Key Ingredients Community Pages

Cover Image: Homemade scones sit plated at the Main Street Bistro in Cavalier, ND Photo by Jessie Veeder Scofield

Cavalier, ND

by Jessie Veeder Scofield

In a charming café with a big picture window looking out over Cavalier’s Main Street, three women gathered for lunch as the spring sun shone through the glass and unto their folded hands.

They gathered to talk about the connection they have to a place they all call home, new faces in town, homemade bread, gardening and plans to celebrate their rich heritage with community events. Events like the 10th Annual Machinery Show and the inaugural, weekly Farmers Market —an event that Zelda Hartje, Pembina County Historical Society administrator, thinks will be invaluable to this hard-working agricultural town. “We don’t take as much time as we should to play around here,” said Zelda.

Evidence of that work ethic played out on the other side of the window as trucks and farm equipment slowly rolled through town and out to the fields.

Talk quickly turned to farming as Becky Ratchenski, a public librarian, explained how she moved to the community 24 years ago to work and raise her children on her husband’s family farm. Pat Morrison a Cavalier native, helps run a local implement dealership alongside her husband. And Zelda, a teacher, history buff and farmer herself greeted familiar faces as they entered the cafe while she explained that her community was home to the first mill stones.

That’s life in small-town Cavalier and these are its women—diverse, knowledgeable, and welcoming. Tucked between the borders of Minnesota and Canada, Cavalier’s population is just over 1,300. The city serves as Pembina County’s seat, a region that was home to the first farm in North Dakota and a piece of trivia that proves the community’s history is as rich as the soil of the Red River Valley it’s nestled in.

And the area continues to produce diversified agribusiness men and women as successfully as it raises crops, because in Pembina County farming is a family affair. With operations boasting 2,000 to 5,000 acres or more of cropland, it takes the knowledge and assistance of several generations to run the business of harvesting crops like potatoes, beets, soybeans, corn and grains.

Dorothy LaCoste is one of the women at the heart of it, having spent her childhood helping to raise dairy cattle, hogs and harvest hay. She went on to marry in 1956 and soon after purchased 400 acres of land near the small village of Leroy, 16 miles northwest of Cavalier. With an additional 1,600 acres of rented land, LaCoste, along with her husband and two daughters, raised wheat, soybeans, pinto beans, hogs, chickens, corn and even Christmas trees while LaCoste maintained a full-time teaching job in the surrounding communities.

And LaCoste, with her small frame and determined attitude, has run the tractor and combine from day one, even when she was eight months pregnant with her second daughter.

“No one held my hand; I had to figure it out myself,” said LaCoste . “But farming is just something I’ve always loved.”

Sara Hinkle wouldn’t say the vision she had for her future mirrored LaCoste’s, but she has come to share the same knowledge and passion for the business.

Born and raised in Cavalier, Hinkle planned to pursue a business degree out-of-state, but during her senior year of high school she met the man, farmer and young entrepreneur who would become her husband and her plans changed.

“It was after our first date that I knew I was going to marry this man and I wasn’t going to live anywhere else,” Hinkle said smiling.

After obtaining her degree, Hinkle indeed returned to Cavalier where she not only helps manage her family’s aerial applicator business, Hinkle Air Spray, Inc., but works alongside her husband and his family as they farm 2,200 acres of wheat, pinto beans, soy beans and beets.

“I do it all, anything they ask of me: combine, plant, cultivate,” said Hinkle, who also drives truck and works as an associate real estate broker.

And true to her community’s values, Hinkle feels fortunate to be in a business where she can work alongside her husband and three young boys.

“This family operation has been priceless to me,” she said.

Priceless like the land and soil both LaCoste and Hinkle have worked hard to care for during droughts, floods and unpredictable weather—challenges in North Dakota farm country that both women have come to accept.

Buy as land prices rise so do concerns about how future generations might make it on this landscape—a concern that flows through these women’s bloodstream just like the work ethic that keeps LaCoste farming and teaching well into her 70s and Hinkle putting in long hours.

The same concern that keeps the women of Cavalier gathering to plan and encourage their community to grow in ideas, children, industry and, of course, crops.

Watford City, ND

by Jessie Veeder Scofield

A small group of fifth and sixth graders leans against a table in the corner of the Pioneer Museum of McKenzie County and watches intently as Orville Mjelstad plops down a piece of white dough and carefully rolls it out into a large, thin circle.

As he works he explains to the children that the dough is made of potatoes, butter and cream, and he talks to them about the special technique needed achieve the proper consistency.

