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The Yankton to Marty Trail

By Bernie Hunhoff

South Dakota Magazine intern Ava Brandt met Digger at Mensch’s Greenhouse in Avon.

A golden dog named Digger met us at the door of Mensch’s Greenhouse, his tail wagging like a windshield wiper. Two cats lolled on a flower worktable and a dozen colorful cockatiels chirped from two cages near the petunias.

Any traveler will crack a smile at Mensch’s Greenhouse in Avon — and that’s fortunate because for the most part this Yankton-to-Marty loop can be a solitary journey, even though it visits seven small towns in South Dakota’s populated southeast corner.

We began the loop early in the morning because of a tip that the Tyndall Bakery has amazing donuts and pastries, and some days they sell out. We had two stops to make before the bakery.

The Lakeport Church in rural Yankton County dates to 1884.

Chalkstone Church

We drove 8 miles west of Yankton on Highway 50 to 431st Avenue, then turned right to the Bruce and Donna Schwarz farm. Drive slowly through the farmyard — the Schwarzes don’t mind — and you come to a small church built of the yellow chalkstone found along stretches of the nearby Missouri. Neighbors keep up the church and mow the cemetery, which features Czech surnames still common in the area. This is Czech country, settled by pioneers from Bohemia and Moravia who began to arrive in 1869. Their first settlement was Lakeport; only the little yellow church, constructed in 1884, has survived.

A wooden church is among the historic buildings preserved at the park in Tabor.

TABOR: CZECH CAPITAL

A few miles further along Highway 50 is the town of Tabor (pop. 405), founded in 1872. Tabor is famous for its annual Czech Days celebration in June. Parking is more plentiful on the other 362 days of the year, so stop on Main Street and stretch your legs by walking through the quaint pioneer village which includes a tiny wood church that was built at Lakeport even before the chalkstone church. Now it is well-kept in the Czech Preservation Society’s heritage park along with several other antiquated structures.

Magazine interns Rose Lane (left) and Ava Brandt at Tyndall’s Eiffel Tower, a fancy flagpole that measures 100 feet.

TYNDALL’S TOWER

One wonders if Gustave Eiffel, engineer and namesake of the tallest structure in Paris, would be flattered to see the imitation in Tyndall.

Tyndall’s”Eiffel” is more than 1,000 feet shorter than Gustave’s, but nearly as old. It was constructed in 1898, just nine years after the original was completed to honor the centennial of the French revolution.

The replica stands on the lawn of the county courthouse, west of downtown on 18th Avenue. But before you visit the tower, stop at the Radack family’s bakery. We dilly-dallied too long, and the cases were nearly empty, so we missed out on the Tyndall Roll, a Bismarck-like pastry filled with white cream and topped with crushed peanuts. No one knows when the legendary roll was created, but the bakery traces its history to 1905.

Carol and Vern Tolsma at their Avon greenhouse.

AVON’S GREENHOUSE

Feeling lonely in southeast South Dakota? Just visit Vern and Carol Tolsma’s Mensch Greenhouse and Flower Shop along Highway 50 in Avon.

Carol’s grandmother, Ada Mensch, started the greenhouse in 1957. Imagine how many flowers have bloomed, thanks to Ada, in 67 years. And how many people have enjoyed the garden bounty that took root here.

The flowers and plants come with free advice. Did you know you should only water tomato plants when absolutely necessary? Vern says a thirsty plant sends roots deep into the soil, making it strong and adding taste to the fruit.

Digger, the greenhouse dog, wags and nuzzles anyone who’ll take the time. Cats and cockatiels also share the space. The cockatiels are orphans who lost their owners and found refuge here.

The Tolsmas tend a 2-acre garden near the shop, and they sell produce, canned goods and amazing pickles. They occasionally set out a table of freebies that need a home.

Some days, Vern wears a blue t-shirt that says it all:”I Love Gardening From My Head to My Tomatoes.”

Richard Langdeaux helps keep Wagner’s park looking beautiful.

A WALK IN THE WAGNER PARK

Follow Highway 50 northwest. South Dakota’s Czech heritage extends into Charles Mix County and the city of Wagner (pop. 1,603), the largest town on this loop tour. Wagner has all the amenities you might want — a coffee shop, restaurants and a grocery store.

On the west side of town, near Highway 50, lies a little lake and park that would be the envy of any city in America. The lake was created when a dam and rock structures were built in the 1930s by WPA workers. Today the park includes two walking bridges, flower gardens, trails and even a small waterfall. This is the best opportunity of the day for a walk.

Richard Langdeaux, a Santa Claus look-alike who was collecting trash in the park, told us that the stone buildings along the lake were once a Scout camp. Artesian springs keep the lake full year-round.

Wagner also offers an impressive museum, operated by the Charles Mix County Historical Society. The collection is known for its Czech exhibits, as well as artifacts from the Yankton Sioux culture that predates the pioneers.

Michael Rouse helps maintain the ground around Marty’s St. Paul Catholic Church.

MARTY’S AMAZING CHURCH

Drive west of Wagner for 6 miles to 388th Avenue and turn south for another 6 miles to Marty. The one and only enterprise is a boarding school started by the Benedictines in 1924 and now operated by the Yankton Sioux Tribe.

Alongside the school is St. Paul Catholic Church, built by volunteers — Indians and non-Indians — in the early 1940s of Indiana sandstone, mined from a quarry near St. Meinrad Archabbey, which founded St. Paul’s.

The steepled church (167 feet!) is surrounded by tall trees and other structures, so it’s hard to appreciate from afar. Exit your car and walk about the churchyard, where there are statues of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint, and St. Theresa, patroness of missions. On most days, the church doors are open; inside, St. Paul’s looks like something you might see in a European city except that the murals, stained glass and other art are rich in Native American themes.

The tallest stone in Greenwood Presbyterian Cemetery marks the grave of Struck by the Ree.

STRUCK BY THE REE

Follow the road south of Marty for about 7 miles and a few curves. You’ll come to Greenwood Presbyterian Cemetery, where the tallest stone marks the grave of Struck By The Ree, a maligned and misunderstood leader of the Nakota. He was born in 1804, as Lewis and Clark came through the river valley. Legend says the explorers wrapped the baby in an American flag and proclaimed he’d be a great leader.

Struck By The Ree did grow to be a wise chief — an environmentalist, a feminist and a peacemaker. He urged pioneers to preserve the timber resources of the river valley. He pleaded that both Nakota and white men respect the Native women. And though he first fought the intrusion of the white civilization, he eventually recognized that it could not be stopped (ìthey are like maggots Ö”). He became a lead negotiator in the 1858 Treaty. Decades later, after the treaty was broken and his people found themselves hungry and hopeless, he was often persecuted; his cabin was burned, and his horses were stolen.

