2 minute read
Minnehaha Funeral Home
The stone used in the foundation of the barn was brought from the quarry at Pipestone, Minn. Note the curved corner pillar in the southwest corner of the barn.
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Laurel is originally from Trent and Mike has roots in Dell Rapids, so the move to Renner was coming home. Mike started out as a welder and worked for Hale’s Trailer in Sioux Falls in the early 1970s. “But I was only making $100 per week and rent was $75. I had to do something different.” So the family moved to the Redfield area, where Mike became a farm hand. They got free rent on the farm place where they lived, all the meat they could eat, plus had a paycheck. So it was a step up from the $100 a week. Later they moved to Watertown where Mike worked making boom trucks for the electrical industry. When Laurel got a good job at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport in the late 1980s, they moved back to southeast South Dakota and were happy to be closer to family. Mike went to work for De Geest Manufacturing in the Tea-Harrisburg area. At first they were renting in Sioux Falls, but a co-worker told her about the Eggers acreage. “We were so blessed to find this place,” Laurel said. The house needed a lot of repairs to make it livable. Mike and Laurel, with help from their two sons, did most of the work. The foundation of the house and part of the barn foundation were professionally tuck-pointed. The pink quartzite used in the foundations was hauled from the quarry at Pipestone, Minn., back in the 1890s.
The two-story house has 13 rooms, plus an entry porch and sun porch. The Nessan family’s original log cabin was used as a summer kitchen for several decades and was on the site until 1990 when Curt and Jean Eggers moved it to a different home site.
Mike said, “The barn was sagging when we moved here. Cross members that were part of the original construction had been removed at some point.” While the oldtime remodeling had worked for decades, ultimately, the removal of the cross members had destabilized the barn’s structure. A con-
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BALTIC | 180 St. Olaf Ave. 605.529.5411 COLTON | 205 East 4th St. 605.446.3246
DELL RAPIDS | 104 East 4th St. 605.428.4200 GARRETSON | 101 South Leslie Dr. 605.594.3700
