Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Snow in Minnesota, again February 20, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 1:43 PM
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UP UNTIL ABOUT 45 minutes ago, snow was falling fast and furious here in Faribault, at a rate of an inch an hour.

Visibility had dwindled to a block in town. As for the country, I wouldn’t even want to guess.

But now, shortly after noon, the snow flakes aren’t as thick or as heavy and conditions have improved. Perhaps this is simply a lull in a storm predicted to drop up to 15 inches of snow here in southeastern Minnesota, more in southwestern Minnesota, “more” being 20 inches.

My area of Minnesota is currently under a winter storm warning until noon Monday.

In southwestern Minnesota, where my mom and other family members live, a blizzard warning has been issued. Snow and winds have created difficult driving conditions and low visibility on the prairie, according to information I just read on the Minnesota Department of Transportation website. I expect that snow gates, if they have not already been lowered across roads like Minnesota State Highway 19, will soon be put in place. That means you do not travel those roadways without the risk of a hefty fine. Prairie people, for the most part, understand the dangers of traveling in a blizzard and stay put.

I expect to spend my day holed up at home, wrapping up writing projects for Minnesota Moments’ spring issue. It’s a good day to do that and a good way to avoid working on income tax. I detest rounding up tax information and, this year, have put off the awful numbers task longer than normal.

On the way home from church, my husband and I stopped at the grocery store, a busy place at 10 a.m. As we entered the store, we were greeted by a shopper who just smiled and said, “Here we go again.” He was, of course, referring to the snow.

Then, a half hour later as we exited the store with our bread and other food packed into three bags, a cart-pusher, who was struggling to gather grocery carts in the snowy parking lot, declared, “Winter all over again.”

See the common word in their statements? That would be “again.”

Yup, here we go again.

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR reports about weather conditions in your area. So submit a comment.

 

I APOLOGIZE for the lack of current photos, but I am without my Canon for a week while it is being cleaned.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Snow peas at the farmers’ market February 18, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:45 AM
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Faribault Farmers' Market sign, photographed during the summer.

MY HUSBAND AND I HAD some fun recently at our teen’s expense.

We were talking about food samples at the grocery store and I was raving about the bread. My spouse was telling me about the fish from Vietnam and how a shopper declared he wouldn’t eat anything from that country because of the parasites. I’m guessing he was a Vietnam War veteran.

Our son caught snippets of our conversation, remaining checked out for most of the exchange as is typical of him. Apparently any words said by the parents are not worthy of his full attention.

That is why, whenever he jumps into the middle of a discussion, his statements usually make no sense.

“What, you got bread at the farmer’s market?” he interjected into our grocery store sample conversation.

Now if we were teenagers, my husband and I would have rolled our eyes. But we didn’t.

One of us responded with something like, “You think there’s a farmers’ market in winter?” Well, maybe in some communities, but not in Central Park in Faribault, Minnesota, in February, even if the temp soared to nearly 50 degrees recently.

Besides, we added, it’s not like the local vendors would have any fresh fruits and vegetables to sell.

Then my husband, who possesses a sense of humor that balances my seriousness, thought for a moment.

Of course, he said, they could sell iceberg lettuce and snow peas, and, I added, freeze pops and snow cones.

And, oh, yeah, the Dairy Queen folks could peddle Blizzards.

By that time, the teen had already begun checking out. I could see it in his rolling eyes, in the dismissive shake of his head, in the vibe that indicated he thought his parents were nuts.

We just laughed.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

February heat wave in Minnesota February 17, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:50 PM
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SEVENTY-FOUR DEGREES and sunny in St. Louis.

Eighty degrees and sunny in Florida.

Foggy and 40-something-degrees in Minnesota.

Thursday held the promise of another warm day in Minnesota. And by warm, I mean anything above freezing. I expected temperatures to reach near the predicted 60 degrees here in southeastern Minnesota. But I had to settle for the 40s, primarily, I think, because the fog failed to lift until late in the day.

But after this long, snowy winter, I’ll take it…because tomorrow winter returns with colder temps and snow on the way for the weekend.

For now, though, for today, patches of grass edge snow banks that are shrinking in February warmth.

Winter, spring and fall. Four seasons captured in this image I took along the edge of my driveway Thursday.

Puddles form in the low dips of the sidewalk. Mud sucks at my boots as I pick up building debris in my yard. Neighborhood children ride their bikes and zoom on their scooters.

Neighbor kids traded winter coats for sweatshirts and rode their scooters and bikes after school Thursday.

In reality, February is still winter and not the spring I await.

I need only click on my computer and open my e-mail for a reality check.

“As for spring, feel free to head our way. It’s 74 degrees and sunny here today, guaranteed to melt any snow you still have hanging around in Minnesota!” writes my editor from St. Louis, Missouri. I send the e-mail to “trash.”

Click.

I can’t escape the taunting, the flaunting. My oldest daughter sends me a text message from Florida, where she arrived last night. “…soon we will go to the beach…it is around 80.”

Click.

