southwestern Minnesota | Minnesota Prairie Roots

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

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: Belview, food, Grandview Valley Winery, historical markers, landscape, Minnesota River valley, pizza, southwestern Minnesota, travel, vineyard, wine, winery

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.

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

Pause to read the Boiling Spring historic marker.

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.

This is good pasture land.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Comments (26)

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.

Comments (37)

I’m not a tree hugger, but… June 2, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: Cottonwood, nature, prairie, southwestern Minnesota, tree hugger, trees, Vesta

MY AUNT JEANETTE has been duly informed.

The ancient cottonwood stands on the north edge of Vesta.

If she ever attempts to have the massive/towering/gigantic cottonwood in her yard cut down, I will be right there hugging that tree.

Now I am not a tree hugger in the true definition of a tree hugger. I would not scamper onto the limb of a tree to prevent its removal. For one thing, I am not agile like a squirrel. Secondly, I am not an outspoken, protesting type person, at least not in public.

But I did protest privately to my aunt when she mentioned cutting down that beautiful sprawling cottonwood gracing her yard.

The tree is messy, she explained, wondering then if I’d like to clean up the cottony seeds and sticky bud capsules dropped onto her lawn.

Point taken.

Yet, this cottonwood deserves special consideration given it’s likely the oldest tree in my southwestern Minnesota prairie hometown. It’s certainly the biggest in girth and the tallest tree in this community of some 320.

I can imagine the early settlers arriving in this mostly treeless land, wind-bent prairie grasses stretching for miles before them. And then, in the distance, the shimmering leaves of a cottonwood.

Or perhaps one of them brought a cottonwood seedling here, planted it on the north edge of this new prairie town.

Decades later, a tire swing looped by a rope to a limb, the sturdy cottonwood still stands strong against the vast prairie sky in my beloved hometown.

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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.

Wind turbines in extreme southwestern Minnesota. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo, July 2013.

These are my thoughts as I travel through my native prairie today. Progress does not always please me. Visually or otherwise.

(This post is cross posted at streets.mn.)

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Rural driveway May 8, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: agriculture, farming, landscape, Morgan, photo essay, rural scene, southwestern Minnesota

I KEEP FLIPPING between the three photos.

Original.

Edited.

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…

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Bringing the magic of prom to a Minnesota nursing home May 6, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: aging, Belview, life, nursing home, Parkview Home, prom, southwestern Minnesota, teenagers, thoughts

TIS PROM SEASON in Minnesota, that annual rite of spring which throws teenage girls into a spin over finding just the right dress, getting a fabulous up-do, planning photo sessions and doing whatever to create the perfect evening.

That’s all delightful, to live in a fairytale world.

But what a group of girls in rural southwestern Minnesota did on the day of their high school prom impresses me more than all the magical glitz and glam.

They took the time last weekend to share prom with the residents of a small town nursing home.

This my mother, who recently moved into Parkview Home in Belview, shared with me during our weekly Sunday evening phone conversation.

If those teens could have eavesdropped on our exchange, they would know just how happy they made my mom by stopping at their workplace before prom to show off their Cinderella selves.

Mom didn’t comment specifically on the dresses, although she did on the “fancy hair.”

And, she noted, some of the girls brought their dates, who, she laughed, looked a bit bored and “were probably wondering when they could leave.”

I don’t doubt her observation. Physically Mom is limited in her abilities. But mentally she is still, as they say, sharp as a tack.

This isn’t about my mother, though, who also profusely praised those prom-goers as kind and thoughtful.

Rather, this is about these young women and, yes, their dates, too. I am impressed by their care, kindness and generosity of spirit. They could have gone on their way, without a thought of stopping at Parkview. But they did. And for that, this daughter is grateful.

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A Minnesota prairie sunset May 5, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: nature, photo essay, prairie, southwestern Minnesota, sunset, Vesta

MY HUSBAND SCURRIED back to my mother’s house, told me to grab my camera and hurry.

And hasten we did. Between her house and the neighbors, along the grass alley a block. Turn west at my uncle and aunt’s house. Fast-walk another block.

Focus on the setting sun, the sky colored in layered shades of orange and yellow, pink and purple.

