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Tasty Theatrics of the Wine Cellar

By Bernie Hunhoff

The Wine Cellar is in the heart of Rapid City, near Art Alley, the Alex Johnson Hotel and Prairie Edge Trading Company.

Christy Land waited on her first table when she was 13 years old and living with her family in the small town of Philip, 85 miles northeast of Rapid City.

“Just slinging eggs and coffee for cowboys and ranchers,” she says.”I wasn’t even legal age for work, and I loved it. I saw it as such a great way to meet people.”

She soon found that knowing one’s way around a restaurant is economic security.”It’s what put me through college at Montana State, and it allowed me to travel across the country,” she says. It also brought her home.

Land was living in California at age 30 when she returned to Rapid City for a family wedding and realized,”that I was supposed to be here. I was never lonelier than when I was surrounded by 20 million people in the valley.”

Family, friends and West River’s outdoor landscapes had been calling.”I was planning to be here two weeks, but I never went back to California,” she says. She quickly found work at some of Rapid City’s top dining establishments, including Arrowhead Country Club and Botticelli’s.

In 2006 she began to serve diners at the Wine Cellar, a cozy restaurant on Sixth Street, midway between two downtown Rapid City icons, the Alex Johnson Hotel and Prairie Edge. Curt Pochardt started the Wine Cellar in 1998, along with an adjacent wine store. Customers could buy wine at Once Upon a Vine and bring the bottle next door to enjoy with their lunch and dinner. Pochardt sold the eatery to Pamela Light and Tammy Sellars in 2001.

“I was working here when my mom passed away,” Land says.”I didn’t know what to do and then one day Pamela suggested that I should buy the Wine Cellar. At first, I thought ‘no thank you,’ but my stepdad told me we should do this. He said it’ll be fun. We can work together.”

Her stepdad is Dave Hirning, a longtime Black Hills contractor.”I think it was perhaps his way of making sure I had a career and wasn’t just galavanting around the country,” she laughs.

Christy Land credits her stepfather Dave Hirning for the restaurant’s success. “I want people to know that I couldn’t do it without him there by my side every day,” she says.

She told Hirning,”Okay, let’s do this. But you have to be there every day with me.” Though he continues to work in construction, he has kept his promise: he does everything from playing host to cooking and washing dishes.”He especially watches to be sure the recipes are followed,” Land says.”I couldn’t do this without him.”

The result is Rapid City restaurant history. Hirning and Land have not only kept the Wine Cellar open but cemented it as a downtown destination. Entrepreneurs celebrate successes there over the filet mignon or the fabled mushroom lasagna. Families meet for birthday parties. Lovers linger in alcoves called”The Alley,” a romantic hideaway behind the main dining area.

The Wine Cellar has also become a go-to place for community fundraisers, including Cinco de Meow, held every May to raise money for the West River Spay and Neuter Coalition which seeks to prevent an over-population of dogs and cats by assisting low-income pet owners.

The cozy establishment has only about a dozen small tables, all with black tablecloths and candles. Blond oak floorboards, shiny with the charming blemishes of old wood, also add warmth to the interior. Midway between the dining area and a small kitchen is the aforementioned alley because long ago it was an actual alley between two old buildings that are now connected.

“It’s all so much fun,” Land says.”I love it. Dave loves it. I really love people and I love to create a place for them to come and enjoy.”

Watch Land, who is 50, and her small staff — all dressed in black — in action on a busy Saturday night and you soon recognize that they are not only serving food; there is a unique entertainment vibe in the air that one can almost taste.

Land says it’s as intentional as the sauce on the lasagna. She studied photography, media and theater at Montana State, and she readily acknowledges that her style of restauranting involves performance.
“You have to set aside everything going on in your own personal life,” she explains.”You are there for your guests. You need to know what you are doing, in the kitchen and in the dining room. You have to be able to read your audience and it has to be genuine. I really love people so it’s natural for me.”

She says the challenge, in these days of low unemployment, is to recruit and keep good staff.”I’d rather be short-staffed than have people who aren’t here for the right reason,” she says.”You can teach anybody how to wait on a table, but you can’t teach them to really care.”

Other issues have arisen that have been the demise of many independent eateries. For example, the costs and availability of food from corporate suppliers is so daunting that Land and her team now make nearly everything from scratch.”Even before the supply chain issues, we always tried to use local foods, much in the same concept as European cuisine served in the small restaurants there,” she says.”So much of what you might buy is full of preservatives and chemicals, so it’s just easier and healthier to make it yourself. Staying small gives us more control over quality and consistency.”

