Beyond Little House » De Smet — General

Ingalls Homestead on the Today Show

Beyond Little House — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:47:36 +0000

The Today Show weekend edition is going to feature Ingalls Homestead on tomorrow’s show. Make sure you’re up to watch it, or set your DVRs!

UPDATE: Watch it here!

July 2011 Update

Sarah Uthoff — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:33:42 +0000

Ma's House on Ingalls Homestead

July tends to be a busy month for Laura fandom. Get caught up with the July Update on Trundlebed Tales Radio. Check back for a new update each month during Laura season.

Before heading out, also catch up on the radio shows from Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and the 40th Anniversary of the De Smet Pageant.

Sarah S. Uthoff blogs at TrundleBed Tales; look for her on Twitter and YouTube and Blog Talk Radio
Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research Association, Vice-President and Membership Chair

Kansas Forever Stamp

Sarah Uthoff — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:44:04 +0000

I just wanted to share with you the great stamp design that I got to mail out the membership renewals. This stamp is in honor of the state of Kansas and has both a traditional water pumping windmill used by many farmers all over the frontier and some of the giant windmills or wind turbines that you will see driving to most Laura homesites. (There is an especially thick grouping of them near Lake Benton, Minnesota off of Highway 14 between Walnut Grove and De Smet.)

And while we’re on the subject of LIWLRA membership renewals, I wanted to make sure that everybody saw that we got the password cleared off the membership form, so you can renew now at any time. Just in case you missed them, you can find a list of the membership benefits here. Again all Charter Memberships expire July 1, 2011.

40th Anniversary of De Smet Pageant

Sarah Uthoff — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:28:09 +0000

This year will be the 40th anniversary of the regular presentation of the De Smet Pageant. The De Smet Pageant rotates its story and this year will be doing By the Shores of Silver Lake. In addition to the normal pageant activities (such as the wagon rides and the What Knot Giftshop – which is only open during the pageant), they are adding special events to schedule. It’s still a work in progress, but I am going to be speaking there the last weekend July 22, 23, 24.

Full dates for the Pageant are:

July 8, 9, 10

July 15, 16, 17

July 22, 23, 24

Note these dates coordinate with the Walnut Grove Pageant which is scheduled for the Friday and Saturday of each of these same weekends so you can do both pageants in one weekend. I recommend seeing both. Also, be aware that both gate opening and the start time of the De Smet Pageant have moved up one hour this year. So the gates open at 6 pm and the pageant will start at 8 pm.

Recently I interviewed pageant board member Ann Lesch about the 40th Anniversary of the Pageant on the Trundlebed Tales Radio Show. Find it on this website or you can download it and take it with you on iTunes under podcasts.

Learn more on the official De Smet Pageant website.

Sarah S. Uthoff blogs at TrundleBed Tales; look for her on Twitter and YouTube and Blog Talk Radio

Family Tree Hunt Ends in Walnut Grove and De Smet

Sarah Uthoff — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 23:43:17 +0000

A local Minnesota television station noticed that genealogy was a big movement in this country. They had one of their reports follow his family tree. Much to his surprise he found a connection to Laura and that led him to interview Nicole Elzenga of Walnut Grove and Ann Lesch of the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet.

For the behind the scenes story, that reporter has since put together a blog post which includes the fact that his parents took him to Walnut Grove as a kid at his request and now he didn’t remember a thing about it. Included is a copy of the photo that reminded him, in front of a covered wagon I’m sure we all recognized.

Sarah S. Uthoff blogs at TrundleBed Tales; look for her on Twitter and YouTube and Blog Talk Radio

The Hard Winter in Context

Amy Lauters — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:28:40 +0000

Our favorite meteorologist, Barbara Mayes Boustead, will be presenting her work on Laura’s Long Winter on Nov. 17 in Sioux Falls, S.D. From the poster:

Laura’s Long Winter: Putting the Hard Winter of 1880-81 into Perspective
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
6:30 p.m. “Earth from Space” Tour
7 p.m. Presentation
Location: Kirby Science Discovery Center, Washington Pavilion

Was the winter of 1880-81 one of the “worst” on record in the region? Barbara Mayes Boustead, a forecast meteorologist and climate focal point at the National Weather Service office in Omaha/Valley, NE uses available weather records to place the historically known “Hard Winter” into perspective, looking at factors such as temperature, amount of precipitation, number of snow days, and wind information. Boustead’s study determines the extent of literary license in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Long Winter which chronicles the Ingalls family’s survival of the brutal winter of 1880-81 in DeSmet, South Dakota. The book includes stories of multiple blizzards lasting multiple days, with little separation between events, and with blizzards occurring from October through April of that winter. The “Hard Winter” had a significant impact on not only the Ingalls family and DeSmet, but on families and towns across the Plains.

