Tag: freeman

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Blizzard in a Small Town

Photography and story by Bernie Hunhoff

A winter storm overwhelms a small town, almost as if the North Wind is flapping a mile-wide blanket of gray goose feathers overhead, rudely muffling all the streets and houses.

The intentions of the few citizens spotted outdoors in a blizzard are immediately obvious. They are walking the dog. Rushing from the grocery store with plastic bags. Shoveling the front steps to maintain the”you’re welcome here anytime” look that’s exhibited on most small town houses in South Dakota. Dawdling is done indoors on days like this.

We waited out such a storm in Freeman (pop. 1,200) and watched the town come to a crawl. Activity was inversely proportionate to the growing speed of the howling wind. Gusts blew to 50 miles per hour, ignoring 30 MPH street signs that poked above the snowdrifts.

The clerk at a variety store on the edge of town lamented that she hadn’t been able to get home to Marion, just a dozen miles away, for two days. She was staying with a cousin. A hair stylist at the Mane Attraction was on the phone, switching appointments from rural people who couldn’t get to town with city dwellers hardy enough to venture a few blocks.

The grocer at Jamboree darted out of the store in a green sweater every hour or so and quickly shoved the snow from his sidewalk. Customers parked near the store’s front door and usually left their engines running as they dashed inside. A desperate thief could have had his pick but no one in Freeman fit the description that particular day.

A little boy in a ski mask came out of the store with two sacks, apparently on an errand for mom. He playfully scaled a 15-foot-high pile of snow in the middle of Main Street before he hustled home to deliver staples to the family kitchen.

Most of the town’s businesses were still open as darkness settled beneath the howling gray blanket. Lights stayed on at the Freeman Courier because it was deadline day and the Waltners were not going to delay the weekly newspaper for a blizzard. The new library was open next door. Flags whipped wildly over a local bank. A snowplow operator skimmed the streets. Fensel’s Motel on the edge of town had rooms available.”Take Number Seven,” said the clerk.”The key is in the door.”

An awful assault of high winds, snow and cold could feel evil to someone suffering its clutches. But a small town is a good place to wait out a storm. Freeman’s citizenry seemed to accept the blizzard as nature’s due for the privilege of living in South Dakota, and that attitude seemed sensible. The storm was a nuisance that would pass. And sure enough, the morning dawned calm and clear.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Pedaling South Dakota

Carl and Jan Brush of Yankton are loyal readers of our magazine, and avid bicyclists. This summer they are combining those two loves on a cross-country trip, using past issues and articles to guide them to interesting people and places. The Brushes have cycled in all 50 states.”But we like South Dakota best!” says Jan. They intend to travel about 360 miles in the next eight days. They’ve agreed to post some reports from the road so we can go along.

DAY ONE: German Cuisine and a Stone Church

We took off from Yankton Sunday morning. We met Ella Berth and Edna Kalubt near the old stone church south of Menno. They told us that Albert Gunderson split the stones with help from an inmate and the congregation in 1935. The church still has services on Wednesday evenings.

In Menno it started to rain so we parked the trike out of the weather at the school and visited the Open Door Cafe for lunch. Great food! We met owners Jerome and Rita Hoff. Rita was proud to point out the framed pages from South Dakota Magazine, Sep/Oct 2011, featuring their German meals that are still served every Tuesday. Rita mentioned the sign above her. It was made by Jerry Buum who passed away young. His widow, Vicky works at Yankton’s Hy-Vee bakery. The Elvis shirt is an antique, collected by Rita’s daughter-in-law.

Overall it was a great ride. We stayed dry. 51 miles total. We saw lots of wildlife. Everyone waved and a herd of horses greeted us west of Freeman at the Jonas farm and ran alongside us for 100 yards inside their pen. We love cycling in South Dakota!

Note: We ride a tandem recumbent trike. It is a 27 speed and is 10 ft long. The brand is Terra Trike, built in Michigan.

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Hutchinson County Haven

The fertile fields of Hutchinson County became a haven for ethnic Germans fleeing Russia in the 1870s. They had lived there for years, enticed by Catherine the Great to transform the region around the Black Sea into Europe’s breadbasket. She offered freedom from military service, but when Czar Alexander II rescinded that promise in 1871, the pacifist Germans sought new land. Several thousand emigrated to southeastern Dakota Territory beginning in 1873. By the end of the decade, Germans had established farms up the James River Valley to the Menno and Freeman areas, where their descendants still work the land. Joel Schwader, of Rapid City, grew up in Freeman. He visited his hometown this summer and shared these photos from rural Hutchinson County.

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Freeman’s Savory Soup

By John Andrews

Green beans star in Joyce Hofer’s soup, but its flavor comes from summer savory, an herb rarely used in other German cooking.

Call it what you want: pepper weed, bohnenkraut, gartenkraut or a pillar of the spice mixture”herbes de provence.” Germans in Freeman know it simply as summer savory, an essential component of the green bean soup that has been part of Schmeckfest‘s first course since the annual”tasting festival” began in 1959.

Summer savory boasts a piney, peppery flavor, similar to thyme or oregano. It is believed to help digest beans, which could explain how savory, otherwise used sparingly in German cuisine, became such an important ingredient in green bean soup.”It has such a distinct flavor,” says Joyce Hofer.”I don’t know that they use it anywhere else but the green bean soup. That’s all I ever use it in, too.”