A vintage lawn chair on my backyard patio remains immersed in a sea of snow. The snow level has decreased considerably, though. Only the tip of this chair has been visible most of the winter.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Harvesting ice in Waseca February 15, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:06 AM
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ACCORDING TO KLETSCHER family history, my dad and Uncle Mike harvested ice from the Redwood River in Marshall many, many decades ago.

I learned that historical tidbit last year from my Uncle Merlin, who helped me with questions for a family reunion trivia competition. My dad never spoke of this winter work, once common in Minnesota. He died in 2003, Mike in 2001, so I’ll never know anything more about their ice harvesting experience.

 

Harvesting ice on Clear Lake.

On Wednesday, February 16, anyone interested in learning about this winter activity should head over to Waseca for the 10th annual Ice Harvest from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at Clear Lake Park.

There visitors will participate in the traditions of ice scoring, cutting, and then storing blocks of harvested ice, in sawdust, in an ice house.

Local students will be there, too, joining in sledding, sleigh rides, snowshoeing, wood cutting and more.

The Waseca County Historical Society, FarmAmerica and AKorn Productions are hosting the event. For more information, contact the WCHS at (507) 835-7700 or go to www.historical.waseca.mn.us.

READERS, IF YOU have stories to share about harvesting ice, submit a comment. I’d like to hear more about this winter activity.

Photo courtesy of the Waseca County Historical Society

 

Ugly chapped hands February 13, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 12:42 PM
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My not-so-beautiful left hand.

THIS IS THE HAND of a writer. My left hand. I would show you my right hand, too, but I can’t hold my camera and photograph my right hand with my left hand. Never mind.

I’m not showing you my appendage because it’s pretty. It’s not.

It’s really rather ugly. My right hand is worse, with cracks and dried spots of blood edging split skin.

The dry, cold air of winter has been rough on my skin. Cleaning a paintbrush with mineral spirits more than a dozen times during the past two weeks has added to the epidermis damage.

I doubt my hands have looked this bad since I was a child. Back in the day, back on the farm, my hands cracked and bled every winter. That was a result of working in the brutal outdoors, protecting my hands with only a thin pair of brown cotton chore gloves as I fed calves and cows, bedded straw and pushed manure into barn gutters.

Dipping my hands into buckets of hot water to mix milk replacer for the calves temporarily warmed numbed fingers. But it also caused them to chap.

My mom offered a solution: Corn Huskers lotion

Oh, how I detested that slimy, clear gel that she insisted we slather across our skin. I’m not here to endorse or not endorse any hand care products, but this lotion did nothing to improve the condition of my chapped hands.

Only the arrival of warmer weather, of spring, signaled relief from the itching, bleeding and cracking.

So, now, like decades ago, I am awaiting the spring renewal and healing of my hands.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Obsessed with oranges January 29, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:41 AM
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Ever since my friend Kathy told me about orange "smiles," I've eaten oranges this way. No struggling to remove the peeling. Just slice and eat. The fruit easily separates from the rind.

EVER CRAVE A SPECIFIC food for days, even weeks?

Lately, I’ve craved oranges.

Now that’s a healthy alternative to the chips and chocolate I sometimes often desire.

While I can’t pinpoint the exact reasons for my orange obsession, I can theorize. This has been a long and snowy winter in Minnesota. When I see and feel and taste an orange, I temporarily escape to a warm, sunny climate like Florida or California. Seriously. If you live in Minnesota, you know exactly what I mean.

Keep sliced oranges handy in the fridge for a quick and healthy snack.

And then there’s the color. Orange. It’s sunny, bright, uplifting. After way too many wake-up-in-the-dark and dark-by-five-o’clock days, I need an orb of cheerfulness to stave off a potential case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Orange is, after all, opposite blue the blues on the color wheel.

Juicy oranges quench thirst and provide Vitamin C.

Oranges also quench my seemingly endless thirst. That thirst, I concluded, is related to my dried out skin which is caused by the furnace running too much and drying out the air during these endless winter days. True or not, a juicy orange hits the spot.

About now you’re probably thinking, what the heck, is this an advertisement for the California Citrus Growers Association or the Florida Orange Growers?

No, rather these are the musings of a winter-weary Minnesotan who tastes summer in an orange.

P.S. I will accept any and all free shipments of oranges to my snow-encased Faribault home. Thank you.

 

Yes, I became obsessed also with photographing oranges. But this fruit photographs so well, don't you think?

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Only in Minnesota in winter January 24, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 5:23 PM
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FORGIVE ME if you’re not from Minnesota. But we Minnesotans obsess about the weather, especially in winter. We have good reason. With snow and cold hanging around for six months or more, the weather definitely impacts our daily lives.

Take my life.

Sunday night my husband grilled chicken and potatoes in the Weber grill atop the snow mountain that was once a backyard patio. The temperature hovered around 10 degrees.

This morning, when my 16-year-old left for school, the temperature registered 15 degrees. That’s 40 degrees warmer than the minus 25-degree reading on Friday morning when he refused to walk eight blocks to school.