Join us prior to the presentation for a tour of Earth from Space, a traveling exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution that will be on display at the Kirby Science Discovery Center from November 8, 2010 – January 9, 2011. The exhibition consists of 41 large-scale banners featuring spectacular satellite imagery collected over the past 30 years, allowing visitors to see our amazing planet from the perspective of orbiting satellites. Tracking the weather is one of the most important applications of remote sensing. Weather satellites in geostationary orbits provide the most well-known satellite images, familiar from their uses in television weather reports. Satellites are also used to track changes in sea surface temperature, which has important effects on global climate.

Earth from Space was organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The exhibition has been made possible by Global Imagination. Additional support has been provided by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Smithsonian Women’s Committee.

Farmgirls Do the Circuit

Sarah Uthoff — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 01:52:29 +0000

Lake Pepin Beach

A women’s club named the Farmgirls has decided to do a Laura trip/service project. It started with one chapter, but grew to include members from multiple groups. They are doing a link of the entire Laura homesite loop, but they aren’t just visiting the Laura sites. Instead they are doing a volunteer project to help the organization at each one. Some people are making the entire loop. Others are just going to visit a few of the stops.

They are keeping a blog of their experiences here:

http://farmgirlsontheloose.blogspot.com

Read news stories below -

Walnut Grove Stop:

http://marshallindependent.com/page/content.detail/id/517220.html?nav=5015

De Smet Stop:

http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100608/COLUMNISTS0113/6080304/Callison-Farmgirls-on-the-Loose-

Sarah S. Uthoff, http://www.trundlebedtales.com

Read my blog: http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com

And look for me as TrundlebedTales on Twitter and YouTube

BLH Contributor in FamilyFun Magazine: “Little Trip on the Prairie” (June/July 2010)

Sandra Hume — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:40:09 +0000

Do you subscribe to FamilyFun magazine? If so, turn to page 47 in the current issue, which is June/July 2010. I wrote a “Family Getaways” story about visiting the Little House sites in Pepin, Wanut Grove, and De Smet. Lots of photos of the sites–including one of me and my son wading in Plum Creek!

Update in November 2010: Here’s the online version of the story.

De Smet Pageant Cast Updates

Sarah Uthoff — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:45:27 +0000

Wilder Bros De Smet Pageant 2009

I hope many of you who attend the conference plan on going on to De Smet and also seeing the pageant there. It really is a different experience than the Walnut Grove conference and everyone should do both if they get the chance. The latest Pageant Perambulations column in the May 19, 2010 issue of The De Smet News by Orval Van Deest and Marian Cramer reports back about the cast of this year’s De Smet pageant, presenting The First Four Years for the very first time. Returning from last year are father and son team Perry Anderson Jr. and Perry Anderson Sr. will return as Almanzo and Pa respectively. Also returning from the Anderson family are Lucas Anderson as a banker and cousin Peter Ingalls. Two of the four Ingalls girls are returning from last year including Caitlan Ostrander as Laura and Sara Scofield who moves from playing Grace to playing Mary. Neal Martens goes from playing Mr. Loftus to playing Norwegian setttler Ole Larsen and the frontier doctor. Truus Schukking will reprise youthful Ellie Boast and James R. Miller changes roles to play the voice of the prairie funeral. Kristi Hubbard and Shawnna Singrey are working together as a narrator to blend the cast and show together.

Ma will be played by newcomer Peggy Nelson. Mackenzie Huland will play Carrie and Jessica Todd will play Grace. I’m looking forward to see what they come up with.

http://www.desmetpageant.org

Sarah S. Uthoff, http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com

Follow me now on Twitter, http://twitter.com/Trundlebedtales

Rooms for Rent in De Smet

Sarah Uthoff — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:59:42 +0000

Upstairs Lobby to Deluxe Hotel

Every year Mt. Pleasant, Iowa is inundated with visitors for one week around Labor Day weekend during the Midwest Old Threshers celebration. The rest of the year they can support a couple of small hotels, but not nearly enough for all the people who would like rooms for that one week. I’ve always wondered why the Laura homesite towns don’t adopt a similar program for festival days. This summer anyway De Smet is.

A group with the Centers for Disease Control will be in De Smet from May through July doing an in-depth health survey of Kingsbury County, but it means a large group of non-Laura people are going to be taking up hotel rooms early this summer. Several pro-tourism groups in De Smet are organizing local people who will be willing to rent out a room overnight. After all rooms from motels and local bed and breakfasts are filled for a certain date, tourists will be referred to rooms on this list. I’m glad they are being proactive on this and you may want to make reservations NOW!

I also hope that other Laura sites (especially Walnut Grove and Pepin) take a good look at this program and how it works and considering adopting a similar program for themselves.

Sarah S. Uthoff, http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com

Follow me now on Twitter, http://twitter.com/Trundlebedtales