Flyboy Donuts

and tools. The appliances, table, chairs and cupboards from Grandma Alice’s house – and even her Geneva kitchen sink base – were salvaged, saved and used in the barn.

Century-old barn doors were re-mounted on the inside, not only protecting the doors from the weather, but also adding to the ambiance. Former feed bunks were converted to bench seats. Gary borrowed lumber from the farm’s east barn to use for the new stairway, as well as for walls and flooring. Replacement stones were acquired from the quarry in Dell Rapids. Gary and Mary’s son, Erik, provided valuable ideas and scoured the Twin Cities for chairs. Mary is thankful to her sisters, friends and neighbors who donated dining room tables, chairs, family heirlooms and other odds and ends. Before the parts and pieces in the barn were removed so interior cleaning could proceed, Kärin took photos of where everything was positioned. After completion, they were able to return the bridles and reins and yokes and other tools and equipment back to their ancestral home which helped to retain the aura of Grandpa and Great-Grandpa just having been inside working the day before. The remodeling of the barn could be tiring, even grueling. Was it all worth it? Gary answered in the affirmative: “It was the kind of thing that gave you such a good feeling. We were doing something with an important purpose. This family’s legacy is profound and has touched all of us in some way, whether you’re a direct descendant or an in-law.”

Tim Renner in the early stages of clean-up on the ground floor of the barn.

CHRISTMAS TREE GROWERS WALK TIGHTROPE THROUGH DERECHO, HAIL AND DROUGHT

By Bob Fitch

Growing Christmas trees is like walking a tight rope without a safety net. When the wind knocks you off the high wire twice and a hail storm adds insult to injury, a grower just hopes there’s plenty of rain to help the trees recover.

With a year like 2022, Tim and Claudia Wassom of Lennox have to wonder why they signed up for this circus at all.

Traditional corn and soybean farmers usually can re-plant crops when the weather deals them a bad hand in the spring. But a Christmas tree takes about 6 years to grow to a salable size – longer when there are back-to-back droughts coupled with two unprecedented derecho storms and a nasty hail storm. “In a dry year like this one, you get about one-third of the growth you normally get,” Tim said. “The derechos tore up one side of the trees and the winds came through just when they were putting on their new growth. We're still going to try to sell a few trees, but supply will be limited.” The Wassom’s own Tannenbaum Tree Farm, a choose-and-cut Christmas tree growing operation. They planted their first trees in 1988 on 20 acres on the Tea-Ellis Road west of Sioux Falls. Since then the city has grown so far west that Sioux Falls Pettigrew Elementary is today adjacent to their previous property. Their first crop of trees on the Tea-Ellis Road site were harvested in 1994. The last trees were cut in 2010. They had a good run there and it was the last land to be sold to developers in that immediate area. “It was kind of hard giving that up,” he said.

A ROCKY START

They planted trees on their new Lennox farm in 2009, but the transition didn’t go smoothly and they weren’t able to begin harvesting trees until 2017. Tim said, “After we started planting here, it