Open 7 Days/week during September & October

645 HWY 52 EAST, PRESTON, MINNESOTA

20+ apple varieties • Local Minnesota-made goods U-Pick Pumpkin Patch • Fresh pastries, caramel apples, & more!

507-765-4486 • www.blossomhillapples.com •

Vintage, Handmade, & Fair Trade

the peddler thepeddlershop.com

107 Coffee St. East, Lanesboro MN. 507.380.1677

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Fall 2021 / iloveinspired.com

PIVO’s many brews and ciders (from their 100 pear and apple trees!) are uber place-based: each is named for a Northeast Iowa town and reflects its cultural heritage. Decorah Nordic Gruit, for example, is flavored with a Scandinavian-inspired blend of juniper berries, rosemary, bay leaf, black walnuts, bog myrtle, and toasted caraway seed – and has won gold in 2020 at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). A full menu lives at: www.pivoblepta.com/pivo-brewery/beer-list / Photos by Kristine Kopperud

“Wouldn’t it be cool if the things we choose to preserve today could be that treasure for others, in the future?” “Pivo” means beer in Czech, the sum total of Craig’s seven generations of Iowa heritage and the language his parents and grandparents spoke at home. “‘Blepta’ means chatterbox, as in, pest,’” Sara adds (her grandfather’s begrudging term of endearment for her). Craig is quick and efficient about buzzing through the brewing set-up, which they launched under the tutelage of brewmaster Richard Mar and his wife LaRasche, who designed and shepherded the 40-tap tasting room. “We made only two mistakes,” Craig assesses as only a military man can: “We needed more cold storage, and more parking.” (Both are now resolved, and Craig has apprenticed to the point of becoming head brewmaster!) Craig also keeps close tabs on start-up metrics and is keen to handily outpace the statistic that most new businesses fail within their first five years. “Our third year was COVID,” he explains, “and we had to decide: Do we go forward with our plan to expand and build an event center? Or do we hunker down and see what happens?” Knowing Calmar would celebrate a gathering place, PIVO/Blepta took the risk on their 400-seat center, trimming it out with barnwood from Sara’s family’s farm and pine slabs (on the bar) from “the only two trees we had to take down,” Sara says. “We didn’t want to waste a thing – that’s part of our heritage, too.”  The Neuzils’ intuition was right: as soon as the patio was poured and outdoor gathering re-opened across Iowa, PIVO and Blepta began hosting the stuff that community is made of: weddings, live music, fund-raisers for area non-profits and causes, proms, and more. “The community is why we built it,” Sara concludes. “Calmar