She buys honeycomb from a Colorado woman who has been raising bees for 70 years.”We get wonderful chicken from a farm in Nebraska. A family from Caputa provides fresh vegetables and our mushrooms come from Alan Carner’s Black Hills Mushrooms.” Bison meat is raised near the Badlands on author Dan O’Brien’s Wild Idea Ranch. She is a regular shopper at the Black Hills Farmers Market.

Just as the food represents the region, in a less tangible way the Wine Cellar is also a reflection of all the restaurants where Land worked.”I learned a lot about wines from Luigi Tuorletti, who ran Botticelli’s,” she says.”After our shift was over, he would sometimes have us try wines — really fine wines that I wouldn’t normally have been familiar with. I got to talk to Luigi the other day and I thanked him for all his mentoring.”

Land’s childhood friends from Philip sometimes step through the door, along with people she served at Arrowhead and other establishments.

“I love that about the Wine Cellar, the way it brings all these people together in a fun way,” she says.

Diners say the same.”Just the service. The food. The people.” That’s how veterinarian Lynn Steadman explains why he’ll drive 90 miles from Chadron, Nebraska.”It is sort of a European-California fusion,” he says.”It’s a different vibe. It’s a limited menu but everything is made fresh. The cuisine doesn’t follow any one path but it’s just good and it’s different.”

Diners will find only about a dozen tables inside the cozy Wine Cellar, all draped with black cloths and featuring a candle.

Steadman says the Wine Cellar garners attention far and wide.”The thing that amazes me is that you can mention this place and, though it’s a small place, everyone knows about it. You’ll go somewhere and be talking to a diverse group of people, and if you start talking about restaurants someone will soon recommend the Wine Cellar. It has a very devoted following.”

He credits Christy Land.”She makes it look easy, but she takes great pride in what she does,” he says.”I’ve observed that she is very concerned that each diner who comes in the door has a good experience.”

James Humen was dining just two tables away from the Nebraska veterinarian. He and his wife brought their two young children on a Saturday evening. The kids were sharing the filet mignon and wondering if they had room for chocolate cake.

Humen appreciates the atmosphere and the food.”This is one of the only chef-driven restaurants in Rapid City. I like the idea that he is in the back in the kitchen, just creating and seeing what he can do for the customers.”

Oh, yes, the food. A writer could wax on about the Wine Cellar for hundreds of words and not get around to the main attractions — the Wild Idea buffalo sliders with roasted tomato jam, carmelized onions and mushrooms; the pan-seared sea scallops on a small bed of risotto, topped with strawberries and basil; or the house filet mignon, Angus beef chargrilled with the house steak rub and mushroom demi-glace.

There’s a story behind every menu item. The risotto, made of arboreo rice, has no cream and is gluten free; it tastes so good that some might consider it a main course. The mushroom lasagna, a vegetarian feature, is richly layered with spinach, tomato, cheeses and a red sauce made — like most everything — right there in the restaurant, in a space not much bigger than a typical residential kitchen.

Curt Pochardt, who founded the diner in 1998, says it more than meets the vision he had at the outset.”They are truly cooking and creating fine foods,” he says.”Nothing comes frozen off a truck. Christy and her group have a level of expertise beyond anything we could do, and beyond what most anybody is doing today.”

He’s a fan of the Cellar’s thin crust pizzas, which include the wild boar sausage, roasted vegetable, Italian fromage, pesto and a traditional pepperoni.”Twenty-five years ago, we thought it was a good thing for our town,” Pochardt says.”I think it is even more important today to have places like the Wine Cellar. The fact that Christy and her stepdad are willing and eager to keep it going strong is something that a lot of people obviously appreciate.”

Those people are easy to meet. They are gathered, five nights a week, around the black-clothed tables on Sixth Street.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Let’s Go Shopping in Scotland

By Bernie Hunhoff

Dean and Karen Rettedal’s department store in Scotland features apparel for men, women and children, though Dean says women’s clothing is most popular. “The men will wear something three or four years or until it wears out, but fortunately the women want something new now and then.”

Ludwig and Donna Rettedal arrived in Scotland to run a shoe store in 1959. Within three years, Walmart, Kmart, and Shopko pioneered big-box stores and suddenly it seemed that small town retailers were an endangered species.