The past two days I’ve had an upstairs window open with a fan blowing hot air outside. Sounds crazy, I know. But I’ve been staining and varnishing window trim on the second floor and the fumes were getting to me. I had a headache. My mouth tasted like stain and varnish. Not healthy. So for some six hours, that window remained open on Sunday and is still open today.

But, hey, the temperature this afternoon is a balmy 28 degrees, so it’s not like I’m allowing sub-zero air into the house.

WHAT TYPES of crazy things have you done in the cold of winter?

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Too cold to walk to school January 22, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:21 AM
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Minnesota Highway 30 in southwestern Minnesota, photographed last winter.

MY SON STAYED HOME from school yesterday. He refused to walk the eight or so blocks to Faribault High School.

I didn’t push the issue. The temperature outside was a bone-chilling, brutal, bitter 25 degrees below zero. Factor in the windchill and the air felt even colder.

I suggested he call a friend for a ride because our car, which has been causing us some problems lately, wouldn’t start—again. And my husband was long gone to work in Northfield with the van.

But my 16-year-old, who isn’t exactly a social butterfly, didn’t know who to call.

So I called the school, explained the situation and he got an excused absence. My son excels academically, so I wasn’t too worried about him missing a day of classes.

I wondered, only briefly, if I qualified as a bad parent by allowing my boy to skip school. But that was simply a fleeting thought as I considered whether I would walk eight blocks in such frigid temperatures. I wouldn’t.

Curious as to exactly how low air temperatures and windchills plunged in southern and central Minnesota from Thursday into Friday morning, I logged onto the National Weather Service Chanhassen office.

Morris, on the wind-swept prairie, recorded the lowest windchill reading, minus 46 degrees at 4 a.m. (I would later learn that International Falls in northern Minnesota recorded an air temperature of 46 degrees below zero.)

Redwood Falls, which lies 20 miles east of my hometown of Vesta, had a minimum windchill reading of minus 39 degrees at 6 a.m. The low temperature was 24 degrees below zero.

Over in Waseca, where two of my sisters and their families live, conditions were a tad warmer with a low windchill of minus 36 degrees at 3 a.m.

Here in Faribault, we had a minus 33 degree windchill reading at 12 a.m. Our lowest temp registered at 29 degrees below zero.

While windchills and air temps vary from one part of Minnesota to the other, the results are the same—it’s simply too darned cold to walk eight blocks to school, or anywhere.

CLICK HERE for a listing of National Weather Service Chanhassen office windchill and temperature readings for central and southern Minnesota.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Summer is only five months away January 21, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:20 AM
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ON BRUTAL, double digit subzero days like today, when the cold invades your lungs, when tires crunch against brittle snow, when the cold air cuts sharp like a knife, when cars groan, when schools start two hours late, we Minnesotans wonder if winter will ever end.

It will.

In five or six or seven months we’ll have forgotten the cold and the snow and the ice and the long, dark days of winter as we enjoy…

a summer evening at a county fair…


corn-on-the-cob, garden-fresh potatoes and grilled pork chops…


the dog days of summer…


picking strawberries at a Minnesota berry farm…


native prairie coneflowers in bloom…


the sweet scent of freshly-mown alfalfa…


fishing from a dock or a boat…

instead of on the surface of a frozen lake.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling


 

The winters of my childhood January 20, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:56 AM
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REMEMBER THE WINTERS of fun?

You could hardly wait to rush out the door and slog through freshly-fallen snow, plowing furrows for a game of fox-and-goose.

You could barely wait for Dad to push bucketsful of snow from the farmyard with his tractor and loader into mountains suitable for scaling.

 

Three of my younger siblings and I pose atop a snow mountain our dad created in our southwestern Minnesota farmyard in this photo dated February 1967.

You excitedly dug into the sides of snowdrifts, hard as bedrock, to carve out snow caves.

You raced across the tops of those snowdrifts, up and down and all around the world of white.

 

Our southwestern Minnesota farmyard is buried in snowdrifts in this March 1965 image. My mom is holding my youngest sister as she stands by the car parked next to the house. My other sister and two brothers and I race down the snowdrifts.

You packed snow into hard balls, aiming for siblings, wiggling and screaming at the brother who grabbed your collar and stuffed ice-cold snow down the back of your neck.

And when the snow was the perfect consistency, you rolled and packed it into big balls, shoving and grunting and straining, working together with classmates or siblings to build a snowman or a snow fort.

Such were the winters of my childhood on a southwestern Minnesota farm. Fierce. Brutal. But, mostly, fun.

Today, living through one of our snowiest winters in forever, I am reminded of those childhood winters. I would be wise to remember the fun I once experienced on the cold, snowy, wind-swept Minnesota prairie.

 

This huge, hard-as-rock snowdrift blocked our farm driveway in this March 1965 photo. My uncle drove over from his nearby farm to help open the drive so the milk truck could reach the milkhouse. That's my mom and five of us kids atop the drift.

WHAT ARE YOUR MEMORIES of childhood winters?

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling