(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for Off 90 is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.

(birds chirping) - [Barbara] Cruising your way next Off 90, we learned about a biking club in Rochester.

We explore a new locally owned business in downtown Mankato.

We check out a virtual field trip from Farmamerica.

These stories and more are coming up on your next stop, Off 90.

(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Barbara Keith.

Thanks for joining me on this trip, Off 90.

First, when Miguel Valdez was growing up in Mexico he saw the movie ET .

Miguel saw kids doing amazing things with their BMX bikes, and that's when he fell in love with biking.

After he grew up, Miguel moved to Rochester and started a pedicab company as well as a bike club.

(upbeat music) - [Miguel] The mission of the Rochester Community Bike Club is to provide a bicycle to everybody in the community who needs a bicycle as a transportation to get access to local resources in the community.

Hi, my name is Miguel Valdez, and this is Rochester Community Bike Club - Pata de Perro.

Rochester Community Bike Club started back in 2011.

I used to volunteer for a summer camp with Latino kids and other minority kids to prepare them to attend college, to plant that seed or the idea of attending college in the future.

I was aware of a similar program like this in Oakland, California, where kids get to ride a bike and be part of a club if they maintain classes, if they show up to school, be on time and stuff like that.

So they get a bike and they get to personalize it.

So that's how we started our club with kids from the summer camp.

We asked for bikes in the community, and we got some bikes and we helped the kids fix them.

And then they got a bike during that summer to go and participate in the summer at the summer camp.

From day one, kids who have been part of the club, they have really good outcomes, I would say because first of all, they come and we explained to the kids that this is their space.

We let them know that this is their club and we want them to run the bike club.

So kids kept coming.

We only asked kids to come at least three times to volunteer and they get to earn a bike, a helmet, and a lot.

We have in the past few members actually that they've been volunteering here and have gained a job at some of the bike shops in town.

And once they got the skills here and the next year that there is a summer and they're looking for a job and they've been able to connect with some of the local bike businesses.

And also there is some kids, they really embrace the cycling culture and I see them now they're adults, and they're still biking around town.

I learned to bike on my sister's bike, a banana bike, flower bike.

And I really want a bicycle when I was growing up after watching the ET movie, all the kids were on their BMX and I want a bike so bad.

And that year, all my friends got a bike, but I didn't have that Christmas until the next Christmas.

So when I got my bike, I was trying to keep up with their tricks and stuff like that.

And I did a big jump and I ended probably cracking my tailbone, hit my head and I left the bike on the street and I just ran home.

As a child I remember I had a lot of independence, and we can see that with our members because we take kids from 10 and older, and we expect them to get here on their own.

And we close the doors at seven and they go home.

They don't have to depend on their parents.

The city is not too big, but it's still safe enough where kids can commute by bicycle.

Once we got here, you're in an environment that is friendly.

And that transfers, I guess, when we interact with our members or when a new member comes or parents bring their kids, we just try to portray that to our members and to the community that this is a welcoming environment.

And we want everybody to be safe and happy.

(upbeat music) - Lakota Made is an indigenous woman owned company that provides wild plant remedies and eco-friendly personal care products.

We sit down with the owner to learn all about her business.

- For a few thousand years, there was no Walgreens, there was no grocery stores.

There was no doctor to go see, and you had to use what was around you.

You had to know how to use it, you had to know how to harvest it.

What was food, what was medicine and what was to stay away from.

It's absolutely beautiful what grows outside and being able to prepare that and use it that's freely out there.

(lady speaking foreign language) Hello relatives my name is Many War Bonnets Woman.

My English name is Megan Lynn Schnitker.

I am born and raised from Milk's Camp Community in Rosebud, South Dakota.

I am a transplant and I am residing here in Mankato for just about the past six years.

Actually, my husband, before we were married, he had an adventure called Transcendence Foundation, and that was helping people get out of the system from helping them in recovery.

So providing them a community connection to recovery programs, access to supportive housing, and then just giving them a network of people that were in recovery.

And that was a really, really brand new idea here in Mankato or in the state of Minnesota.

And there was no other model like that when we started.

And so it was privately funded for about 18 months.

And then there was going to be a 10 month period between funding and that we weren't able to do that.

And so, unfortunately we had to close the doors.

Then I was a stay at home mom for a few years, for like a year and a half.

And my husband was the full-time employee person, main source of income.

And we were having this conversation while I was making plants salves for our family.

And he was like, well why don't you just do this?

And I was like, okay yeah, I do do this.

I don't know what you mean.

And he said, well sell it.

And I'm like, nobody's gonna buy this stuff.

That's just beads in jars, everybody knows about this.

He's like, nobody knows about this stuff.

And I was like, okay.

So I made a batch of salves and I put it on my Facebook and it sold immediately.

And I made another batch of salves and that's just kinda how I got to Mankato and how I got to right here.

I had an opportunity to have a table at the Mankato Pow-Wow.

And it was to share a small corner of my mom's vending table.

And I did that and I sold out in the first day and I was like, okay, yay.

I kept going to vendor event, vendor event.

And we did that for two years.

My friend Natasha Frost reached out to me, says I have a space.

And so it was just for storage.

And then we ended up remodeling the space and doing all of our production down there, all of our production and making down there, and then COVID happened.

And all of our vendor markets called and canceled within two weeks.

We were like, oh my god, what are we going to do?

Well, then as soon as the oh my gosh, what are we gonna do, the online sales went through the roof Natasha Frost approached me again.

And she was like, okay so these tenants are moving out of this space that's just right across from your production space.

And I was like, oh my gosh, really?

As soon as we got the keys and came into the space, I was like, we have it.

And there was absolutely nothing in here.

And they're like, okay, when do you plan on opening?

And I was like 10 days.

All I wanted was that wall painted, everything came from the thrift stores and we've saved it from landfills and gave it life again.

And that's the whole purpose behind the code I made is reusing, reducing, recycling, using things that are already out there.

And so that's where everything that is in here came from.

Everything that is here comes from plants that I grow around here in Mankato that we can easily harvest throughout the warm season.

And so all the plants, they all have different kinds of purposes.

And when you mix them together, it's just like cooking.

You can either make bread or you can make pie, or you can make pastry.

And so the plants all have different kinds of properties.

And so when you mix them together, they can make a tea, they can make a salve, they can make a tonic.

Our biggest sellers are the baby products.

Baby Love salve to help heal and prevent diaper rash also worked really good for dry cracked skin.

Then I make shampoo bars in quite a few different scents and different bases from goat milk to hemp, to honey and oatmeal and shea butter, so that people with really dry skin.

I also make lotion bars for people trying to again, get away from the plastic.

Also make deodorant bars, sunscreen bars, dish soap bars.

And then we have our drinkable teas.

I have quite a few different recipes in those.

And then we started going into bath teas because most ancient cultures have a bath tea of some sort.

And so, we did as well as indigenous people, and they use them for all different kinds of skin remedies, helping the body heal and relax and childbirth and skincare.

And so I started bringing different kinds of bath teas back.

And so I have two different recipes right now with a ton of them in the works.

We have infused honeys, elderberry tonics.

Elderberry tonics are huge.

Help with immune system boosting, gut health, body inflammation, antioxidants.

And then the infused honeys are just sweet clover honey, it's South Dakota prairie honey that we have infused with elderberries, infused elderberry honey.

And then we have (speaks foreign language) which means good medicine.

And it has chaga mushrooms, turmeric, and elderberries in it which is my favorite because it tastes really, really good.

Mankato has definitely welcomed this history, this knowledge and this education that I put into not only my products, but when people come and see me and they get to ask questions about plants or what grows in their yard, it's reconnecting people with what grows around them.