Nobody told the Rettedals.

“I was in the fourth grade when we moved here from Winner,” Dean Rettedal says.”It was in the spring of the year and all the Scotland boys went out after school and played baseball.” Before long, he was playing first base.

Dean’s dad was an avid golfer in Winner.”There was no course here in Scotland, so he and some friends went around and sold shares and started the golf course.”

Dean and his four brothers fished for bullhead and bluegill in Lake Henry. He mowed lawns for spending money and was inspired to play the trumpet by music teacher Len Vellek. The latter was life changing.

Dean majored in music at the University of South Dakota. When he needed an accompanist for his junior-year solo trumpet recital, someone suggested Karen Twite, a Beresford freshman. They married in 1971 and both taught at Centerville and Emmettsburg, Iowa, but Dean didn’t forget his happy childhood in Scotland.

In 1979, he and Karen bought the department store where his father had the shoe store. Incidentally, 1979 is also when Texas Instruments debuted a personal computer that would soon make it possible for people to shop from home. Amazon took advantage of the technology in 1994 and before long many of the big box stores were slumping.

Ludwig and Donna Rettedal came to Scotland with their young family in 1959 to run a shoe store in the town’s department store.

Only two JCPenney stores survive in all of South Dakota and there are now just three Kmart stores in the entire United States. Amazon is the world’s biggest retailer worldwide. But Rettedal’s Department Store is king in Scotland. It continues to exist as 4,000 square feet of calm and charm, aisles of gentility that seem very different from today’s often overhyped, overpriced and underwhelming commercial shopping experience.

Dean and Karen Rettedal only shrug and smile when asked about the contrast with the corporate culture.”We do have people who come in and say it’s nice to have somewhere to shop other than a big mall,” Dean acknowledges.

“We have a lot of loyal customers who have also become good friends,” nods Karen.

Understatements, if you ask around town. Mike Behl has a good view of the Rettedal Store. He works across the street at Farmers and Merchants State Bank, his family’s vocation since his grandfather came to town in 1938.

“Dean and Karen have a market that fits the people of Scotland,” Behl says.”And people come from all over the area. You see cars from everywhere. You can see that people like them, and they just like to shop there.”

The young banker says it is a godsend for the men, especially.”If you find you have to go to a funeral or a wedding and you need a nice shirt, you go see Dean.”

Rettedal’s has clothing for men, women and children, along with toys and books, greeting cards and a shoe department that looks exactly like it did when the family came to town in 1959. The same six steel chairs still await customers, though Dean reupholstered them a few years ago.

Behl, the banker, says having a beloved cornerstone store helps the entire town. He points up and down the street to a flower shop, coffee shop, hardware store, grocery store, four-lane bowling alley and several eateries that all benefit when out-of-towners arrive.

The neighboring stores also have their charms and niches. Jake and Valerie Sturges stock the usual tools, paints and plumbing supplies that you expect at Scotland Hardware, but they also offer Valerie’s handcrafted gift items and a big section of fishing tackle for anglers at Lake Henry.

“We also have a lot of the small appliances like coffee pots,” says Valerie.”It’s an emergency in town if someone’s coffee pot goes out first thing in the morning.”

Ron’s Market, just a block off Main Street, stocks the basic food items, along with local treats like Amish candies, Dimock Cheese, chislic from Kaylor Locker and eggs from a local Hutterite colony.

Scotland Locker, the town’s popular butcher shop, is best-known for flavored brats. Favorites include a breakfast brat stuffed with hash browns and cheddar cheese, as well as a hot brat known as Napalm in the AM.

Dean Rettedal says Scotland had more stores in the 1960s when he was a child.”We had three cafes, two hardware stores, two grocery stores. Fortunately, we still have all those services, but they are just not doubled up today.”

In the town’s early years, it even had two main streets. The town was founded in 1870 on Dawson Creek by C.T. Campbell, a Civil War soldier from Pennsylvania who nearly died from battle injuries. Though badly crippled, he recovered enough to return to the fighting and served with distinction. Reassigned to Dakota Territory after the war, he was drawn to the beauty of Dawson Creek and chose it as his townsite.

When the Menno Wolves and Scotland Highlanders merged their football programs, their gridiron name became the Trappers. Dean Rettedal shows off the mascot, a highlander with a wolf head hat.