A tall memorial near Greenwood commemorates the 1858 Treaty.

Treaty Memorial

Continue south and you’ll soon come to another memorial, erected to honor Struck By The Ree and seven other Native American signers of the 1858 Treaty, which gave the government more than 11 million acres for $1.6 million and established a reservation for the Nakota.

The monument was constructed in 1907, topped with an obelisk. A few decades ago, vandals toppled the obelisk — a posthumous insult to Struck By The Ree, a century after his death in 1888. It has since been restored.

Springfield sits above a growing delta in the Missouri River.

A MISSOURI RIVER DELTA TOWN

Drive south from the treaty marker and you’ll come to the tiny community of Greenwood, once the hub of the Yankton Sioux Tribe. At Greenwood, if you are not in a hurry, turn right and follow the river for a mile or two for scenic views. Then return and continue east along the Missouri.

Eventually you’ll come to 312th Street, and then to Highway 37 which will lead you to Springfield, once South Dakota’s smallest college town. Thirty years ago, the University of South Dakota/Springfield was closed, despite furious opposition, and the campus was converted to a prison.

Townspeople feared that the prison would be the ruin of Springfield, but it has persevered. Norm’s, once a favorite hangout for collegians, still serves burgers and beer. A company known as Mr. Golf Car parks more than 200 golf carts along Main Street. A museum keeps the history of the college alive, and anglers come to fish the river.

Springfield still has a post office, bank and library — plus several eateries. On its eastern edge is a veteran’s memorial with a panoramic view of the river.

The highway sign lists the population at 834. That doesn’t count the 1,200 prisoners who live there.

Six unknown soldiers of Lt. Col. George Custer’s 7th Cavalry are buried in the Bon Homme Cemetery.

APPLE TREE ROAD

For a final treat on your loop, turn east onto Apple Tree Road (a mile north of Springfield).

A few miles down the road is a spot known as Apple Tree (though the state Game, Fish and Parks Department calls it Sand Creek). It consists of a campground and cabins, a boat dock and a little peninsula where you can walk out among the reeds and see where the invasive delta ends and Lewis and Clark Lake’s open water begins.

This was once a delightful place to enjoy the bellowing of giant bullfrogs. They were silent on our stop. Perhaps they dislike the phragmites, an invasive wetland plant that is taking over.

Continue east on Apple Tree Road and you’ll soon pass the tidy Bon Homme Cemetery where a large stone memorial marks the graves of six soldiers who traveled with Lt. Col. George Custer and his 7th Cavalry in 1873.

As Custer’s entourage camped at the nearby town of Bon Homme for four days, six became ill and died. Historians speculate that they contracted typhoid fever. The six were initially entombed at Snatch Creek and then reburied at the cemetery in 1893. In 1922 the large marker was built in the cemetery to give some measure of respect to the nameless six, who might otherwise have perished at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

A replica log schoolhouse stands near the Bon Homme townsite.

BON HOMME WAS A TOWN

Continue south on Apple Tree Road and you soon come to a curve near the old community of Bon Homme. At the curve is a monument to the first schoolhouse in the Dakotas. A small replica of the 1860 log schoolhouse was erected in 1910 by pioneers, and it remains there today. Care to skip a rock in the river (or fish or launch a boat)? Just follow the gravel road south at the curve for less than a mile and you’ll drive right up to the water’s edge and a sandy beach.

Back at the curve, head north to Highway 52. It will lead you east to Highway 50, which takes you past the chalkstone church and on to Yankton.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Our Goat Renaissance

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Humans and goats share a deep bond, one that’s rich with fun and laughter. Photo by Mark Smither

When I was growing up in eastern Yankton County, we only knew one person who raised goats — an eccentric bachelor named Ernie Stortvedt, who lived across the road from my grandparents and was famous for his lackadaisical approach to cleanliness. Even in our fun-loving neighborhood, Ernie didn’t set an example anyone was apt to emulate. Goats and Ernie remained linked in my mind for decades.

That changed five years ago, when my niece blew her birthday money on a goat. My family quickly learned that goats are kind of like potato chips — nobody has just one. Soon, my brother and sister-in-law started going to livestock sales in search of goat bargains. Friends offer them goats. Bucks and does regularly escape their sex-segregated pastures and five months later, baby goats arrive. It’s not unusual to find a diapered kid or two in their house, confined in a playpen as they await their next bottle feeding. Now my family describes themselves as goat hoarders. They even have a sweet brown Boer named Honey earmarked for my daughter to work with when she starts 4-H.

Goats will probably never supplant cattle in South Dakota, but ownership is rising. According to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, South Dakota’s goat population consisted of 17,868 animals in 2017, an increase of about 7,000 over the previous 10 years. That number will undoubtedly be higher when the next goat census is released in 2022. I asked Katie Freng Doty, Yankton County 4-H’s Youth Development Assistant, if she’d noticed the change. Doty, who raises 30 Boer goats with her husband, Tyler, and daughter, Avery, on their farm north of Mission Hill, said that she and her sister were among the first to show meat goats in our area in 2011.”In my younger years of 4-H I don’t recall there being a Market Meat Goat show at the state fair,” Doty says.”It is now just as big of a show as any of the other species.”

I turned to a few other goat-loving South Dakotans to find out what makes the animals so popular. Most people agreed that goats are livestock on a human scale, which makes sense — archeological evidence indicates that humans first tamed the goat around 10,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest species to become domesticated. Goats also require less space, feed and money than other, larger creatures. But the animals are also intelligent and full of personality, so it’s easy for human and goat to create a deep bond, one that’s often full of laughter. Doty remembers her sister’s first goat, a runt named Bambi.”Any time we would take our goats for walks, her goat would only make it so far and he would just flop over. My sister, who was only 9 at the time, would pick him up and carry him home,” she says.”He caught on to that pretty quick. It didn’t take long and we would only make it a couple steps before he was done walking.”

Four-Legged Hospitality

Visitors of all ages enjoy getting to know the livestock at Pleasant Valley Farm and Cabins of Custer. Photo by Ardent Photography.

In a quiet valley in the southern Black Hills, a guard llama named Batman watches over his herd of goats with a sharp eye and deadly feet, ever on the lookout for mountain lions, coyotes and other threats.”He is not a pet,” says Susan Barnes of Pleasant Valley Farm and Cabins.”We’ve seen him kill coyotes. He stomped them to death.”

Susan worked at the University of Wyoming for decades, while her husband, Tom, was an environmental engineer. But when they retired in 2004, they knew they wanted to return to the 120-acre farm near Custer that Susan’s family had called home for generations. They divided the land into 17 pastures, leaving 40 acres for growing winter feed, and began to raise Boer show goats, but their interests quickly morphed into creating a herd of crossbred Boer, Spanish and Savannah goats for meat purposes. In 2019, the couple opened three vacation cabins and started giving farm tours to Black Hills visitors curious about the goats, Batman, and the rest of the menagerie: two herd dogs, Lily and Monte, a flock of free-range chickens and a few pigs.”A lot of these people are from Chicago and places like that and have never really seen animals,” Susan says. And while the guests may giggle at a goat’s antics and get a kick out of feeding the livestock, Susan makes it clear that farm life is not all fun and games.”You have to be here all the time. It’s dirty. It’s heavy. It can be sad if you have a goat that gets hurt. This kind of work isn’t for everybody.”

Tom, who passed away in August 2020, was a driving force in the promotion of goats as livestock and as food animals in South Dakota — not always an easy task in cattle country. He served as vice president of the South Dakota Specialty Producers for two years, teamed with area chefs to introduce goat meat, also known as chevon, to local palates and was willing to talk goats any time he had a willing listener.”Tom was a good promoter. He really liked people and loved his goats,” Susan says.”He set a pretty good standard for me to keep up. Tom was crazy to get people to buy goats.”

Luckily, Susan has ample support from their two children, who have been heavily involved in business decisions from the beginning. Daughter Molly Schultz and her husband Clayton manage the farm’s social media, Airbnb listing and website, PleasantValleyFarmandCabins.com. Son Tony and his wife Heather live in Alaska, but they helped Tom build the cabins and come home to handle maintenance jobs.”It’s a real family deal,” Susan says.

Susan describes goat meat as healthy, lean and mild.”It’s just kind of unique and it’s not something that overpowers you. I use goat hamburger for everything that I would use regular hamburger for,” she says. The farm supplies meat to A&D Jamaican Restaurant in Rapid City, Wild Spruce Market, Skogen Kitchen and Black Hills Burger & Bun of Custer, which sometimes serves a goatburger special. But their best customers are a group of Pakistani doctors at Monument Health, who use the meat in dishes from their homeland.

Having a local market for meat ensures that the Barnes’ goats are all more or less friendly — a bad attitude is a death sentence at Pleasant Valley Farm.”If you’re mean, you turn into goatburger,” Susan says.

***

New Mexico-Style Green Chili

by Suzanne Stemme of The Goat Rancher

1 pound goat meat, cubed

1 sweet onion, chopped

1 tablespoon oil

1 can black beans

1 can cream-style corn

1/2 cup Hatch green chiles

2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 tablespoon chili powder

SautÈ goat and chopped onion in oil until onion is soft (about 5 to 7 minutes). Add black beans, corn, green chiles and spices. Cover pan and simmer on low heat for 1 1/2 hours, stirring frequently. Top with grated cheese and serve with tortilla chips or corn bread.

Soap Making in Smithwick

Connie Koski snuggles with Zoey, a small-eared Alpine-LaMancha cross from the High Prairie Dairy Goats herd near Smithwick.

Anita Mason and Connie Koski, Smithwick’s goat herding soap makers, came to South Dakota for the climate. Mason ran a raw milk cow share program and kept Alpine goats in her native Virginia for decades before she was diagnosed with lupus. Southern humidity exacerbated the inflammatory disease, so the pair moved someplace more arid.”We’re both getting older and we said, ëIf we’re going to do this farming thing, we need to be able to walk,'” Mason says. In 2019, Koski took a job teaching social science at Oglala Lakota College. The two settled in Fall River County and started High Prairie Dairy Goats and the Grubby Goat Soap Company.

Their South Dakota herd primarily consists of LaManchas, a breed with a sweet disposition, high-butterfat milk and nubby, barely-there”gopher ears.””Everybody always asks about the LaManchas: ëWhat happened to their ears?’ They think it’s like docking tails on dogs. You can make lots of jokes,” Koski says. There’s also a rescue Toggenburg who suffered ear loss due to frostbite, but the queen of the herd is a sassy Alpine doe named Lucy.”Lucy’s the boss around here. She’s the only goat with ears,” Koski says.

There are several ways to make soap, but the basic process involves milk, fat and lye, which creates a chemical reaction called saponification. Goggles and heavy-duty gloves are worn to avoid lye burns.”It’s pretty much a cross between a chemistry experiment and a math venture,” Mason says.”Everything has to work out in relation to how much lye you use or you’ll melt your house.” She is not exaggerating — she and her father once tried to wing their way through a batch of soap, with disastrous results.”It ate through an aluminum stockpot we were using, ate through the linoleum, burned through the floor and burned through a rug,” she says.

Mason and Koski make a cold-process soap. First, frozen milk is mixed with lye in an ice-cold bowl. Then coconut oil, safflower oil, shea butter or other fats are gently heated to about 110 to 125 degrees. The milk/lye mixture is slowly combined with the warm oil until it becomes thick. The mixture is then poured into bread loaf pans, allowed to rest for 48 hours, then sliced, wrapped and placed on a shelf. The soap blocks cure for five weeks, which allows excess water to evaporate and eliminates any residual harshness from the lye.

Some soap makers would stop there, but Mason and Koski take an additional step called remilling, in which the blocks of soap are melted in the microwave, along with a small amount of additional milk, fragrance and other additives as desired. The soap is then repoured into molds and allowed to dry for about 24 hours. The remilling creates a soft, smooth soap that is gentle enough for Mason’s sensitive skin.”I like the softer bar,” she says.”If I’m comfortable, then everybody else should be comfortable.”

The pandemic halted craft shows, so goat’s milk soap production has slowed accordingly. Instead, the pair focuses on raising milk-fed pork.”It really makes a difference in the meat. It’s a super moist pork,” Mason says.”It tends to be very flavorful, like somebody slow-cooked it for two days.”

Once the pandemic ends, Koski hopes to introduce South Dakotans to their docile LaManchas.”Our plan was to bring some of these awesome East Coast lines out this way. It’s hard to go meet the kids at 4-H because COVID put the kibosh on that. Maybe we aren’t super awesome yet, but we’d really like to start showing,” she says. Mason wants to educate people about the value of dairy goats as part of a self-sustaining lifestyle.”There’s just no better animal than a dairy goat for that. You can make your own dairy products. You can raise bum lambs and calves off of their milk. Most people could have one in their backyard.” But perhaps their greatest challenge is finding a trusted neighbor so they can take a vacation.”We’re trying to sucker somebody into looking after the goats so we can get away for a while. It’s not working out very well for us. As soon as we say ëdairy goats’ they run,” Mason says.

Raised by Goats in Groton

Tessa Erdmann of Groton had learned patience and adaptability through her work in the show ring. Photo by Jacee J Photography.

After his family sold off their herd of registered Angus cattle, third-generation farmer Darrin Erdmann of Groton vowed to stick to corn and soybeans. Then his daughter, Tessa, joined 4-H. Erdmann bought her three goats, two does and a wether, and it all went downhill from there.”You can’t keep a waterer open for just three, so I got about 15 more. Then you can’t pay for the water with just 15 so I got about 20 more. Then we bought some more. At one point we had about 150,” Darrin says.”A project like this is hard to run as a business. It turns into a hobby, so you’re not really watching your balance sheet on it.”

The Erdmann family, which includes wife Julie and son Jarrett, raises predominantly Boer-based show goats, supplying animals to 4-H kids and to the local population of Karen and Somali immigrants. Darrin also owns Texkota Panel and Gate, distributing durable American-made steel pens to livestock producers.

Darrin remembers the public’s puzzlement when his daughter first showed goats at the South Dakota State Fair.”These old farmers would walk through and they were just amazed. ëWhy do we have goats here? This is South Dakota.'” But as a member of the state’s 4-H meat goat committee, Darrin has seen firsthand the goat explosion, which he credits in part to the bond that children develop with their animals.”Every one of them has almost a pet quality. Other livestock do not get that bond with a kid,” he says.

Tessa, a senior at Groton High School, has had the opportunity to bond with many goats since she first started showing in 2013 — some more successfully than others. Her first year, she wrangled a 100-pound hellion named Thunderbolt.”He had the worst personality. He was just absolutely wild. Holding that goat was never easy,” Tessa says. But she didn’t give up.”It drove me to try new things, different coolers, different feed, sit in their pen a little bit more. The next year, all the changes that I made paid off.”

That adaptability has served Tessa well, both when it comes to bonding with goats and when dealing with surprises in the show ring. One of her most harrowing experiences happened when her goat got diarrhea in front of a first-time judge in the middle of the 2018 Senior Showmanship competition.”I didn’t know what to do because obviously that’s not good looking for a show animal,” she says.”I wiped it off on my hand and wiped it on the side of my leg and kept going. That was probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done.” The judge never mentioned the mishap, and Tessa and her goat won the competition.

But whether Tessa won or lost, perhaps one of the greatest gifts Tessa has gotten from the goat world is friendship.”When I would go to these shows, all the kids there were just like me. They worked with their livestock day in and day out. They’ve become like a second family,” she says. Tessa is deciding whether to attend South Dakota State University or Oklahoma State University, but wherever she goes, she knows that friendly faces will make college feel like home.”4-H and FFA have given me the opportunity to branch out and meet so many different people,” she says.”My friends always joke if they meet a new person I probably know them first.”

Tessa gives 4-H a lot of credit in shaping her into the confident young woman she is today, but her father puts it more bluntly.”People always say, ëTessa’s such a good kid. Who raised her? It wasn’t you.’ It was the goats.”

From Finance to Fromage

Rapid City cheesemaker Spencer Crawford believes dairy goats are a good addition to a self-sufficient homestead.

Spencer Crawford went overseas to study finance and came home a goat farmer. After attending graduate school in Paris, he found himself drawn to socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurship. During the course of his 10-year stay in France, he raised bees outside of Paris, dabbled in permaculture and was considering a move to West Africa to raise goats when a phone call from his mother changed everything.”My mom says, ëNo, no, no. I can visit you in Paris, but I don’t think I can make it to West Africa. Why don’t you come home? Why are you going to be a farmer in Africa? You can be a farmer in Pennington County,'” Crawford remembers.”Listen to Mom. Usually she’s right.”

Crawford returned to his native Rapid City three years ago, where he teaches French and Spanish at St. Thomas More Middle School and practices small-scale agriculture on his parents’ acreage north of town. His father, Tony, watches the farm during the day.”He helps out, but he and his friends are still scratching their heads. He never thought that his horse barn would be filled with a bunch of goats. I think the horses might be a little confused too,” Crawford says.

Some cowboys mock goats as”the poor man’s cow,” but Crawford appreciates the animal.”In terms of what they eat and what they produce, it’s just a lot more human scale,” he says.”You don’t need a ton of land, a ton of infrastructure. To milk the goats, you need a bucket with a lid, and the home kitchen is enough to have your family totally self-sufficient with milk and cheese and soap.”

With his herd of 10 Alpine dairy goats, plus chickens, honeybees and a number of cats, Crawford engages in permaculture, an interconnected style of farming in which all of the elements work together holistically.”Every plant that you plant, you can eat it or the goats can eat it,” he says.”No loafers. Everyone has a job.” One of the goats’ jobs is to provide rich milk, which Crawford uses to create tomme, an aged, washed-rind cheese.

The origins of cheesemaking are lost to time, but it is believed that the first cheeses were made when fresh milk was stored in pouches made from animal stomachs. Rennet, a mixture of enzymes found in the stomach’s lining, coagulated the milk and caused curds and whey to form. Crawford’s method is a bit more sophisticated. First, goat milk is heated in a sterilized pot. Next, bacteria is added to help the cheese develop flavor, followed by the curd-forming rennet. The curds are separated from the whey, placed in a mold or cheesecloth, weighted down and salted. This helps remove moisture from the cheese and encourages a crust to form.”It’s going to look a little spooky sometimes, but what’s inside is the good stuff,” Crawford says. His cheeses are left to age in a spare refrigerator in his basement. Cheese ages best in a humid environment at a temperature of about 50 degrees, so Crawford stores the cheeses in Tupperware containers with the lids cracked open and periodically washes each cheese with salt water. This helps kill bad bacteria or mold, develops the cheese’s protective crust and draws out additional moisture.

Unlike a commercial operation, there are many variables involved in Crawford’s cheese, so every wheel is a surprise.”The cheese is kind of a living, changing entity of its own,” he says.”You cut into a cheese that you’ve been saving for 10 months and then the wheel of cheese next to it that you made three days later and you think, ëWhat the heck? Why is this one so delicious?'”

Crawford would like to build a commercial kitchen, but due to government regulations, a health department-compliant cheesemaking facility is an expensive proposition. For now, he’s content to watch the comic interactions between his animals, share his best cheeses at potlucks and enjoy his after-school farm venture.”Some people go to the bar after work. I go milk some goats,” he says.

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

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Retracing Roads to Our Round Barns

By Bernie Hunhoff

A barn-like pavilion is the centerpiece of the two-county fairgrounds near Nisland.

South Dakota Magazine staffers crisscrossed South Dakota 25 years ago in search of that rare architectural treasure — the round barn.

With help from the State Historical Society, we eventually found 29. They included livestock sales barns, the Butte-Lawrence county fairgrounds pavilion, two octagonal machine sheds and a charming, vertical-log barn near Sturgis. South Dakota never had many round barns, so forgive us for loosely interpreting the term.

We also learned that circular barn construction dates at least to the Bronze Age (hundreds of years B.C.), when boulders were used not just for castles in Britain but also for barns.

George Washington was among the first American farmers to build a barn in the round. A reconstruction of his original 16-sided barn, based on the first president’s own drawings, is a popular attraction at Mount Vernon.

The Shakers were the first Americans to experiment with round construction. A Shaker stone barn built at Hancock, Massachusetts, in 1824 is among the country’s oldest.

There’s just something about roundness. Eric Sloane, author of An Age of Barns, wrote,”Farmers made circular designs on their barns and their wives sewed circular patterns on quilts. They took delight in round hats, rugs and boxes, and they made round drawer pulls and hand rests for their severely-angled furniture.”

Anton Anfinson, a contractor from Wakonda, promoted the round barn concept in southeast South Dakota. Anfinson believed a round barn was the most efficient way to feed cattle. Many round barns featured a silo or a hole in the hay mow at the center. Livestock stood with their heads to the center at feeding or milking time, making it easier to feed the animals and clean their waste.

Most farmers who constructed round barns must have believed in Anfinson’s economic theory, but it’s likely that they were also intrigued by the thought of having something out of the ordinary.

They got what they bargained for. During our 1990s search, we found that if we got within 10 miles of a round barn and asked for help, somebody would soon have directions. Any well-kept old barn gets people’s attention, but a round barn becomes a neighborhood landmark.

“A man’s barn bespoke his worth as a man,” wrote Bob Lacy in a foreword to his book, Barn.”It expressed his earthly aspirations and symbolized the substance of his legacy to his children.”

Rural historians estimate that fewer than 3,000 round barns existed in North America, and most were built in Canada. South Dakota never had more than three or four dozen.

Twenty-five years ago, it was heartening to learn that someone cared about nearly every round barn we discovered. Over the past year, we retraced our travels and found that most of those barns still stand. Following are stories about the barns and the people who care for them in the 21st century.

Watertown

The Corson Emminger barn south of Watertown along Highway 81.

East River’s most visible round barn stands just south of Watertown along U.S. Highway 81. Corson Emminger came to South Dakota in 1905 from Wisconsin, where round barns were popular with dairy farmers, and built the 50-foot diameter barn with concrete blocks in 1910. He added an attractive cupola for good measure. The barn served as a milking parlor for decades. Today, the Emminger barn is missing a few shingles but it remains in good shape thanks to the Moeller family, its longtime owners.

1880 Town

West River’s most prominent round barn serves as a grand entry to the Hullinger family’s 1880 Town, a pioneer village located 22 miles west of Murdo along Interstate 90. Richard Hullinger remembers the day they moved the 14-sided barn from a ranch near Draper, about 45 miles away.”We came across the country on a ridge, and we had to do a little dirt work on the draws to make the crossings.” Built in 1919, before the invention of power tools, the barn’s symmetrical roof is high art to anyone who ever handled a handsaw or hammer.

Mission Hill

Norman Nelsen would be pleased to see the place he named New Hope Farm more than a century ago. Nelsen was a man who appreciated detail. He kept a journal of the materials and costs when he built an octagonal barn in 1913 as a machinery shed.”He recorded how many nails and how many boards he used, and he kept track of the costs,” says his great-grandson Chris Nelsen, who now lives on the farm, northwest of Mission Hill, with his wife Cindy and their children.”You can still see the hooks in the round barn where he hung the longest ears of corn to dry,” Nelsen says.”It was his method of doing natural seed selection.”

In 1914, Norman built a traditional rectangular barn just a stone’s throw to the west. Today, calves and sheep enjoy the big barn, and the smaller one is still used for storage. Chris and Cindy tend fastidiously to both barns — they plan to re-shingle the round barn and they recently sided and roofed the big barn, where letters atop the main door read NEW HOPE FARM.

Sioux Falls

The Shafer family has tended to a round barn on the northeast edge of Sioux Falls for many years. The barn was built of hollow block in 1919-20 by bankers Art Winters and Ray Stevens, who liked the round concept for cattle feeding. They installed a nearby scale and operated the farm like a stockyard.

However, the feeder cattle created too much moisture in the winter months, causing thick layers of ice to collect on the walls. The bankers eventually abandoned their operation and sold the barn to the Shafer family, which owns it today. For years, they operated a dairy in the barn; today it’s mostly used for storage.

Ron Hodne says Lawrence Welk and his band entertained in the round barn.

Winfred

Lawrence Welk and his band played a few songs at a dance in the Hodne family’s big round barn southwest of Madison near the little town of Winfred. Entertaining seems to fit the Hodne family, which now operates a big hunting lodge affectionately called Hodneville (officially the Bird’s Nest) within shotgun range of the barn.

The 80-foot diameter barn was built for beef cattle in 1918. Ron Hodne’s parents bought the place in 1946 and today he lives nearby with his wife, Ev. They and three sons — Brad, Brian and Brandon — run the lodge, which can accommodate 50 overnight guests.

A few years ago, Hodne asked his sons if they thought the barn was worth preserving because it needed a $40,000 roof.”They said, ‘Do it,'” he says.

The family has used the round barn for just about everything you can raise in South Dakota — cattle, hogs and chickens.”We even tried artichokes,” Hodne jokes. It’s empty today, except for a farm cat, but he and his family may eventually find a way to incorporate it into the lodge.

Draper

The Freier barn near Draper was built from a pre-cut mail order kit, possibly from the Gordon Van Tine Company of Davenport, Iowa. It was used as a sheep barn for decades.

Renner

Blocks for a round barn on the northern outskirts of Renner were made from sand and gravel collected at a nearby pit in 1917. The Sorum family has owned the barn for generations. They used it as a dairy for many years, but in recent decades it has served as a horse stable and a cat paradise.

Gettysburg

South Dakota’s largest round barn is on the Sloat farm north of Gettysburg. Measuring 100 feet in diameter, the wood-frame structure is used for swine, beef and dairy.

Sturgis

A barn of vertical pine logs stands in Bulldog Gulch near Sturgis.

South Dakota’s only round barn made of logs lies in Bulldog Gulch, just south of the Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis. It was built of pine logs, stood vertically on a circular concrete footing, in about 1941 by the Blairs, a prominent pioneer ranching family.

Dick and Lonna Morkert removed 2 feet of cattle manure when they bought the barn 30 years ago. Once cleaned, they found the barn was perfect for their four horses. Lonna, who then worked at a clinic in Sturgis, met the man who cut the logs.”He was an old-timer who was known for his mules,” she says.”The Blairs gave him the job of cutting the trees. He said he skidded them down from the mountain just to the west.”

Bulldog Gulch has a rich history. The 1874 Custer Expedition stopped there and watered horses at the same creek that the Morkert horses enjoy. Some think the gulch was named for Madame Bulldog, who ran a saloon there.

The Blairs arrived in 1907. They raised registered Hereford cattle and held bull sales at the log barn in the early 1940s. Dick Morkert says old-timers remembered that bidders sat on long benches.

Weddings are sometimes celebrated at the No Name City campground, which borders the Morkerts’ barn and corrals. On a few occasions, a bride with good taste in architecture will ask to have a picture taken by the very clean log barn.

A round barn is among the collection of 14 old agricultural buildings at the Little Village Farm near Trent.

Trent

When the Big Sioux River threatened a century-old round barn near Trent in the 1990s, the landowners called Jim Lacey and said,”You need that barn!”

Lacey agreed, but moving round barns is not easy because they lack the floor beams of rectangular structures. Still, the Beckers of Marion agreed to move it with Lacey’s help, and together they brought it out of the river valley and onto what’s now known as Little Village Farm, a collection of 14 old agricultural buildings.

The village’s only other round barn is a brooder house.”It was a prefab job, probably sold by Sears or Wards,” Lacey says.”You put it together just like the old redwood water tanks, with steel bands. Tenant farmers could buy one, and then take it with them if they moved from one farm to another.” If the chickens dirtied a spot, the farmer simply pulled the brooder house to an area with fresh grass.

Jim and Joan Lacey welcome guests to their Little Village Farm, located west of Trent in Moody County. The buildings are full of farm and ranch machinery, tools and collectibles, including more than 6,000 farm caps. There is a small admission fee.

Zell

Twin 12-sided round barns sit in a horse pasture on the northeast corner of Zell, a small village west of Redfield on Highway 212. Zell was named by Benedictine sisters who built a wood monastery there in 1886 which is also standing, though showing its age.

Unityville

A big tile barn once stood just west of a little town with the fine name of Unityville in McCook County. The town was christened as Stark when it was founded in 1907, but when officials learned that there was already a Stark in North Dakota they unified around the new name. The landmark round barn was built in 1921. Unfortunately, Unityville is all but gone, the farmstead is now a cornfield and only the barn’s silo is now standing. Life is stark in Unityville.

Potter County

A 20-sided hog house built by John Nold in 1903 may be the first round barn built in South Dakota, according to a 1995 study by the South Dakota State Historical Society.

Nisland

The entire Butte-Lawrence County Fairgrounds is on the National Registry of Historic Places. Its jewel is the round pavilion.

Buried in the cottonwood and oak forest of the Belle Fourche River valley lies one of America’s truly unique county fairgrounds, and its centerpiece is a century-old, octagon pavilion.

The forested 40-acre site is a mile west of Nisland in Butte County, which has shared a county fair with Lawrence County since 1980. And who wouldn’t want to share such fairgrounds?

The white-washed buildings include two long, rectangular barracks that housed German POWs during World War II. The prisoners helped farmers with the sugar beet harvest. Big-branched cottonwoods shade the buildings and grass. The entire fairgrounds are on the National Registry of Historic Places, but the pine jewel is the round pavilion. President Calvin Coolidge attended the fair and was pictured at the pavilion when he vacationed in the Black Hills in 1927.

The sturdy structure survived several calamities, including a 2012 windstorm that damaged the roof and windows. The two counties and their fair board invested nearly $300,000 in repairs and updates. Officials hope to find ways to use the pavilion throughout the year — maybe for weddings and family reunions — to garner income for future expenses.

The fair is held the first weekend of August, a week before the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Area 4-Hers exhibit crafts, garden produce and other projects on the main floor and a second story balcony of the pavilion. REA co-ops host a free barbecue. Boys and girls show their livestock and compete in catch-the-sheep and dress-a-rabbit contests. At sunset, animals sleep in the barns as country music wafts to the high ceiling of the pavilion.

Admission is free at the fair, perhaps because the atmosphere is priceless.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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South Dakota’s Sledding Hills

Local youth take to their sleds at Yankton’s Morgen Park. Photo by Bernie Hunhoff.

By Bernie Hunhoff

South Dakota’s reputation for geographic diversity holds true when it comes to snow sledding. Some of our eastern cities are too flat, and the slopes in some of our mountain towns are too rugged, steep and rocky.

In Aberdeen, where the terrain has been described as”flat as a barn door,” city leaders manufactured a 25′ hill so kids could enjoy winter. However, we discovered that most communities have a natural hill that becomes a hot spot when it snows.

Pack your sleds as you travel this winter because there are plenty of hills to explore. Most of the snow hills are unsupervised, so adults should be ready to act if they see something dangerous — a heavy toboggan sled, for example, that could carom out of control and hurt someone, or a motorized vehicle on the slopes. Sledding has long been a favorite winter tradition, even for our flatland friends. Let’s keep it alive.

Here’s our list of city slopes. Tell us what we’re missing. We’d also like to know where to find the closest and richest hot chocolate after a day on the slopes.

ABERDEEN — God created most of South Dakota’s hills and mountains, but man assisted with the modest slope in Baird Park (1715 24th Avenue NE), the most popular sledding spot in the Hub City. City officials created the gentle 25-foot just for kids.

BELLE FOURCHE — Slopes behind the Tri-State Museum (415 5th Avenue) are a favorite, though they may be too fast for younger kids and there is a walking path at the foot of the hill so watch for pedestrians.

CUSTER — Pageant Hill has been touted as one of the finest family sledding spots in the Black Hills. It may be too steep and long for younger kids, but you don’t have to descend from the very top. The hill is the summit of beautiful Big Rock Park, which also includes hiking trails and a disc golf course. It rises above the city’s south side.

HOT SPRINGS — Southern Hills Golf Course (1130 Clubhouse Drive) is fun and scenic.

HURON — Toboggan Hill (6th Street & Lawnridge Avenue), aka Slide Hill, is a bluff above the Jim River valley on Huron’s east side.

LEMMON — The ever-resourceful people of Lemmon discovered years ago that it was less expensive to build a small hill for their new water storage rather than just build a taller tower. Then someone got the great idea or also making it into a sledding slope with a warming shack. Tank Hill is quite easy to spot on the city’s west side. Many years ago, when the water tower developed a leak during a cold spell, kids were able to slide on the ice flow all the way downtown.

PIERRE — The slopes above the soccer fields in Hilger’s Gulch are popular. The gulch is a scenic valley just north of the State Capitol building.

RAPID CITY — Meadowbrook School Hill (3125 W. Flormann Street) is a good spot, as well as the Civic Center hill that rises above the Holiday Inn Rushmore Plaza parking lot downtown.

SIOUX FALLS — Tuthill Park in southeast Sioux Falls is the site of weddings and parties in the summer months, but when the snow falls it becomes the domain of well-bundled children with sleds. Spellerberg Park (2299 W. 22nd Street), closer to the city center, also has a fair slope. Great Bear Ski Valley welcomes snow tubers, who get to ride the ski lifts.

SPEARFISH — Hills behind the Donald E. Young Center on the Black Hills State University campus are fast and fun.

STURGIS — Lions Club Park (off Lazelle Street) is a good place for younger kids, and Strong Field Hill on Ballpark Road is fun for older youth.

WATERTOWN — St. Ann’s Hill, a sledder’s delight, is so named because St. Ann’s was the original name of the nearby Prairie Lakes Hospital. Take Highway 20 to 10th Avenue and turn uphill.

WESSINGTON SPRINGS — It’s worth a drive to experience Ski Hill on the west edge of Wessington Springs. The natural setting in the Wessington Hills is idyllic, but the real attraction is an old, homemade invention with an electric motor that powers a 1,200-foot rope lift. Jokingly called the”Rube Goldberg ski lift,” the simple equipment has been lovingly cared for by handy volunteers, including Lloyd Marken, 85, who helped to build it in 1956.

YANKTON — Morgen Park (1200 Green Street) is the go-to sledding hill in town, however kids also like to slide down the earthen slope of Gavins Point Dam, where it rises above Pierson Ranch Recreation Area west of Yankton.

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More Winter by the River

Almost every morning, you’ll find retired Yankton High School teacher and debate coach Paul Harens along the Missouri, scouting for fresh views of our old river town. We shared a few of his cold-weather shots in “Winter by the River,” a story in our January/February 2020 issue, but here are a few more for your enjoyment. Look for more of Harens’ work on Instagram.

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Yankton’s Civil Rights Champion

By John Andrews

Until the day Ted Blakey died in 2004, he possessed a newspaper clipping from February 1838. It advertised his grandfather, an 11-year-old boy at the time, for sale at a slave auction in Missouri. For Blakey, a Yankton businessman and tireless Civil Rights advocate, it served as a reminder of how far his family had come.

Blakey was born in Yankton in 1925, the youngest of 11 children. His family roots were in Missouri, but his father and uncle were encouraged to move to South Dakota after hearing Tom Douglas, an African-American who ran a successful business in Yankton. Douglas wanted to share the freedom he enjoyed so in 1904 he traveled through Missouri, telling everyone who would listen that if they came to Yankton they would find”freedom like you’ve never seen anywhere.”

Blakey’s father and uncle were in the crowd one day and were intrigued by the proposal. The final straw came the day his father was accused of assaulting a white woman after simply bumping into her in a dry goods store. The clerk threatened to lynch him if he ever returned. When he got home he told his wife they were leaving for South Dakota. They arrived in Yankton on Oct. 16, 1905.

In the Dakotas African-Americans did not find the same attitudes toward them that were prevalent in Southern states, but discriminatory language still found its way into early territorial laws. Gov. William Jayne, in his first message to the new territorial legislature in 1862, called for a ban on slavery. Despite his entreaty, a committee passed a bill preventing”persons of color” residing in Dakota Territory. Fortunately the full House rejected the measure. Still, the Organic Act that authorized a government for Dakota Territory declared that only”every free white male inhabitant of the United States…shall be entitled to vote at the first election.” Not until 1868 did the legislature delete the word”white.” Similarly, schools were”equally free and accessible to all white children,” until 1868.

Blakey became the owner of a successful janitorial service and pest control business in Yankton. He was also president of the school board and the PTA and active in the Jaycees and Kiwanis.”It was never really that bad,” Blakey recalled in a 2001 interview, though there were incidents of discrimination in the 1960s. South Dakota’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People surveyed the state and found certain restaurants in Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Huron, Mitchell and other larger towns refused to allow blacks to eat in. Another survey by the Black Hills Civil Rights Committee revealed that 90 percent of bars and barbershops and 30 percent of restaurants and motels in Rapid City refused service to blacks.

The NAACP and Gov. Archie Gubbrud recruited Blakey to remedy the situation.”That was when I really hit it,” he later recalled.”I went before Rotary, Kiwanis, the Sacred Heart PTA and a lot of clubs there. See up until then, a black person couldn’t get a haircut in Yankton until after 5 o’clock. He (the barber) pulled down the shade and cut your hair. There was not a barbershop in Yankton that would cut a black man’s hair in 1963.”

Blakey helped change all of that. In 1963 Gov. Gubbrud signed a Civil Rights Bill. Blakey also urged the state legislature to approve the 24th amendment to the constitution, eliminating the poll tax. South Dakota was the 38th and final state needed to approve the amendment in 1964.

In time Blakey came to be the unofficial spokesperson for South Dakota’s black population, a role he especially relished whenever outsiders had questions.”We hear about the Holocaust, and survivors of Pearl Harbor,” Blakey says.”I want them to know what black people did in South Dakota, and in Yankton.”

Thanks to Ted Blakey, many South Dakotans knew the story well.

Governor Archie Gubbrud and Ted Blakey of Yankton
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This Isn’t Yankee Stadium

By Colin Kapitan


Editor’s Note: Colin “Kap” Kapitan, a fixture on the South Dakota sports scene for six decades, died Dec. 28. Kap was a fun-loving character and a man who could both tell a story in the bar or hammer it out on a keyboard. He was a sportswriter and editor for the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan. But he will be best remembered as a dedicated sports official who reffed countless high school and college football and basketball games. He also umpired one baseball game in his hometown of Yankton, and he wrote about the experience in our May/June 1994 issue.


People often ask me why baseball umpiring is not part of my summer activity since I’ve officiated and reffed high school and college football games for years and years. Actually, I did don the umpire blue for three seasons. How clearly I remember my last stint behind the plate. That day, I decided shin guards, chest protectors and face masks were not conductive to me having fun. Here’s the background story.

Baseball umpiring was a tradeoff for me. In 1962, I was looking for a basketball referee partner. A friend, Darrell, was seeking a baseball-umpiring sidekick. We compromised. Darrell would work basketball with me. Together, we would work college baseball six weeks in the spring.

I worked a lot of games. Southern State, Yankton, Wayne, Morningside and the University of South Dakota. Three, sometimes four doubleheaders a week. For three years. Three long years.

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t get into balls and strikes. Certainly it wasn’t that I didn’t love the game. Or that I didn’t know the game.

Maybe it was those doubleheaders. Start at noon and go ’til dark. No daylight savings time then. Maybe it was the dreary weather. Wind and rain. More wind. More rain. I wore more clothes on the diamond than when shoveling snow.

My last afternoon was a day much like just described. Riverside diamond in Yankton. The wind was whipping off the river, bringing slow and steady precipitation. The temperature was in the mid-30s. Your regular college baseball doubleheader. The Yankton College Greyhounds were entertaining John F. Kennedy College of Wahoo, Neb. Both schools are now defunct.

I was behind the plate for the first game and should have suspected this would be worse than your ordinary game when the JFK catcher came out for the bottom of the first. Despite the weather, he wore a t-shirt. Maybe he figured all those tattoos would keep him warm. He looked 35 and sounded like a Marine drill sergeant. Jose was his name.

Jose didn’t like most of my decisions. His coach agreed with him. The coach? Bob Cerv. Not a name that rings a bell with your average baseball fan, but Bob Cerv was a good player on the New York Yankee teams of the mid-1950s. He played with Mickey Mantle. He had several World Series championship rings. This day he was as big as a house. Three hundred and fifty pounds, plus. Over a 6-foot-4 frame. With a growly voice and a vocabulary that put his foulmouthed catcher to shame. He visited me often during the first game.

I struggled through the contest. Actually the seven innings went pretty fast. I figured I had it made. Just seven more innings on the bases, collect my $30 and get home to a hot bath.

It wasn’t that easy. I forgot Murphy’s Law.

First play of the second game. A bang bang at first base. My call went against JFK. Here came Cerv across the diamond as fast as a 350-pounder can make it.

I made up my mind right there. Before the ex-big leaguer could utter a word, I had my say! To my surprise, Bob Cerv grinned. He left the diamond, never to return that afternoon.

Darrell could hardly wait to get to me after the game. “What happened?” he asked. “What transpired that Cerv never again left the dugout?”

As Cerv approached in that first inning, I chose my words carefully. “Excuse me, Mr. Cerv, but this isn’t Yankee Stadium. Don’t think you’ll make it there as a manager nor I as an umpire. But I will tell you one thing. If you leave me alone the rest of the afternoon, I promise you that I’ll never umpire another baseball game so long as I live.”

The lumbering giant stopped. He looked dazed for a moment, then gathered himself and smiled. “You got it, kid.”

He kept his word. And I have kept mine.

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Catfishing With Nata

By Rebecca Johnson

Nata Jones and her husband Brad enjoy fishing at Apple Tree, a peaceful bay by the Missouri River east of Springfield.

Catfishing is a popular sport for Yankton residents because the wild Missouri River flows just south of town. There are tricks to landing the wily cats, and to cooking them. But it’s nothing you can’t learn. Ask Nata Jones.

Nata is a native of Chernivtsi, a city of some 240,000 people in the Ukraine. She met Brad Jones of Yankton while vacationing in Minneapolis, and within a year she left her chocolate store and was married at the Chapel in the Hills near Rapid City.”It was a beautiful wedding at a wooden church in the mountains,” she recalls warmly.

Nata Jones

She liked South Dakota even before she discovered the Missouri River.”I love small town people. Everybody is so friendly and smiling. You don’t need to worry about nothing,” she says with a charming European accent.”If something happened, everybody would help me.”

She applied for three jobs and was amazed to find herself with not one but three. She tried to balance them all for month, but eventually chose to be a certified nursing assistant at Avera Yankton Care Center, a nursing home on Eighth Street, not far from the river. She loves to visit with the residents, and she likes her co-workers.”I never have a day when I want to stay home,” she says.

Not that she doesn’t like home. She and Brad live in a wooded area near Lewis and Clark Lake.”The first year I am here we see millions of geese come by,” she exclaims, still with wonder in her eyes.”I see by the house deer, turkey, raccoon. I never see this in Ukraine.”

And then there are the catfish and walleye.”I fished in the Ukraine, too, but this is a little bit different here,” Nata says.”In the Ukraine I don’t have time and beautiful place to go. Now I just come home from work and if it’s sunny out (Brad and I will) go.”

Their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Rex, always goes along.”He is very important fisherman,” says Nata.”He likes to jump from the boat ramp and just fly into the water.” Rex is also an environmentalist; he swims below the surface to retrieve discarded plastic bottles and then deposits them on the bank.

As Brad and Nata Jones concentrate on fishing, their dog Rex enjoys chasing bull frogs and retrieving plastic bottles from the Missouri River bottom.

Nata and Brad fish for whatever finned creatures are available but Nata proclaims catfish her favorite, explaining it’s the most expensive fish in the Ukraine. Channel cats seek areas where fast water becomes slow. Brad finds the perfect, clear water channels either by boat or along shore.”He is the real professional. He knows all the secrets,” Nata says. They use stink bait from a local bait shop to lure the bottom feeding fish, because the whiskered swimmers will generally eat anything they can catch in their mouths but their strongest sense is smell.”(The stink bait) smells very, very bad but this is what catfish like,” the angler says with a laugh.

Reeling in food for dinner is the ultimate goal but that is not Nata’s definition of a successful expedition. She doesn’t care if they get a bite. They enjoy the boat ride or the time ashore. She can’t imagine ever moving from this home near all her favorite fishing spots.”When my husband retires, he wants to leave to Montana or Yellowstone,” says Jones.”I said no because we have such a beautiful place here. We cannot leave.”

Baked Catfish with Onions and Tomatoes

Here’s one of Nata’s favorite recipes for catfish, although it can be used with any white fish. Baking times vary according to the thickness of the fish.

2 lbs. catfish

1 medium onion, diced

2 large tomatoes, diced

2 tsp. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Remove all skin and cut fillets into 8 pieces. Place into lightly greased baking dish. Saute onions in olive oil until translucent. Add tomatoes and cook until soft, stirring often. Spoon mixture over fish and lightly salt and pepper. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees or until fish flakes easily with a fork. (Sometimes Nata replaces the two large tomatoes with 3 coarsely shredded carrots for a twist on this basic recipe.)

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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A Lasting Legacy

Our July/August issue includes a story by John Andrews on Joseph Ward. Ward came to Yankton in the late 1860s to spread congregationalism, but his legacy in South Dakota extends far beyond the church. Andrews collected several photos from the Yankton College archives for the feature. Here are some that we couldn’t fit into the magazine.