Long Prairie

Today was one of those miraculous days during which things unfold again and again into the extraordinary. Today we went to Long Prairie.

Long Prairie is a little more than an hour from where we live. You take the interstate up to Sauk Center, the birthplace of Sinclair Lewis and inspiration for Main Street. Then you take Hwy 71 out into the country and eventually get to the small town of Long Prairie. The whole way we talked about Sinclair Lewis, the critique of the Midwestern small town and the Romanticism of it, the critique of the city and the Romanticism of it, and of America and her literature. I was feeling happy.

We went for a funeral. Long Prairie is the county seat of Todd County, with the courthouse and the church made of the same yellow brick, sitting on two hills. The funeral presider was an older priest, a Willenbring, like Russ who grows strawberries and his nephew Matthew who is beekeeping on our farm.

And then we went to see the sawyers.

Steve always has a side trip in mind when we venture out, which is what makes them adventures. It usually involves looking at machinery of some sort. This side trip was much more appealing to me than looking at trailers or skid-loaders. He wanted to stop and see if we could talk to some of the Amish sawyers who are known for milling up quality wood for furniture. He had a few Google maps printed out with the names he got from the university’s forest manager: Noah, Andy and Mose Schwartzentruber, all on separate farms in the area.

We first drove up to Noah’s house, neat and with a nice garden by the front door. Later we saw another, much larger garden behind the house. They had a sign that said “Maple Syrup for sale,” so that made us feel better about going up to the door. The wife and two small girls answered– only later did we realize these smaller children only speak German. She was friendly and explained that her husband was out with the boys, and then she got us the maple syrup. She presented it to me like a precious gift. Also, she told us Noah only mills softwood, not hardwoods.

But before we left, Noah came around the barn and so we went to talk to him. He was kind enough to show us his mill and saw and the huge cottonwood logs. He mills them into slats for pallets. He told us about his six sons and showed us the old-fashioned corn cribs built into the barn walls, where the corn is stacked and dries evenly for winter feed.

Then he sent us down the road to see Andy, his nephew, who mills hardwood logs.

After stopping at Andy’s mill on the road, we were directed to his house by a young Amish boy, barefoot and wearing a straw hat and suspenders. I had trouble not staring at the clothes, actually, made of rich fabrics with beautiful buttons and clasps, the men in lined vests and interesting trousers and shirts, the little girls barefoot in crimson and blue dresses. I had a really hard time not taking photos of the gorgeous children.

At Andy’s farm, we could see him bringing a horse out of the barn for the buggy. We pulled up and stopped and what first caught us, besides a girl who looked too small to be walking so fast in her long dress, was the clothesline running from the house all the way up to the peak of the barn. It was on a pulley and had clothes and linens pinned from one end to the other. It was arresting, really.

Andy welcomed us as warmly and naturally as Noah had, and we asked him about wood. It was a great pleasure, really, to have business that could bring us to this beautiful farm. The children, four or five of them, were playing off by themselves, and only the youngest two took a wide-eyed interest in us. This is when we learned they didn’t understand English. While we talked, Andy hooked up the horse to the buggy, then brought it over as we prepared to go. Unlike Noah, Andy has a phone number for his business where Steve could leave a message for him about the wood, and they exchanged information.

The wood, red oak, will be milled into two-inch slabs. It will be green wood and need to dry in our hayloft for a year or two before it can be turned into furniture. It will be free edged, with one bark edge left intact, and it will not have many knots, though a knot or two can make the slab interesting.

While I took photos (with permission, of course) of the laundry line, the children sat in the buggy waiting for their father.

We were so inspired that on the way home we took another detour down to Kriegle Lake. Steve showed me the Indian Marker Tree Jeff had identified, and the guest cabin whose upper floor is made out of a trolley car depot from Minneapolis.