We are in the process of preparing the classroom so that we'll be able to do in-person and still offer virtual classes, whether it's plant-based or it's cultural based, we will be doing those hopefully in the next couple of months.

Our directions are on our social media.

We Lakota Made LLC on Facebook, lakotamade.com directions to the store are on both places.

Otherwise we are at 515 North Riverfront, Mankato, Minnesota.

And the easiest way to explain it is we're the side door of the wooden spoon building.

Side door of the Frost Plaza Building.

We're kind of over here hidden, but it's kind of like a hidden gem and so (laughs).

But yeah, that's where we're at.

(upbeat music) - Farmamerica exists to connect people with the abolition of agriculture by being Minnesota's center for agricultural interpretation.

They've shared a virtual field trip with us.

As we head out to tour their exciting attractions.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the dugout.

The dugout was the first home and the start of a new life for immigrants settling in America.

Before they got here many immigrants came from Europe and were promised free land once they got to America.

They spent months on a ship sailing across the ocean with their family and all of their belongings in one trunk, we call those suitcases now today.

Once they got to America, they landed on the east coast.

When they got there, they were so excited to be finally on land and off of a ship, but they had more traveling to do.

The free land was not on the east coast, but in the Midwest.

And a lot of free land was here in Minnesota.

Now, once they got here, it would be about late August and they didn't have much time to make a home or decide where they were going to settle.

So when they found the perfect spot for their family, their first home was called the dugout.

Fathers and sons would dig out the hole in a hillside.

And this would be where families would spend their first winter together.

The father would get lumber from the area to build a structured entrance.

And the whole family would do all of their winter activities, cooking, anything of the sort that they needed to do in this eight by 12 structure.

Now, when spring came, the mom came out and maybe had a few additional children come along over the winter.

And she looked at the father and said, it is time for a bigger home.

(upbeat music) Welcome to the hovel or what some people like to call the sod roof house.

After a long winter spent in the dugout and a growing family, mothers would come out in the spring and say, it's time for a bigger home.

So fathers and sons would travel north to the big woods to get larger logs, to build the hovel out of.

And next they decided the roof was going to be made of sod, which oftentimes protected them from the elements.

But sometimes the rain would seep through the soil and leak onto the family's heads.

Also, the roof was used as an herb garden where children would tend to the herbs to keep away from the deer.

Sometimes families would even let their chickens roam on top of the roof to protect them from some of the predators like foxes or coyotes living in the area.

Now, can you imagine living in a home just like this with your whole family, all of your parents, brothers, sisters, and maybe even your grandparents?

Now that doesn't seem like a lot of space, but to these pioneers, it was so much better than living in the dugout.

But as families grew, sons and daughters got married.

Mothers decided once again, it was time for a bigger home.

So let's move on and see what they were up to next.

(upbeat music) Welcome to the log cabin.

The third and final stop on your tour of the 1850 site at Farmamerica.

I want you to take a look at the log cabin behind me and compare it to the hovel that we just talked about.

What differences or similarities can you come up with between the two?

One of the biggest differences that I spotted was the shape of the logs that make up this home.

They're squares compared to the circles or round shape of the logs that we saw at the hovel.

Now, how did this happen?

Do trees grow like that in the wild or naturally?

No, absolutely not.

Families would gather their friends and neighbors from around the area to come and help build their home with them.

They would take a special tool to plane the edges of the logs and make them flat so they could fit tight together, not to allow any gaps or cracks that critters, the wind or any other outside elements might want to sneak through and get into their home.

And look at that fancy roof.

There's no sod or grass on the top of this home.

That's right those are shingles that protected them even more from the rain that might come down on their home.

And one more item on this log home that's a big difference from the two homes that we've seen before.

That's right, it's a window.

This log home actually has two windows.

And that's quite unique for a log cabin.

Many families did not have any windows in their log cabins, but if you were lucky, you could have one shipped from Northern Minnesota down the Mississippi River to add to your home.