Oh, how I love the sunset on my beloved prairie in my hometown of Vesta, Minnesota.

I can never get enough of it.

This moment when day transitions into evening with beauty unequal on a land that stretches flat into forever.

Spectacular sunset, like poetry sweeping across the prairie sky.

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Awaiting planting in southwestern Minnesota April 23, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: agriculture, Brown County, farming, Redwood County, rural Minnesota, seasons, southwestern Minnesota, spring planting, thoughts

YOU CAN SEE IT, sense it, almost smell and hear it—the anticipation of spring planting.

Along Minnesota State Highway 19 between Redwood Falls and Vesta.

Bare and stubbled fields stretch for miles and miles across southwestern Minnesota, earth turned to the warming sun, awaiting the seeds of spring.

Only remnants of winter remain in scattered patches of road ditch snow.

Along Brown County 29 southeast of Morgan.

Along Brown County Road 29 southeast of Morgan.

On the edges of farm yards, tractors and planters and other implements sit, pulled from machine sheds. Greased. Oiled. Ready.

Farmers wait. Thawing spring rains fall. Frost rises from the ground. Drying winds whip across the land.

A child-size John Deere tractor photographed in my hometown of Vesta.

A child-size John Deere tractor photographed at dusk a yard away from a field in my hometown of Vesta.

And the days unfold into the season of renewal and hope and sowing of seeds.

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How the Minnesota prairie ignites my poetry April 2, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: Audrey Kletscher Helbling, Minnesota, National Poetry Month, poetry, poetry anthology, poets, SELCO, Southeastern Libraries Cooperating, southwestern Minnesota, writing

WHAT IS IT ABOUT POETRY?

Do you embrace or shun it? Write it or read it? Do you even care?

April marks National Poetry Month, a full thirty days initially established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 to focus on poetry.

My most recent poem, "The Farmer's Wife, Circa 1960, has been published in Poetic Strokes, an anthology published by Southeastern Libraries Cooperating. My poem was one of 23 selected from 196 submissions. The anthology should soon be available for check-out by library patrons in the SELCO system.

My most recent poem, “The Farmer’s Wife, Circa 1960,” has been printed in Poetic Strokes, an anthology published by Southeastern Libraries Cooperating. My poem was one of 23 selected from 196 submissions. The anthology should soon be available for check-out by library patrons in the SELCO system.

If you haven’t read poetry in years, I’d suggest you revisit poetry. Long gone, mostly, are rhymed verses.

Instead, you will find poets penning free verse that correlates to an abbreviated form of storytelling or a spilling of emotions or a harmony of detailed observations and more.

Despite differences in subject matter and style, poets share a common love of language. Alliterations. Personification. Similes and metaphors. Strong verbs.

Poetry, though it may appear easy to write, is not.

Details matter. Each word matters. The sound of a poem read aloud matters.

A poem I wrote about my mother, published in Poetic Strokes 2014.

A poem I wrote about my mother, just published in Poetic Strokes 2014, A Regional Anthology of Poetry from Southeastern Minnesota.

Every poet possesses a style. I’d define mine as rooted in my native southwestern Minnesota prairie. That stark land shaped me as a writer. My poems convey a strong sense of place, words wheeling like a prairie fire across the landscape of a page.

With so few distractions, the prairie presents an ideal environment to notice details—the grate of the wind, the lean of an outbuilding, the weathered grey of an abandoned farmhouse, the isolation, the calloused hands of a farmer, green corn leaves unfurling against rich black soil, the horizontal grid of township gravel roads, power lines stretching into infinity…

Those who’ve never lived on the prairie often fail to understand its beauty, dismissing it as the middle of nowhere.

But this land holds my heart and memories and continues to inspire me. Not all of my verse. But much of it.