“This is my mother’s rolling pin,” his wife Carol informs the students as she uses a long, flat wooden stick to move her husband’s dough to the hot griddle where she turns it over as it bubbles and cooks.

The Mjelstads are making lefse, a traditional Norwegian flat bread, as part of the National Day of Norway, or Syttende Mai Celebration, put on by the local chapter of the Sons of Norway in Watford City.

And the students know all about lefse. As they wait patiently to smear butter and sugar on the fresh batch, the majority of their hands shoot up in the air when asked if they have ever tasted lefse and remain there when asked if they have helped make it.

This shared knowledge of heritage food is what bridges the gap between generations and speaks to the tradition that has been important to the culture in this booming agricultural and oil town.

Downstairs, community members flock in by the dozens to have a taste of other Norwegian dishes that remind them of their childhood or their grandmother’s cooking. Rommegrot, Krumkaka, and Norske bryllupskaka (Norwegian Wedding Cake) were on display and served up by local women whose mothers and fathers came over from Norway to homestead and raise livestock and children on the rocky soil of McKenzie County.

The food is simple, mostly white, and made from ingredients like flour, potatoes and sugar. Some of the recipes, like sot suppe, or “sweet soup,” were made with chokecherries and other ingredients gathered from the landscape, evidence of the resourcefulness the settlers passed down the family line.

“When the immigrants came over from Norway one hundred years ago, they brought with them one-hundred-year-old traditions,” said Rob Favorite, pastor and president of the local Sons of Norway chapter. “These are the traditions they hold on tight to and what they pass on.”

Founded in 1914, Watford City is a relatively young community with residents that remain on or have ties to the land that their family homesteaded during what the young Norwegians called “American Fever,” Favorite explained. During an impoverished time in their country where the farms were small, children were plentiful and there was a shortage of work, young people took the promise of available land in America as their chance to escape poverty.

And Favorite believes that the Scandinavian immigrants were a people meant for this landscape. Used to the mountainous, tough soil of the fjords they brought with them a built-in character and heartiness of people who know what it means to live and work in adverse conditions.

A character that has kept families close and allowed for people like Jan Dodge to remain on the land her great uncles farmed and help manage her mother’s mother homestead place.

“It’s important to me to keep the land in my family,” said Dodge, who raises cattle with her husband on the ranch where she grew up southeast of Watford City. “You never know how life will turn out and the family will always have a place to come back to.”

That same mentality runs through the veins of her neighbors as well—neighbors Dodge grew up with who have remained to raise cattle and take care of the land their grandparents and great-grandparents homesteaded. And although the days where a family could make a living off of one-quarter section of land are behind them, Dodge pointed out that many of the ranchers in the area run their 3,000 acre-plus operations by renting land from families who have kept ownership of their family’s homestead place.

And so, as combines and oil trucks alike parade through the streets of Watford City and people from all over the country look to make a living and a home in this booming town, the Pioneer Museum stands on the edge of it all, with its doors open wide to tell their story and pour you coffee and maybe, if you’re lucky, serve up a piece of lefse.

And on the edge of the North Dakota badlands in what was once her mother’s house, Jan Dodge makes rosettes, chokecherry pudding and rommegrot alongside her mother and two daughters and holds on tight—just like her community, just like her family—to her traditions, her land and the food she’s always known.

Valley City, ND

by Jessie Veeder Scofield

Take a stroll through downtown Valley City and it becomes quite clear why it’s known as “The City of Bridges.” The Sheyenne River winds its way through neighborhoods and parks, creating a beautiful backdrop for a business community that exists among rejuvenated and repurposed historic buildings and friendly locals waving to one another from across the street.

A few moments spent with the residents will reveal that the bridges creating beautiful arches over the water seem to stand as symbols for a community holding on strong to traditions while moving toward the future with open minds and steadfastness.

The county seat of Barnes County, this humble city of 6,800 stands in the heart of farming country where soybeans, corn and wheat sprout and thrive in the rich soil of the valley.

And the community has been celebrating their agriculture roots for years with annual events like the North Dakota Winter Show, established in 1937 to provide education, promote agriculture and honor the pioneer culture and heritage. So it seems fitting that the home of the oldest and longest running agriculture show should be home to the North Dakota Agriculture Hall of Fame as well—a place where the industry’s history is observed and honored.

Because in a fast-paced, technology- based society, it is difficult to ignore how things have changed since the inaugural days of the Winter Show.

“There used to be people lining the streets six abreast,” said Don Johnson, a retired farmer from Fingal, lamenting on how the city would bustle with farm families during the big event. “Now things have changed, cars are faster, roads are better and there’s more competition for activities.”

