Security Savings Bank

A collection of the books written by Doris Stensland.

“My great grandfather Ole Overseth worked on the railroad to get money with the goal of claiming some land. He made his application at Vermillion in April 1872 for a homestead in Norway Township,” she said. “The part of Norway where my ancestors came from was full of trees. But they came to this land that was empty with no trees. They’d get seedlings from the river banks and plant windbreaks in rows.”

Doris became curious about her great grandparents after looking at the Norwegian language hymnal of her great grandmother, Johannes Overseth. In the front of the hymnal, she had written her name and a reference to Philippians 3:20, which reads: “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” For a woman who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, traversed half a continent, endured the hardscrabble life of the prairie, and traded her Norwegian citizenship for American citizenship, Johannes’ brief reference to scripture bears witness to a Christian’s true citizenship has nothing to do with nationality and that the ultimate reward is not an earthly one.

Much of Doris’ writing is grounded in her Norwegian heritage, her Christian faith and her decades on the farm. An example in Our Words Are Blossoms is this excerpt of free verse from “Grandpa’s Barn” where she compares the barn to the Biblical ark:

ROOTED IN OUR COMMUNITIES

WE UNDERSTAND FARMING

For over 100 years, we have been financing farming operations, and we have roots that run deep in the community.

AG SERVICES Competitive Rates Real Estate Loans Construction Loans Lines Of Credit Livestock Loans Crop Input Loans

SECURING YOUR FUTURE

bankwithssb.com

For her first book, “Haul The Water, Haul The Wood,” Doris painted this picture of her great grandparents. Doris with her late husband, Hans, on their 74th wedding anniversary.

It was his pride and joy, this huge structure that added the finishing touch to his farm. It was his ark, filled with animals and hay where he was Noah tending to all his creatures.

Doris was born in the back room of a country store at Leeville, which was located north of Beresford in bygone days. She spent many of her early days at her grandparent’s farm. “So I was happy to marry a farmer,” she said.

Before moving to The Inn on Westport in Sioux Falls in 2009, she and her late husband, Hans, farmed on Highway 11 about two miles north of the turn towards Lands Lutheran Church. “We had chickens, pigs, milk cows, and we fattened cattle. When we had hail and didn’t have any crop, we could still make it because we had milk to sell. Hans wasn’t afraid of work.” Today, their son, Jim, farms land adjacent to Lands Lutheran, on ground once farmed by his great grandfather and his great uncle.

In Our Words Are Blossoms, Doris defines “The Basic Ingredient” which unites these farmers over the generations:

What makes a man a farmer? It isn’t his land, or his tractor and plow, or his overalls, work shoes, or lots of ‘know-how.’

It’s an intangible thing that runs through his veins, that carries him through the dust storms and rains. That makes him invest his money without a guarantee of receiving a dime. That gives him confidence with nature to cope.

It’s that tender but powerful substance called Hope.