SPRING GROVE, Minn. — A town lush with Norwegian ancestry and many long-standing farm families was a gold mine for oral historian and media producer Erin Dorbin.
The Houston, Minn., resident has a background in capturing the stories of agriculture in several Minnesota counties. When she found out about an oral history project at Spring Grove's Giants of the Earth Heritage Center, it was a "no-brainer" to sign on.
"I definitely __have an interest in people's relationship to agriculture and how it changes over time," Dorbin said. "I had found out about GOE through a previous position in the area and hadn't really connected with them, but I had been put in contact with them through Courtney Bergey of the Economic Development Authority because she thought it would be a good match. I would say it has turned out to be so."
Now she's investing her time in meeting local families and interviewing them on video, a project that GOE board president Karen Gray hopes will preserve important stories of the area.
"In the years since Giants organized in 2009, we've lost so many lovely people, and we never recorded their stories," Gray said. "Our society is changing so quickly, and once the generation that lived on the land has died or had to move away to a nursing home, our experience has been that those stories get lost. We don't want to lose them because they are threads of the fabric of our society."
With the research help of GOE, Dorbin is collecting raw footage, as well as exploring places in the area relevant to the project.
"The end result of this is still undecided because there are so many stories and experiences, that I think it would really best serve their stories to find the correct way to showcase these and make them accessible to the public," Dorbin said. "We had talked about a long form documentary, but I wonder if there's another way to present these stories, like an interactive media website."
The plan for the time is to present some of this footage at Spring Grove's Homecoming celebration, held June 22-25. It's an "all-town reunion," as Gray described it. She said those days may provide another opportunity for Dorbin to add stories to what she's already found. They're looking to learn all kinds of things.
"Just the mannerisms, and the attire, and the stories that people share with us, there are so many that __have interesting details," Gray said. "It seems that once a person relaxes and forgets they're being filmed, that's when some of the shyer characters share colorful stories."
For Dorbin, the point of the project is not just to find out what life was like in the early days of Norwegian settlement. She wants to find out how the stories are alive today and what younger generations see as their future in agriculture.
"I'm speaking with a young man named Jacob Solum, who is 9 years old, about how he views his future in agriculture," Dorbin said. "His father is Jay Solum and his grandmother is Barb Solum. He's enthusiastic about following in their footsteps."
That's not to say that the stories from the past haven't caught her interest.
"When people recall to me the nights of their wedding or honeymoon, they talk about, 'Oh, we went and were married, and then we went home and milked cows, or worked with pigs, or had chores'," Dorbin said. "I just kept hearing this over and over again. That really speaks to what it takes to keep a small family farm operation going."
Knowing one's family background can provide insights on who a person has become, as Gray put it.
"Having people on some kind of document that will be available 200 years from now, for their descendants to see what they looked like and how they sounded, these are all ways that future people can connect with who they are," she said. "Maybe you're a musical person who doesn't know where your talent came from, and then you learn about an ancestor who was a musical performer, and you can say, 'That's where that came from!'"
In a time when the number of farm families is decreasing and rural areas face economic hardships, both Dorbin and Gray feel that sharing what farmers have meant to society can help renew the connection.
"If you've never plowed a field in springtime, you have no idea what that smells like," Gray said. "You get to smell that wonderful, pungent odor that comes from the earth. I don't know if anyone's talking about that on those films, but I hope they do."
Dorbin's also enjoyed exploring the Driftless Area. She mentioned that some families had told her they believed there were caves underneath their properties.
"There is a place called the Catacombs of Yucatan [in Houston County]," she said. "It's a former commercial cave in the Yucatan Valley. There used to be this old dance hall in the cave in the '30s and '40s. I've asked many people about it, and someone offered to show it to me. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. The plan is to explore it in early April."
Perhaps by presenting these stories in a way that everyone can connect to, the project can shed some new light on rural America.
"As a historian and artist, working in rural America is really important to me," Dorbin said. "I think there is a lot of discussion about how rural areas are dying, so I really enjoy this opportunity to speak to these people who are living in rural America, so they can share their experiences and maybe shift the narrative a little bit."