This log cabin actually has two windows.

One you can see behind me.

And the other is on the second story.

That's right, this home has two floors.

It has a set of stairs that lead to the upstairs of this log home.

This is where the children would sleep at night.

Many pioneers had many children.

So there might be quite a few of you up on the top floor.

Next mom and dad got to relax on the main floor in their large bed that stayed downstairs away from all of those children.

You were also lucky if you could have a stove in your home, it would give you heat and a place to cook over a wood fire.

Now this log home is much different from the dugout or the hovel that we've seen so far.

Which one would you rather live in if you were living as a pioneer in the 1800s?

(upbeat music) - Lilly Wagner had no intention of moving to the United States from Germany, but then she fell in love.

She and her husband to be determined that there were more opportunities in the US.

She has since become a doctor and made Rochester her home.

- My name is Lilly Wagner and I was born and raised in Berlin, Germany.

About halfway through medical school was when I first spent a year in the United States.

I had zero intention of leaving Germany for good.

I did not have plans to meet somebody and fall in love and start dating during that year.

But I did and I met my husband, Brian, and we stayed together after I left.

And so then I actually had to start wrapping my mind around the fact that we live in different countries.

And one of us would have to move across the Atlantic.

And we sat down and talked about what career opportunities there are, how easy it would be for me to move here, how easy it would be for him to move over to Germany.

And I can tell you that there's not as many online resources to figure out how to immigrate into Germany.

I think because the United States is a country that attracts so many immigrants, there's a whole industry and information sources just dedicated to all the different routes, whether it's immigrating for work, for family, for marriage.

And it was much more straightforward to figure out how that was going to work than trying to get some information about how he would he able to immigrate to Germany.

We did meet with an attorney once just to get some guidance on what route we would take, because there are many different routes to legal immigration and even immigration through marriage has different options.

We went the route of obtaining what's called a K1 fiance visa for me, which allows the visa holder to enter the country with the intent of staying here.

So it's an immigrant visa.

The other route would have been for us to just get married while I'm here on a student visa for one of my rotations and the attorney strongly cautioned against that because it's considered immigration fraud if you enter the country on a non-immigrant visa, knowing that you plan to marry and stay here.

We didn't want to risk that given that we wanted to start our careers and have everything in order.

So we went that proper route.

I came into the country, we could get married legally, then go through what's called an adjustment of status to get a green card.

I lived in Houston, Texas, which is where my husband was in grad school.

So we stayed there for most of my medical rotations.

We then moved to the east coast.

I was in New Haven, Connecticut for one year, and then in New York City for four years.

We then moved to San Francisco, California.

And all of those moves were DIY in a truck.

And we didn't own a car for the entire time that we lived in New York City so that made it easier.

It was just the two of us in the truck and our stuff from our one bedroom apartment in the back.

It was certainly interesting for me as an outsider to see just how different life is in different parts of the states.

Having lived in Houston and then the east coast and then the west coast and now in Rochester, it's definitely a never ending learning process about the fabric of the United States, how much the different regions differ in their composition of people, of different backgrounds and attitudes.

(gentle music) - We reached the end of this tour, Off 90.

Thanks for riding along, see you next time.

But before we go, a local poet shares his work with us in his poem Dry Heaves.

- [Poet] When life punches you squarely in the jaw, oftentimes there is no preparation for the hit.

To call this dream a nightmare would be an understatement.

This dream was an uppercut, it was the furlough, the dreaded backdrop from an ostensibly great deck of cards.

It was the sibling of gravity and like its kinfolk impossible to work against and invisible to the eye, except for how effectively it pulled you down.

The Pollyanna's meet call it a wake up call with everyone else, it's the abrupt hangup.

Hard to get rid of, the pain taunts, nags, and coats the innermost visceral, stabbing your insides with your every attempt to get rid of it.

It tugs and stabs, tugs and stabs like the dry hue it is.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for Off 90 is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(birds chirping)