Some of my prairie-inspired poetry includes:

“This Barn Remembers,” Lake Region Review #1
“Taking Lunch to the Men in the Field,” Lake Region Review #2
“Abandoned Barn,” The Talking Stick, Volume 20
“Broken,” The Talking Stick, Volume 21
“The Farmer’s Song,” The Talking Stick, Volume 22
“Prairie Sisters,” Poetic Strokes, Volume 2
“Abandoned Farmhouse,” Poetic Strokes, Volume 3
“Walking Beans,” Poetic Strokes, Volume 3
“A school without a library,” Poetic Strokes, Volume 4
“Saturday night baths,” Poetic Strokes, Volume 4
“Her Treasure,” 11^th annual Poet-Artist Collaboration, Crossings at Carnegie
“Lilacs”, 13^th annual Poet-Artist Collaboration, Crossings at Carnegie and honorable mention at 18^th annual Northwoods Art & Book Festival

And that poetry, my prairie poetry, has graced billboards, walls, recreational signage, galleries, and the pages of magazines, newspapers and anthologies.

Perhaps it’s time to consider compiling those poems and others into a collection. Thoughts?

Comments (27)

Kids helping kids celebrate on the prairie & more January 29, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:00 AM
Tags: birthday, birthday cake, charity, Cheerful Givers, childhood memories, donations, education, food shelf, giving, Mary and Martha's Pantry, southwestern Minnesota, Westbrook-Walnut Grove Public Schools

A CANDLE-TOPPED CAKE and a small toy may not seem like much to celebrate a birthday.

But to a child in need, both mean a great deal.

The birthday cake booklet from my childhood that Bernie found on eBay.

The booklet from which my siblings and I chose our birthday cake designs.

I understand. Growing up in a poor farm family on the southwestern Minnesota prairie, I did not receive gifts from my parents on my birthday. They had no money for such extras. Rather, my mom pulled out her 1959 General Foods Corporation’s Baker’s Coconut Animal Cut-Up Cake booklet so I could choose a design for my birthday cake.

My second birthday and the clown cake my mom made for me.

Me with the clown cake my mom made for my second birthday.

With those birthday memories on my mind, I was pleased to read Tuesday of a community service project undertaken by the Class of 2019 at Westbrook-Walnut Grove Public Schools, 45 minutes to the south of my hometown of Vesta.

Students are assembling birthday bags for Mary and Martha’s Pantry, a Westbrook-based food shelf, according to information in the January 28 issue of the Westbrook/Walnut Grove Charger Report on the school website.

Birthday gift bags will include cake mixes. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

The gift bags will include a cake mix, frosting, candles, a Happy Birthday banner and a small toy. How sweet is that? I love to learn about kids doing good.

SOME 170 MILES to the north and east in the Twin Cities metro, Eagan-based Cheerful Givers has provided birthday gift bags to 700,000-plus children during the past 20 years.

The non-profit’s mission is to “provide toy-filled gift bags to food shelves and shelters so that parents living in poverty can give their child a birthday gift. We believe this simple gesture boosts self-esteem, enhances self-worth, and strengthens bonds in families.”

And might I add, these bags filled with 10 items like books, plush toys, puzzles, stickers and more, simply make a child happy.

Two months from today, on Saturday, March 29, Cheerful Givers is celebrating its 20th birthday with “The Great Minnesota Birthday Party” in the Sear’s Court at the Mall of America. The goal of the 1 – 3 p.m. event is to raise $20,0000 and “to spread awareness of the need for all kids to be recognized with a gift on their birthday.”

Back on the prairie, far from the big city, teens at Westbrook-Walnut Grove Public Schools aren’t planning a fundraiser for the Mary and Martha’s Pantry birthday bags. Rather, they are dipping in to their own funds (or those of their parents and others) to purchase gift bag items. And in the process, they are learning, in my opinion, that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

FYI: To learn more about the W-WG school project, click here and see #13 in the Charger report.

To learn more about Eagan-based Cheerful Givers, click here.

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Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

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

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

I’m not a tree hugger, but… June 2, 2014

The changing prairie view May 14, 2014

Rural driveway May 8, 2014

Bringing the magic of prom to a Minnesota nursing home May 6, 2014

A Minnesota prairie sunset May 5, 2014

Awaiting planting in southwestern Minnesota April 23, 2014

How the Minnesota prairie ignites my poetry April 2, 2014

Kids helping kids celebrate on the prairie & more January 29, 2014

Follow Minnesota Prairie Roots via Email

An essay of barn photos & memories; In praise of preserving country churches; & Testing the track during a Soap Box Derby trial run in Faribault

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