More activities, yes, and more people living in town as small farms become larger, a shift that many North Dakota agricultural communities in the valley are facing.

It’s a nationwide challenge, but Valley City seems to have its finger on the pulse by paying attention to new industry opportunities and introducing manufacturing businesses and technology-based growth. But according to Stephanie Mayfield, executive vice president of the Valley City Area Chamber of Commerce, the Barnes County economy is still agriculturally driven with an abundance of service businesses like Dakota Plains Cooperative, John Deere Agricultural Equipment and Air Seeding Group, and several crop and agricultural insurance agencies at the helm of the business community.

And as much as Valley City is holding on strong to an industry that shaped their community, so do they continue to exude the farming spirit that still exists in the bloodlines of the Norwegian, Scandinavian and German immigrants that settled the valley. With that spirit comes a community rooted deep in traditions of coming together in food and fellowship.

“People who homesteaded the landscape prepared and hosted large meals out of necessity to feed threshing crews,” said Wes Anderson, curator of the Barnes County Historical Society Museum. “That relationship with food has now become tradition. It’s ingrained in us.”

Whether it’s the chili cook-off that serves as a friendly competition among local businesses, the annual church picnic, the long-standing farmers markets, or the school system that provides traveling sports teams with healthy meals while on the road, Valley City takes care of one another.

“Food is at the basis of a giving and caring community,” said Aryls Netfield, president of the local gardening club. “Whenever there is a need or an event, food is involved.”

Often-times community service clubs and organizations like the local VFW or Eagles Club take the lead, putting together large community spaghetti feeds, pancake breakfasts, or ham and beef sandwich lunches to raise money to help a local resident pay medical bills from an accident or a help a family affected by a natural disaster.

These types of efforts are not unfamiliar to residents of small town America, but it’s the innovative thinking, follow-through and the idea that more can be done that sets Valley City above.

Efforts like planting extra seeds in the city’s 54-plot community garden as part of the North Dakota Hunger Free Project and reaping 4,500 pounds of vegetables to make available to those in need. Or like Pizza Corner Pizza, one of the largest employers in Valley City, allowing nonprofit organizations and schools to sell their pizzas for fundraising campaigns.

And Valley City acknowledges the importance of passing down traditions and knowledge to younger generations. Inventive learning opportunities like the public school system working with students to plant, weed and harvest an endamame garden helps educate children about farming and where their food comes from. But most importantly, it instills in this young generation a desire to explore their roots and work to understand how the community’s history and knowledge of agriculture might be used to push them toward a bright and innovative future.

Williston, ND

by Jessie Veeder Scofield

Adrienne Stepanek vividly remembers her first slice of pizza. It was 1956, the year after she moved from rural McKenzie County to Williston, North Dakota, with her new husband. She was pregnant with her first child and they were visiting Seaside, Oregon.

Stepanek’s experience with the cheesy slice was an encounter with food that she will never forget, because it reminds her how things have changed.

“We didn’t have the choices we do now,” Stepanek said as she recalled how the grocery stores in her hometown of Williston at the time were stocked with the basics: potatoes, carrots, corn and some condiments.

“We made do with what we had available to us, we didn’t have so many things we needed.” Stepanek lamented.

It is quite evident as you walk the busy streets of Williston that much has changed in this bustling town, and Stepanek isn’t the only resident to take notice. As the town looks to celebrate its 125th anniversary in the coming year, one can’t help but think that when the railroad executive James J. Hill declared the town “The City of Opportunity,” he didn’t know how much weight that statement would hold decades later.

Hill’s catchy appellation and promise of fertile soil drew Scandinavian and German settlers with plans of raising cattle and irrigating farm land for crops like wheat, corn and potatoes. What they didn’t know was that below the ground existed miles of stratified rock now known as the Bakken formation—and billions of barrels of oil waiting to be discovered.

With an agricultural and energy-based economy, Williston has grown more than 22 percent in the last decade and now boasts a population of over 14,500 residents and growing. As trucks roll through town and over fields dotted with pumping units, you can’t talk Williston without talking oil and you can’t talk oil without talking history.

And you can’t talk history without community.

Standing in the center of it all is the James Memorial Art Center, a historic landmark that focuses on bringing people together in the name of history. It is one of the only buildings in the city that has been preserved in its original state.

“It’s important to have a building like this in our community because it shows where we’ve been and where we can go,” said Kim Madsen, James Memorial board president.

And it looks like Williston is heading toward diversity. As people move into the area from all over the country to work in the booming industry, they bring with them new perspective, new challenges and new food-ways.