Campbell helped Scotlanders relocate to the present site in 1881 when the railroad arrived. In its early years, the town had two shopping districts because of language barriers between Germans from Russia and other settlers. The former group built stores along Currie Street (now Curry Street), which still intersects Main Street on the west side of town. However, as immigrant families became more acclimated to the English language and American culture, Main Street dominated. Today it still features pioneer brick architecture, though some of the handsome structures need repair.

Fortunately, the Rettedal Department Store looks much as it did in 1929 when JCPenney leased the space. Dean has a deed for the property that shows the terms: $1,500 per year plus 2 percent of gross sales over $90,000.

The store still has the same high tin ceiling and big wood door. Greeting card racks are where they were in the 1950s but gone is the mechanical cash carrier that carried customers’ payments and receipts to an upstairs office.

When the Rettedals bought the store in 1979, Karen ran it full-time while Dean split his days between the store and a part-time role as a music teacher and band director at Mount Marty University in Yankton.

“When I retired from Mount Marty in 2015, friends asked me what I was going to do with all my time,” laughs Dean.”I said I was going to just work six days a week.”

On summer mornings, he rises early and visits the golf course his father helped to start.”I go out for about 20 minutes and walk as fast as I can go,” he grins. Then he heads for the store.

He serves as treasurer for the Scotland Chamber of Commerce, a job he’s held for 40 years. Karen directs the church choir and Dean still plays trumpet for the Yankton Summer Band and the Sioux Empire Brass. They visit their children, Kristi and David, who live in Sioux Falls and Dakota Dunes, respectively. They also travel”to market” at Minneapolis several times a year to shop for inventory. But most of their days are spent together in their store aisles, along with Vickie Fillaus and Marlys Haase, two longtime co-workers.

Dean, a man of few words, describes a good day at the store like this:”You’re busy. People are happy. You have what they want.”

He doesn’t need to say that working alongside Karen, in the same space that attracted his parents to Scotland in 1959, is something he cherishes. It’s apparent to every visitor who walks through the old wood door.

“We are retirement age I guess, but it’s a great life for us,” Karen says.”It’s a big commitment so you have to enjoy it, but we do. I don’t know what we’d do all day if we didn’t have the store. If someone came in and said, ëWe want to buy it,’ I guess we’d have to think about it a little harder Ö.”

Obviously, Karen has no enthusiasm for selling. She didn’t even finish the sentence, and Dean acted as if he wasn’t listening to such talk. That’s good news for Scotland’s remaining Main Street.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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A Living Drink

By John Andrews

Jacob Fokken was 20 and drinking maybe one or two sodas every day. Soon, he began feeling that something wasn’t quite right with his health, so he decided to eliminate those sugary drinks.”I quit cold turkey, which isn’t how a lot of things go,” he says.”I substituted with tea, black coffee and at the same time I found kombucha. The nature of the kombucha satisfied everything that I ever craved in a soda, plus it was low in sugar and had probiotics.”

That life change eventually turned into a family business called Songbird Kombucha, though it took some time to get there. Fokken drank kombucha for about six years before he tried making it. Kombucha is an ancient food that dates back more than 2,000 years. It’s a fermented drink made with tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast, and then infused with different flavors. Kombucha’s probiotic benefits include promoting a healthy immune system and relieving stomach and intestinal ailments.

Fokken found himself working at the Sioux Falls Food Coop, where he revived its dormant kombucha line.”I just dove in and experimented for a year and really enjoyed it,” he says.”Plus, I was able to serve it to people at the register. People were trying it, and I had this growing confidence in brewing it. It just grew and grew.”

In February 2020, Fokken and his wife Elsa launched Songbird Kombucha. Their rotation of about 20 flavors features a variety of fruit and herb combinations, such as blueberry lavender, orange licorice anise and rhubarb cinnamon. Find Songbird Kombucha on tap in Sioux Falls, Vermillion, Yankton, Hartford, Jefferson and Mitchell or visit the Fokkens’ storefront at 1712 S. Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Ultimate Vehicle

By John Andrews

Kent Miller’s Ultimate Outdoor Vehicle was built for ice fishing, but serves a multitude of purposes.

A lot of good inventions get their start when someone says,”Wouldn’t it be nice if….” That’s what happened nearly four years ago when Kent Miller went ice fishing with some family members. They pulled sleds loaded with gear across the snow, traversed the ice to set up a shack, then tore it down and moved when the fish wouldn’t bite — all of which was made more difficult by his father-in-law’s bad knee. That led to Miller’s,”Wouldn’t it be nice if …” moment.

