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“Where Fillmore County News Comes First” Weekly Edition
Senior Living Section PAGE
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Spring Valley to upgrade radios PAGE
21
Monday, July 29, 2019
Mabel-Canton water damage PAGE
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Volume 34 Issue 43
Chatfield interim wastewater operator PAGE
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Fillmore Central renovations on track PAGE
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Canton • Chatfield • Fountain • Harmony • Houston • Lanesboro • Mabel • Ostrander • Peterson • Preston • Rushford • Rushford Village • Spring Valley • Whalan • Wykoff
Mission 66 brings joy to Houston Driftless Goat
Company; setting the stage for restoration BY K IRSTEN ZOELLNER kirsten@fillmorecountyjournal.com
The joy shows on the kids faces as the playground is opened. BY BARB JEFFERS barb@fillmorecountyjournal.com
“How sweet it is!” stated Bruce Vonderohe, borrowing a line from Jackie Gleason, as the Mission 66 Playground in Houston, Minn., was about to open to the public at a special ceremony in Central Park on July 21. This magnificent playground became a reality due to the hard work and perseverance of many people that got behind the project spearheaded by the Houston High School Class of ‘66. “The whole thing was really an accident,” explains Vonderohe. “At the 40th class reunion, there were four of us involved in planning it and the idea came up after the final day of the class reunion, which is held during the Houston Hoedown celebration, that we should have a parade
entry on Sunday,” he says. “Ideas were kicked around they thought of bringing horses in to pull a cart and decided that was too hot for the horses,” states Vonderohe. So he asked the group if they knew anyone who had a bus they could use for the parade. It just so happened that classmate Bryan Forsyth had seen a school bus sitting in a cowyard that was for sale. Vonderohe called the owner and soon the Class of ‘66 had a bus! “Had we not won first place in the parade that year it probably would have ended right there,” notes Vonderohe, saying, “but you know, we had to come back for a curtain call and the rest is history,” he states. “The real clincher was when we followed the football team in 2008,” explains Vonderohe. They took the bus to some of the games and had any people that had ever graduated from
Photo by Barb Jeffers Houston High School sign their names inside the bus. “That gave the whole Houston community ownership to it,” Vonderohe relays. “Then we went to the dome for the championship games, and they won of course in 2008, and we had the bus in the parking lot blaring music - the whole town was there to celebrate,” he reminisces. The Class of ‘66 returned with the bus each year for the Hoedown parade and thought maybe the year of the 50th reunion they would stop but many people in town told them they needed to keep it going. “Well, there had to be a way out because either we are not going to be around or the bus isn’t going to be around at some point, so the idea came to put it in as a piece of the playground,” See MISSION 66 Page 2 ➤
Living in arguably one of the most breathtaking natural areas, we often see the lush rolling hills, dense forests, and golden prairies at face value. We forget that they have been roamed, managed by farm and land owners, and altered by years of interaction by humans. A shift in balance between soil, land, plant, and animal has resulted in reduction of quality and sustainability and introduction of noxious vegetation, pest, and deep land scarring has shifted. But, the balance is being restored. Driftless Goat Company, in rural Lanesboro, can attest to this firsthand. “We have a business that is attractive to a diverse group of people: farmers, environmentalists, academics, artists, outdoors enthusiasts. There are a lot of ecological challenges and it’s exciting that agriculture is providing a solution,” says company co-founder Peter Ruen. “In America, we often hear that agriculture is the problem.
Agriculture is part of the solution. Fillmore County… the farms and farmers here are a different breed. It’s one of the cleanest counties in the country.” “The story is the goats,” he continues. In 2017, Ruen and wife Cynthia, along with neighbors Jim and Debbie Rand, started Driftless Goat Company with two goats and a vision for responsible land management to steward the ever-changing environment. The company provides managed goat grazing not as a replacement to other methods, but as a viable alternative. Becoming more and more common, in both rural and urban areas, the grazing of goats provides a reduction in usage of mechanical vegetative removal, whether mowing, cutting, or manually removing weeds, using chemical sprays, and other repetitive management strategies. Working with nature, rather than against it, grazing is effective in flood and fire See DRIFTLESS GOAT Page 14 ➤
County creates finance department BY K AREN R EISNER karen@fillmorecountyjournal.com
Fillmore County commissioners, for several years, have worked toward centralized finance. At the July 23 meeting, the board unanimously voted to create a Finance Department,
effective August 1 as recommended by the Personnel Committee. Commissioner Randy Dahl, who has long supported centralized finance, noted that a Finance Department is the norm See COUNTY BOARD Page 21 ➤