Heritage acres had a good year

To the Editor:

To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, what a long strange trip 2020 has been. At Heritage Acres, we are really grateful that we have 40 acres so we could host two of our events this year despite COVID-19.

The first event was Threshing Day on August 9. We didn’t heavily promote it, but threshing still needs to happen, virus or not, so we had some of our other activities that day, including tractors on display.

Our October 11 Harvest Festival felt almost normal. Cookie baking was happening in the house, all our buildings were open for self-guided tours, and volunteers were putting together our soup fundraiser in Prairieville and listening to some great folk music from Barefoot Becky and the Ivanhoe Dutchmen.

Heritage Acres in Fairmont would like to thank so many people for making our mission and these events possible. Visit Fairmont MN, our local visitors’ bureau, helped us heavily promote these two events throughout southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council provided funds to have Barefoot Becky and her band out. Federated Rural Electric awarded us a grant that allowed us to hire Duane Roll from Robin’s Blacksmithing for our blacksmith demonstration. Timberlake Orchard and Harvey and Sue Moeller donated apples for our apple pressing, always a highlight for so many people as the apple cider is really good. Wayne Claude had a model train out there he was running in the depot; a lot of kids and kids-at-heart enjoyed that. Channel Seed Company and Nu-Way donated seed for us this year. Of course, without that, there’s no threshing or harvesting. The City of Fairmont Parks Department brought out some extra picnic tables for us. Thank you also to this newspaper and so many other media outlets in the area that helped us promote this event. It was just so good to have normalcy for a day.

Last, but in no way least, thank you to the many, many volunteers who make it possible for Heritage Acres to be able to continue its mission. We had volunteers cooking and baking, supervising the corn shelling and apple pressing, harvesting, and driving tractors for wagon rides. And when we don’t have events, we have volunteers out weekly to help maintain our equipment, buildings and property. Martin County has a jewel in Heritage Acres and its volunteers.

Jerry Simon

President

Heritage Acres