The diverse population couldn’t be more evident than in the parking lot of the local Economart grocery store where license plates represent nearly every corner of the United States. And the new flavors of the community are reflected on store shelves as well, where customers now find a variety of spices and seasonings from all over the world, a new organic food section and a wide variety of meat selections.

“We were a bit isolated before,” said Mike Kraft, who has owned and operated Economart since 1994. “This new activity has helped us assimilate to different cultures.”

And just as the shelves represent changes, so does the workforce, not only at Economart, but in local restaurants as well.

To keep up with staff demands, food service industries have turned to companies like United Work and Travel out of New York City to hire foreign students looking for travel and employment opportunities while on spring break. Every three months Economart welcomes new students from Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Turkey and Jamaica as part of their 168-member staff—a staff that is deep in the mix of the challenging and changing relationship between an industry that the community was founded upon and one that was discovered and rediscovered along the way.

But with the economic ebb and flow that Williston will continue to face, they also understand that it’s the people who make the community. And so the James Memorial Art Center is making plans to bring people together in the name of food by organizing a community event where residents can share recipes and demonstrate their own heritage cooking.

“There are so many new people here from different cultural backgrounds, it’s time to meet them,” said Madsen.

With food as the backdrop, Madsen believes that among the bursting store shelves and changing landscape, there is room for variety of all kinds, and much we can learn from one another.

And that is one that that hasn’t changed in this land of opportunity.

Hettinger, ND

by Jessie Veeder Scofield

Jodi Lefebre came home last summer after a day of work to find a bucket full of strawberries sitting on her kitchen counter. Having a large garden full of fruits and vegetables, Lefebre was delighted. She wondered who went to all the trouble to pick and clean her strawberries?

But the strawberries weren’t hers. They were a gift from the garden of Lance Ketterling, a local farmer and gardener who raises 1,800 acres of wheat and corn on his family farm and comes home in the evening to tend to a wide variety of berries, vegetables, herbs and fruit.

Lefebre’s kitchen was more than likely a stop along Ketterling’s route to drop off strawberries to other friends and family and to Nancy Feller, owner and baker at Main Street Grind Coffee Shop, so she could use the fresh fruit in her homemade turnovers and pies.

“I just like to grow things, to experiment with different vegetables and see what does well,” said Ketterling whose recent endeavor is tending to 100 grape vines. But mostly, he confesses, he gardens because he loves seeing others enjoy the fruits of his labor.

“It is fun to give the produce away and hear the stories about what they made with it,” he said.

That’s the circle of fellowship in the agricultural town of Hettinger, set along the rolling plains of southwest North Dakota. Take a walk through the streets of the charming neighborhoods or drive to the outskirts of town and you will find large gardens tucked in backyards and along acres, and neighbors visiting on lawns about how the cucumbers are coming along.

Because for the residents of Hettinger food, whether it’s a garden or a home-cooked meal, is a means of expressing themselves in love, healing, gratitude, and friendship.

Friendships like the one formed between Hettinger, native Lafebre and her co-worker Inger Christensen, an immigrant from Denmark. Their shared interest in gardening brought them together to learn from each other and turn their passion into an annual craft where Lafebre showcases hundreds of homemade canned items and Christensen puts her crochet pieces out for sale.

And when asked why the friends work so hard to host such an elaborate event, year after year, they both share the same reasons.

“It’s the relationships I establish that I wouldn’t otherwise,” said Lafebre. “People connect with me through the food I make, ask me to teach them, and we get to be friends.”

It’s the same answer that Connie Walch, local caterer and owner of The Beanery, gives when asked what makes her work special. Contracted through the Burlington Northern Railroad, Walsh is on call to serve meals to the railroad workers as they pass through town. Her homemade meals are the backdrop for the men to open up about their work, home and families.

“The conversations I have with the people I serve, that’s my favorite part,” said Walch.

Sandi Nelson, who participates in a program where members of the community prepare and serve lefse to residents at local nursing homes, agrees. Amazed by the memories and stories that the process of cooking the traditional Scandinavian flat bread conjure up, it is an event she looks forward to every year.

“Give someone a cup of coffee and a piece of lefse and they will talk to you for hours.” Nelson said. “It’s an important way to connect young and old.”

That connection is something Rita Becker takes to heart. A mother of two grown sons who grew up cooking dishes alongside her mother and sisters, Becker doesn’t let the miles keep her from sharing her love of cooking with her sons. “I learned to cook by standing next to my mother in the kitchen,” Becker said. “My sons call for the recipes now and I give them instructions over the phone.”