Green bean soup, along with noodle soup and salad, is one of the first dishes served at the family style buffet in the basement of Pioneer Hall on the Freeman Academy campus. The soup has its origins with the Low German people, one of three Anabaptist ethnic groups that founded Freeman in the early 1880s. The others (the Hutters and the Swiss) traditionally prepared their own signature dishes to be served at Schmeckfest. Hutters made noodle soup, beef stew and their unique sweetened sauerkraut. The Swiss were known for their poppy seed rolls.”You just kind of stuck to the dishes you knew,” says Hofer, who counts herself among the Hutters.”Now it’s done communally, because there aren’t enough Low German women to make just the green bean soup.”

Summer savory isn’t a culinary secret, though Schmeckfest diners are often heard asking what gives the soup its unique essence. The herb’s history can be traced to early Greece. Mythological creatures called satyrs were often shown wearing crowns of savory. People in the Middle Ages wore savory garlands to prevent drowsiness. When the Emperor Charlemagne ruled over Western Europe in the early ninth century, he included summer savory on his list of herbs to be grown in his royal gardens. Savory’s role in German cooking began at about the same time, when monks brought the herb from its native region along the Mediterranean Sea in southern Europe to their monastery gardens in Germany.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the upper class citizenry of Western Europe grew savory in”gardens of delight.” Today you’ll find it growing in the backyard gardens of several Freeman chefs. A handful of gardeners sell tiny bags of savory at the Country Kitchen shop set up during Schmeckfest every year. Hofer bought a bag for $3.50 in 2013, and was still using it as 2014’s festival approached.”I try to buy enough to use through the year,” she says.”What you can grow is better than what you can buy, but what you get at the store is better than nothing.”

While savory dispenses a unique flavor, large quantities of the herb eaten directly can be unpalatable. That’s why Hofer places sprigs inside a tea strainer, and hangs it over the edge of the pot as the soup simmers.”You probably wouldn’t want to eat the savory itself,” Hofer says.”It has a slight aroma, but it really comes out when it mixes with other ingredients of the soup.”

Bought or grown, that’s what makes Schmeckfest’s green bean soup a dish to savor.

Schmeckfest 2019 is scheduled for March 29-30 and April 5-6 on the Freeman Academy campus.

Gr¸ne Schauble Suppe

Joyce Hofer’s green bean soup recipe is adapted from the Schmeckfest recipe that feeds 1,000 guests and 250 workers on each of the festival’s four nights.

ham bone (optional)

1/2 gallon water‚Ä®

1/2 lb. smoked ham‚Ä®

2 1/2 to 3 cups potatoes

1/2 cup chopped onion

3 or 4 sprigs summer savory‚Ä®

1/2 cup finely diced or ground carrots

2 cans string beans (16 oz. total)‚Ä®

2 tablespoons sour cream

Cook smoked ham bone or smoked ham in water until tender. The last half hour before serving, add potatoes (cut in 1/2-inch cubes), carrots, onions and summer savory, using a tea strainer hung over the edge of the pot. When the vegetables are tender, add beans, including the juice, and sour cream. May substitute 1 pound of fresh-cut green beans and cream or butter for sour cream, if desired. Ham base may be added for extra flavor. Hofer says the soup is best when allowed to simmer at least an hour, but it can be eaten when completely heated.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2014 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Silver Lake Wildlife

By Christian Begeman

In mid-March I saw a post on a local birding website that 50-plus bald eagles were observed at Silver Lake, along Highway 81 north of Freeman, so I took the camera and long lens out to see for myself.

I set off after work on Saint Patrick’s Day. The evening sky was heavy with low and fast rain clouds that spit a few drops now and then. As I approached the lake from the north, I discerned many large and dark shapes in the trees that surround the little lake. The eagles were still there.

When I pulled into the roadside park I was surprised and thrilled to see an eagle perched right above the outhouse. A few snaps later he decided he didn’t like the looks of me staring at him from my car window and flew off. Later in the evening as I rounded the east side of the lake on a county road, a red fox suddenly appeared on the ice. My vehicle’s engine must have startled him on his evening hunt. We raced alongside each other for half a mile before I was able to get ahead of him enough to stop and capture a shot of his flight across the ice. Later that evening, I drove to a lone barn a couple miles northwest. The low clouds had parted enough on the horizon to let the setting sun through. A bald eagle photo and a sunset shot all within an hour. It was a good day.

I returned the following Saturday to see if the eagles were still around. Sure enough, I saw about 25 in the trees ringing the lake again. I also encountered a hawk hiding in plain sight in a tree adjacent to the roadside park. The edges of the water had receded and a number of waterfowl were enjoying the open water. I couldn’t get close enough in the broad daylight to get any interesting shots so I decided to get up before the sun on Sunday morning and plant myself behind some tall grass near the water’s edge to get a better view. Bald eagles typically are most active in the early morning, so I was hoping to capture them in action as well.

Sunday morning’s temperature was in the mid-teens. When I arrived at Silver Lake, the shades of color were just starting to change in the east. Cold and bleary eyed, I made my way down to the spot I had picked the day before only to discover the water had refrozen. I relocated as best I could to the new edge of open water and waited. The eagles were already out on the ice and active. I watched a juvenile eagle catch a fish, fly up about 60 feet and then drop it. As he did this, another six or seven eagles flew from their perch to join the fun. Unfortunately for them (and for me) the fish broke through the thin ice and they could not retrieve it again.

Since most of the action took place when it was too dark to shoot, I didn’t get the photos I was looking for, but I did get to practice silhouette shots against an ever-changing colored sky. I also got to hear multiple duck species fly over and in front of me. The sound they made reminded me of bottle rockets whizzing past (don’t ask how I know what that sounds like). It was a glorious morning, and South Dakota at its finest.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.