Big Stone County, Minnesota - Living Rural and Loving it!
We enjoy (in so many ways) a strong arts community, here on the MNbump. They are weaved into our daily lives, with their music during our festivals, arts activities during our events such as Lake Days (in June), Cornfest (in August), they host events …
One of our annual events here in Big Stone County is golfing on ice! We get creative, here on the MNbump! Golfing starts mid-morning and goes into the afternoon with a bean bag tournament starting mid afternoon at the Memorial Building and ending the evening …
I’m pretty excited about this new business (of course I’m excited about EVERY business here on the MNbump!) It was funny to hear the story of their opening – they had listed a few of their “old” bikes on-line and as Kevin described “We had so much activity that we had to shut’er down after only a week!” They decided that they needed to be a little more prepared before they opened that up again! Love it!
You can easily hear their love for the bikes when both he (Kevin Backstrand) and his partner Tina Richards talk about each bike on their showroom floor and their plans for the future. They not only sell the bikes they also have in stock those hard to find parts for the older antique models. One bike is heading to Poland, another to Germany and then a little closer to home in New York and also here in Raymond Minnesota.
They are planning a bike swap this summer during Cornfest and have already had a few very well known collectors stop in Ortonville to look over their inventory. It will be exciting to see the new community of collectors making a trek to the MNbump. They will soon share the latest happenings at the Old Bike Barn LLC on their new website and Facebook page (on-line soon). Until then, feel free to stop down and take a look – It is most definitely worth the stop! It is the new building next to Carquest of Ortonville and Gabe’s Auto Service – 547 US Highway 12, Ortonville.
The quick photos that I took this morning are of the 1956 Chevy Nomad; however if you look up you will see some of their bike inventory.
There are a couple of ways that MNbump can help to promote your Events. 1) You can create a Facebook Event. This Event will be added to the MNbump Facebook Events list & a link will be included on the MNbump Calendar of Events. A …
I was just checking the events on our MNbump Facebook page and noticed the next three are in Clinton – with Graceville and Ortonville after that. On January 28th, it is Learn to Drop Spindle Class at the Inadvertent Cafe. A quote from Kathy Draeger …
by Vicki Oakes
What a delightful lunch today! I was invited to speak at the Ortonville Study Club – all about MNbump. I was very excited to see that all but one of the members had heard about MNbump – one even noted that they currently have a call out for a new Pastor and that they had referred those inquiring on this position to the MNbump.com website for information about the area.
The presentation centered on MNbump’s history (originated as a Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley project through a grant by the University of Minnesota Regional Sustainable Development partnerships & the University of Minnesota Tourism Center’s grant to Big Stone Area Growth – the Countywide economic development group) and then summarized how this initiative is also assisting with our regional recruitment work based on Ben Winchester’s “Brain Gain” report (University of Minnesota) with details noted on the first page of the handout (Handout, PDF) and community connections/development. I can talk at length and with great enthusiasm on this topic – so their questions helped to keep me focused!
We also came up with a couple of ways to all work together on MNbump – Kathy Randall takes wonderful pictures while biking in Big Stone County (I know because we are friends on Facebook) – like most people, she keeps her settings private on her posts. She will be making some of those photo posts on Facebook public so that I can share them on MNbump! Another great outcome, is that the Study Club members are from a number of different Churches in town and they’d like to get together to talk about how they can create their own Google Calendars so that their Church activities will be able to be merged with the MNbump’s Community Calendar.
Gayle Mittelstaedt noted that my picture was hanging in the entry (with all those that have been confirmed at Zion Lutheran Church) – thankfully she did not specify which year-section that I could be found in (but to note, the photo is in color!)
I was so impressed with the Study Club’s initial reading which they all read together after starting the meeting that I just have to share (and I think it would be a wonderful piece to read before any and all meetings!): Keep us, oh God, from pettiness; Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed. Let us be done with fault-finding, and leave off self-seeking. May we put away all pretenses, and meet each other face to face, without self-pity and without prejudice. May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous. Make us to grow calm, serene, and gentle. Teach us to put into action our better impulses, straight-forward, and unafraid. Grant that we may realize it is the little things that create differences; That in the big things in life we are one. And may we strive to touch and to know the great common heart of us all; and O Lord God, let us not forget to be kind.
Their Mission Statement: To provide sociability, enlightenment, and pleasure for the members by means of the study of literature, art, travel, problems of health and government as well as other subjects of current interest to the group.
The Ortonville Study Club meets at Zion Lutheran Church and is catered by Crazy Apron Catering (lunch was awesome – in case you were wondering – turns out I was wearing some of the caramel topping from the the apple dumpling dessert during my presentation but they were kind enough not to point it out.)
Life is Good, here on the MNbump!