The mechanical engineer envisioned a vehicle on tracks that could go through snow, could float in case the ice broke, and had space for everything a fisherman might need. Three years of building and testing prototypes finally resulted in the Ultimate Outdoor Vehicle.

Though Miller had ice fishing in mind during development, the UOV is designed to do almost anything in any conditions. The hull is made from marine grade 1/8-inch aluminum for durability. Its heavy-duty rubber tracks with steel links carry it through snow, mud, grass, water and gravel. The hydrostatic drive and zero-turn ability make it maneuverable and easy to control. A canvas enclosure and vinyl windshield and side windows protect the driver and passenger from the elements. Inside are hatches that lock and seal, allowing fishermen to drill holes in the ice without ever leaving the vehicle.

Miller has a degree in mechanical engineering from South Dakota State University and has worked in the field for 20 years. He and his wife, Heather Solberg, also operate Miller Design and Manufacturing from their acreage between Brookings and Volga. That’s where the UOV was born, along with other tracked projects such as a radio-controlled vehicle for a friend who has physical disabilities and a small snow dozer.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Fun and Games

By John Andrews

Dustin and Hezel Garness build larger-than-life games in their Hartford workshop.

It all began with Kubb, a game that legend says originated with the Vikings, who played with the bones of their conquered enemies. (It likely is Scandinavian, but less macabre; Kubb translates to”block of wood” in Norwegian, and probably evolved from a game using scraps of firewood.) Dustin Garness’s family likes to play it, and one day the woodworker in him wondered if he could make a set. After he crafted the pieces, he wondered if anyone would buy it. He made a few more Kubb sets, some giant dice and tumbling blocks and brought them to Hartford’s Downtown Market. He sold four games.”That was a good start,” Garness says.”It was sort of a mini proof of concept.”

Garness Games is now a legitimate side hustle for Garness and his wife, Hezel. Dustin works at Family Memorials by Gibson in Sioux Falls and Hezel is a preschool teacher just finishing her education degree, but in the evenings and on weekends they make larger than life yard games: dominoes made from 1 by 6 cedar, dice from 4-by-4 lumber, stackable blocks out of 2-by-3s, huge Connect Four racks and cornhole boards.

Customers have come to appreciate the creativity they can add to their own games. Garness will customize them with names and dates for weddings or other family functions, for example. The Garnesses have also launched a rental service and will transport games for events.

They’ve also launched a series of educational products for students learning their numbers and letters and have new games in mind.”There’s always a list,” Garness says, which currently includes”The Price is Right” favorite Plinko.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Changing the Game

By John Andrews

Erika Peterson turned a decadent treat into a multi-million-dollar enterprise.

When Erika Peterson and her partner Craig Mount moved back to Rapid City from Colorado, they missed the homemade peanut butter that they had discovered at farmers markets and grown to love. So, Peterson bought a refurbished commercial peanut grinder and made small batches for family and friends. Demand grew through social media, word of mouth and the understated power of peanut butter. Nearly two years later, she leads a company called Nerdy Nuts and sells up to $500,000 worth of peanut butter a month.”I had no clue how obsessed people were with peanut butter until I started selling it,” Peterson says.”Our flavors sell out every week; people are asking us for merchandise. We just can’t wrap our heads around it.”

The business’ rise began at the Black Hills Farmers Market. Peterson would sell out of peanut butter within two hours. It continued as they branched out to other marketplaces and trade shows.”We started asking our customers what they were looking for, and how they were eating our peanut butter. And everybody kept saying that they’d just eat it with a spoon, because it was so different and good.” That difference comes in the texture. Peterson calls it”smunchy,” somewhere between smooth and crunchy, featuring tiny chunks of peanuts in a smooth base.

After the couple had their second child, Peterson — a graduate of the University of South Dakota’s School of Business — went all-in on peanut butter. She created a presidential peanut butter line, naming flavors after contenders in the 2020 general election. National television networks noticed, giving them their first taste of viral stardom.”That’s when we realized that people were looking at peanut butter as an actual food item, a treat, something they could indulge in.”

That led to an indulgence line featuring peanut butters with chocolate, brownie bits and other decadent delights. When three influencers on the social media platform TikTok all posted rave reviews, sales skyrocketed. Peterson rented a commercial kitchen, hired a packing company, found a facility to make plastic jars and hired logistics experts to help it all run smoothly.”We went from a tiny company doing $30,000 in sales in 2019 to a multimillion-dollar company in six months,” she says.”We’re changing the game of peanut butter.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2021 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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School for Snowshoes

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Snowshoes and other traditional crafts are preserved at the Four Winds Boat Shop near Vermillion.