But the important role that heritage cooking plays in a family couldn’t be more evident than in the kitchen of Ceil Ann Clemet. As she bakes homemade bread, Clemet can’t help but think of her grandmother who once lived in her house, wiped the counters and baked in the very same bread pan.

And in her grandmother’s kitchen, Clemet works to engage the generations by ensuring that the tradition of making homemade lemon velvet ice cream carries on every July 4th, and that her family continues to gather for Christmases around her grandmother’s table.

“Food is a way of keeping family together,” said Clemet. “We are connected by food in our activities from birth to death.”

And as Lafebre uses a friend’s recipe to turn Ketterling’s strawberries into a homemade jam to donate to a local fundraiser, it is quite clear that food not only connects but speaks as a common language between cultures and generations in this close-knit community.

New Rockford, ND

by Jessie Veeder Scofield

If you’re looking for New Rockford you’ll need to take a step off the beaten path. You will need to follow the line on the map that takes you off of the interstate and into a quiet town nestled in the middle of North Dakota—a town with tidy houses, six churches, and a school placed along neat streets and cut smartly down the center by the Burlington Northern Railroad.

If you’re looking for New Rockford, you may think you have found it between the farmsteads and fields outside of town, the stop signs, parks and the quiet hum of cars on the paved streets. But this agricultural town with a population of just over 1,300 has an unexpected heartbeat and creative pulse.

And you can find that heartbeat inside a renovated 100-year-old building where singers and actors are rehearsing and preparing for the last few performances of a sixteen-night musical run, where community members are stopping in for a cup of coffee and tourists are making calls to the box office to grab what is left of a nearly sold-out show.

This is the Dakota Prairie Regional Center for the Arts (DPRCA) and Deb Belquist, managing director, is deep in the throes of her twentieth year of musicals. A nonprofit organization that includes a coffee shop, dance studio and theatre, DPRCA was developed out of Belquist’s mission to keep the arts alive and thriving in her hometown and create a space for community members and students to come together to gain confidence, fellowship, and make a bit of money in the name of long-run theatre productions.

It is a historical mission not far removed from this small town’s past. Founded in 1883, New Rockford was once home to at least three stage production theatres and a movie theatre. Over the years, as towns do, the buildings in New Rockford have gone through a series of changes to accommodate the ebb and flow of the generations. But under Belquist’s leadership and with countless volunteer hours, the DPRCA has converted a building that has served the community as a meat shop, grocery store, drug store, bar, dance hall and even a boxing arena, back into a space for which the building was intended. Night after night, people from all over the state and region come to fill the 130 seats and lend their applause to actors, singers and musicians performing right below the original Opera House where it all began.

“It is important for people to see a street revitalized with the spirit and energy of the arts,” said Belquist. “We believe in the importance of bringing art to people on the prairie,”

It’s a progressive vision by a Scandinavian agricultural community who has historically refused to use the excuse of isolation to keep them from self-expression, entertainment and ideas that keep their community thriving.

Ideas like the North American Bison Cooperative and harvest plant located south of New Rockford, established in 1993 as a farmer-owned processing company that specializes in natural, hormone-free bison and the recent establishment of Gavilon Grain L.L.C., a new grain terminal with a 120-car loading capacity for wheat, corn and soybeans. The introduction of these businesses, combined with a community that values the arts, not only helps diversify the area industry, but also draws new and returning residents to New Rockford to live, work, play and retire.

“We attract people from all over the country who want to live in a small town but don’t want to sacrifice their desire to be involved in the arts,” said Belquist. “It’s all about uniting interests with opportunity.”

And for Belquist and those involved with DPRCA, there is opportunity on every corner. Whether it’s theatre productions, art classes, yoga, and dance or finding creative ways to celebrate their history through the Central North Dakota Steam Thresher’s Reunion.

Now in its fifty-third year, the Thresher’s Reunion pays homage to the area’s rich agricultural history by showcasing the technology and traditions of the past with a parade of steam engines and tractors, plowing and threshing demonstrations, and a community breakfast cooked in an old-fashioned cook car.

With people from all over the country coming to participate and pay tribute, the DPRCA once again sees an opportunity to use the arts to dig deeper, start a conversation and entertain.

And so Belquist, along with her crew of volunteers, will head out into the community armed with a video camera, microphones and questions to capture the real stories from residents who may have prepared meals in a cook car, worked the fields with a steam engine, raised their children off of vegetables from their family gardens, and maybe, when the cattle were fed and the dishes were done, took in a performance at the local theater.