids to Vesta (not home) in one bus as weather conditions were so poor. The bus crept along the highway with one student standing just inside the open bus door guiding the driver in near-visibility conditions.

The often brutal winters on the prairie also necessitated designated “snow homes,” homes in town where country kids could stay if snow stranded them in town. Although I had snow homes every year from junior high until I graduated in 1974, I never once had to stay at one. My siblings did.

Even though the prairie winters were harsh, as a kid, I loved winter. Rock-hard snowdrifts that circled the granary and the house and the barn and the snow piles formed by my dad with the bucket of his John Deere tractor became treacherous mountains to explore. We drove our imaginary dog sleds there, played King of the Mountain, dug snow tunnels, slid in our sleds…

Winters were fun back then.

Wind-whipped snow drifts around the abandoned milkhouse and silo.

I’m certain, though, for my parents, winter must have been a lot of hard work—pushing all that snow from the driveway and yard to open a path for the milk truck, thawing frozen drinking cups and a frozen gutter cleaner, emptying the pot that served as our bathroom in the cold front porch…

All of these memories rushed back as I viewed the photos my niece Hillary took of this recent winter storm in southwestern Minnesota. Her images are from the farm where I grew up, the place of sweet memories and of long, cold, harsh winters.

Snow began falling Monday afternoon in the Vesta area, causing low visibility and poor driving conditions as snow covered roadways, according to my niece.

Snow swirled into drifts in the farmyard on the farm of my childhood.

Snowdrifts formed at the edge of the yard, next to the grove.

IF YOU HAVE WINTER memories or stories to share, submit a comment to Minnesota Prairie Roots. I’d like to hear yours.

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Returning to my Minnesota prairie roots September 12, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:58 PM
Tags: agriculture, barns, blogging, Faribault Daily News, feature stories, Minnesota, Minnesota Prairie Roots, photography, southwestern Minnesota, The Dam Store, the prairie

THIS AFTERNOON, my husband, son and I returned from a weekend trip to my beloved prairie, southwestern Minnesota. The journey brought stops along the way and back—one which stretched into a 2-hour lunch at The Dam Store, a food/live bait/tackle place just outside Rapidan near Mankato.

This homey joint, which sits next to the Rapidan Dam on the scenic Blue Earth River, advertises the “BEST DAM HAMBURGERS AND PIE BY A DAM SITE.” That’s no lie. But you won’t read about it here. I’m planning a magazine feature story on this kitschy 100-year-old café/store. That explains the lengthy lunch hour (or rather two), of a cheeseburger and fries and dam good homemade chocolate caramel pecan pie, that evolved into interviews and photo-taking.

You'll find great hamburgers and homemade pies at The Dam Store, an unassuming century old eatery.

As we traveled west toward our destination in rural Lamberton in Redwood County, I filled my camera with images from the road, setting a fast shutter speed and zooming down the passenger-side car window or aiming through the windshield whenever a photo op arose.

All along that drive, I gawked at the sky, the wide, wide prairie sky that I can never get enough of no matter how many times I view it.

Likewise, I cannot get enough of this land where I grew up. Here the soil and sky and wind taught me how to see and smell and feel and listen, and because of that, how to write with a detailed, grassroots style.

Returning to southwestern Minnesota renews my gratefulness for roots that reach deep into the earth. Even though I left this land 36 years ago, I remain forever connected to the prairie, “home” in my heart.

Driving U.S. Highway 71 in southwestern Minnesota, you can see a sky and land that stretches beyond forever.

Empty corn cribs on the prairie await another harvest. Or perhaps they are no longer used.

Even a collapsed barn possesses a certain beauty on the prairie. While I saw many barns in disrepair or falling apart, I also saw many that still stand, strong and proud in this wind-swept land.

Sheep and a horse graze in a roadside pasture.

A lone silo leaves me wondering, "What happened to the barn?"

(I shot the landscape photos while we were traveling along U.S. Highway 71 between Minnesota Highway 30 and U.S. Highway 14 in southwestern Minnesota on Saturday.)

UPON OUR RETURN to southeastern Minnesota, I grabbed today’s Faribault Daily News from the mailbox to find my photo, and a feature story about me, splashed across the front page. Several days ago reporter James Warden interviewed me about my blogging.

I’ll be honest and tell you that I’d been dodging the interview with James because I’m a bit uncomfortable in the spotlight. I much prefer the other side of the notebook and camera.

Even though I would have preferred my story tucked discreetly inside the pages of the newspaper, I cannot contain my enthusiasm for James’ reporting and writing. He captured the essence of me and my blogging style by using words and descriptions and details that would be fitting of a Minnesota Prairie Roots blog post.

If you’d like to check out journalist James’ take on me and my blogging, click here.

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West of New Ulm June 15, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:12 AM
Tags: southwestern Minnesota

Traveling along Redwood County Highway 10 between Vesta (my hometown) and Lucan in southwestern Minnesota, a land defined by open spaces, big skies, farm fields and small towns.

DOES SOUTHERN MINNESOTA exist west of New Ulm?

Of course it does, you say. Just look at a map, follow a road west.

Well, folks, I can tell you that for many Minnesotans, southern Minnesota ends at New Ulm, or even Mankato some 25 miles to the east.

I’ve drawn this conclusion after decades of trying to explain where I grew up. Typically, I say that my hometown lies half-way between Redwood Falls and Marshall on State Highway 19.

All too often, I’ll get a blank stare, meaning I must resort to a more detailed explanation that Vesta is west of Redwood Falls, which is west of New Ulm, which is west of Mankato.

Then maybe, just maybe, they’ll understand.

Minnesotans unfamiliar with the southwestern part of our state really ought to spend some time there, in this land of wide open spaces and endless skies, of farm fields and small towns, of grain elevators and water towers that can be seen from miles away.

I’m proud to claim roots in the southwestern Minnesota prairie. My blog name, Minnesota Prairie Roots, honors the land that shaped who I became as a person and a writer.

Although I don’t get back to the prairie as often as I’d like, I’ve never lost my connection to this place. I appreciate the solitude, the wind, the sky—especially the skies—the rich black soil, the weathering red barns, even the cemetery where my father and other family members lie buried on a rare prairie hilltop that overlooks the countryside.

I have not lived in southwestern Minnesota for nearly three decades. But I’ll always consider this land, this place my kids call “the middle of nowhere,” my home.

Well, I rather like “the middle of nowhere,” this Minnesota that lies west of New Ulm, which lies west of Mankato.