Students are welcome in the refurbished schoolhouse nestled into the hills of Dawne and Matt Olson’s farm near Vermillion. But instead of grammar and geography, these students are learning to make boats, pine needle baskets, fishing flies, wing bone turkey calls, snowshoes and other traditional crafts.

Dawne Olson came to woodworking through her love of the outdoors. After seeing a cedar strip canoe under construction at a canoe museum, she bought a book on canoe building and decided to try it, even though she had no prior experience.”I literally propped the book up in my shopping cart while I wandered around the store trying to find the tools that were recommended to use, even though I had never heard of half of them,” Olson says. She picked up additional books and peppered an online boat-building forum with questions. By the time Olson had a finished canoe, she was hooked. She opened Four Winds Boat Shop in 2015, in part so that she could help others feel the sense of satisfaction that comes from developing a new skill.”When I finished my third year of snowshoe workshops, one of the participants sent me a picture of her completed snowshoes,” Olson says.”She said, ‘I can’t remember the last time I was this proud of myself.’ I love that so much.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2019 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Soap That’s Good For You

By Rebecca Johnson

Erin Nelson of Beresford has always been health-conscious, striving to use products free from chemicals and impurities.”It’s made a huge difference in how my body and skin feels,” she says. When Nelson couldn’t find soap that fit her lifestyle in local stores, she started making her own.”I decided people have been making it for hundreds of years and I just wanted to know how,” she explains.

Nelson started her Irish Twins Soap Company in 2009. She hand stirs and pours more than 35 types of bar soaps in her downtown shop, including varieties for acne, psoriasis and eczema. Many contain French and Moroccan clays, and her Dakota Gunsmoke contains activated charcoal.”The clays pull toxins out of your skin and activated charcoal does too,” she explains.

Along with artisan bar soaps, Nelson makes soy wax candles, bath and body products and household cleaners. And she’s fussy about ingredient quality, using honey, beeswax, goat’s milk, herbs and botanicals from local farms.

This story is revised from the July/August 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Tough Times Call for Tough Kennels

By John Andrews

Doug Sangl and Lyle Van Kalsbeek knew hard times were coming. The Great Recession had just hit, and business at their plastics molding company in Tea was slowing to a crawl. They needed a project to fill time, so they combined their love of animals and engineering expertise to design a dog kennel that’s tougher than anything else on the market and a better fit for cars and trucks.

Since then, production of Ruff Tough Kennels has become the partners’ top priority.”We wanted to make them safer and more compact,” Sangl says.”The body is solid; we got rid of the joint where they typically get molded together. That takes a few inches off. Our intermediate size kennel is popular for hunting dogs, and you can fit three wide in back of a pickup. Other kennels with a lip on them won’t do that.”

Other improvements include double doors, which allow access through either side of a car and provide another opening in case of an accident.”They’re kind of like a helmet for your dog,” he says.”We’ve had several testimonials from people who have been in accidents who tell us their dog is alive because of our kennels.”

Ruff Tough Kennels are available at Cabela’s, Scheels and Nyberg’s Ace Hardware in Sioux Falls, or online.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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From Nature to Your Home

By Emily VanDerhule

Jeremy Schmidt was on his tractor when a tire blew. The culprit? A deer shed. He hung on to the antler, hoping to make a bottle opener out of it. The shed proved too small, so he made a coffee scoop instead. That became the start of SoDak Honest, the business Jeremy and his wife Bobbi operate from their farm near Custer. Along with naturally shed antlers, the Schmidts use scrap metal, downed cottonwoods and other items found in nature to create household products.

“I like to know what the things in my house are made of, where they came from, and I want to be able to shake the hand of the person who made it,” Bobbi says.

The Schmidts do custom work, like a 7-foot bench so solid even the blustery winds atop a Missouri River bluff wouldn’t move it. Barnwood tables can be made to fit any space.”We also make small items like jewelry,” Bobbi says.”The natural oils from a person’s hands keep our rings from drying out.”

Jeremy is mostly self-taught aside from a few classes in high school.”There’s a lot of math involved. I use the Pythagorean theorem more than I ever thought I would,” he jokes.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.