- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Coming up next, "Off 90," dogs and cats at the Mower County Humane Society, author and novelist, Brad Zellar, and an unusual outdoor music venue near Clarks Grove.

It's all just ahead, "Off 90."

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle music) (dogs barking) - When it's food in there, they go directly back to their houses.

(dogs barking continues) Hi.

Oh.

(dogs barking continues) (cat meowing) (volunteers laughing) - [Volunteer] It's heavy.

(gentle upbeat music) - The Mower County Humane Society was founded in 1950, and the organization's been, had numerous locations over the year.

They did not have a shelter until, oh, the late '80s.

And then we moved from that building into this building back in 2013, Labor Day weekend.

We built the building in 2012/2013, and moved in that fall.

(gentle upbeat music continues) We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with IRS and with the state, and probably the three key things about how we're structured and how we operate as an organization, number one, we're a completely independent private organization.

We're not affiliated with any NGOs or the government.

We're not in the public sector at all.

The misconception is because of the name, Mower County Humane Society, that we're part of the county.

The name Mower County simply refers to the geographic area that we serve, which is all of Mower County.

- Hey, buddy.

But Toby's about three, so he's a very young dog.

You're very handsome.

You're very handsome.

- We're also fully funded by donations, at least over 90%.

Less than 10% of our income on an annual basis of revenue is actually from adoption fees.

We have very modest adoption fees.

We only charge $50 for a cat and then about $150 and a little bit up sometimes, depending on the breed for dogs and we put far more money than that in 'em to get 'em prepared for adoption.

But we are completely dependent on the community's donations to support us financially, and fortunately we've been very blessed that way with the community.

We've always had good financial support.

And then the third thing is we're 100% all volunteer organizations.

And when I say 100%, I mean 100% from top to bottom.

We don't even have a part-time office person to answer the phones or take in the mail or anything.

It's all volunteers, so when you make a donation to Mower County Humane Society, 100% of it goes to the care of the animals and nowhere else.

- All right, shy girl, I cleaned your kennel for ya.

(gentle upbeat music) - We have a twofold mission at the humane society.

We have what we refer to as our reactive mission and our proactive mission.

Our reactive mission is the obvious one.

We operate the shelter so we take in and we care for and house and feed and water and take care of the animals until we can find them a good responsible forever home to adopt to.

And then our proactive mission is that we do everything we can to promote and sponsor and facilitate and educate around spaying and neutering of pets throughout the community.

So that's the method.

We try to stop the problem before it even hits us in the first place.

So we work hand in glove with the city and with the pound is run by the Austin Police Department with the community service officers, so our volunteers work really closely with them on custody of the animals.

They have to hold 'em for so long before we can take 'em and things like that, but there's always a lot of confusion.

People show up all the time, knocking on the door.

I'm here to pick up my animal or whatever, and then we have to clarify, you know, are you looking for us or are you looking for the pound?

And figure out where they need to go.

(kennel rattling) The last two years have been right on average for us.

We track the numbers every year, a 10 year average, about 150 dogs will adopt out a year, and about 200 to 220 cats.

So we've got about 370 animals a year that we adopt out.

And of those about 160, just under 50%, like 45% will come through the city pond.

(dog barking) We have actual kennel space, depending on how they're configured, for approximately 114 cats.

And the average population is more in the 121, 130.

It's gotten as high as 150, but we try to keep it way closer to 130.

So we've always been, since we opened, over capacity.

We've always got more cats than we have individual kennel spaces, but one of the factors is that sometimes that includes a mother with like six kittens, so you've got six animals in one kennel.

So it sounds like it's a lot, but it's really not.

So we always say that we're always over capacity, but we're not overcrowded.

We've got enough space for everybody.

(dogs barking) All of our animals go, we don't bring an animal directly into the shelter, typically.

We do have on both the dog and cat side, we have isolation areas or isle rooms, we call 'em, where a new animal, we'll keep 'em there, but typically they go straight to the vet to be vetted first, and we do some blood work to make sure they haven't got anything that's communicable before we'll expose 'em to the rest of the population and risk spreading anything.

(dogs barking) On an annual basis, our largest expense is our vet care.

It takes about 60% of our annual budget goes to the vet bill.

- [Kelly] The challenge is gonna be when we name 'em and get 'em ready for adoption.

Who's who?

- Yeah, we have names.

We just don't know.

- Yeah, they're gonna be triplets when it comes to the orange ones.

She says, I know mama, this Kelly, I feel like- - Yeah, so another issue we have with stray cats, especially cats, dogs as well, but I think everyone knows in Austin that you're not allowed to let your dog run at large, that your dog has to be leased or enclosed or the dog pound or whatever will pick it up and you'll have to come down to the pound to get your dog back.

But what people don't seem to understand is that that same ordinance in the city applies to cats.

You cannot let your cat run at large.

It has to be either, if it's outside, then you have to be with it on a leash, or it has to be in an enclosed area.

And a lot of people, it's an old, old, you know, put the cat out for the night, the old adage, right?

People still do that.

They still let their cats roam and that's a big problem we have.

Cats have to get out, cats are supposed to run loose.

Not in Austin, they're not, no.

There's a city ordinance and it's actually against the law to let your cat run at large.

(gentle upbeat music) Our biggest challenge, like I think most service groups and most organizations now, most non-profits, is that it's more about manpower.

It's more about labor.

We always need more volunteers.

So yeah, it's- - I'm making a cake.

- You could build a shelter the size of the Metrodome and you could fill it with animals.

There's plenty of animals in need out there, but the size of the shelter what determines the number of animals we can care for isn't how much space we have, it's how much volunteer help we have because every animal you bring in has to be cared for.

So if you haven't got enough people, then you have to start cutting back on the number of animals you can take in that you can take care of so that's always our biggest challenge is to find more volunteers.

You know, it's a very rewarding place to volunteer because almost every animal has a happy ending, eventually.

It takes a long time sometimes for some of 'em, but almost always they end up going home someplace.

They find that forever home and that's what makes it worth it.

When you see that animal go out the door, and a lot of people are really good, once they've made an adoption, then they kind of keep in touch, either through our social media sites, Facebook, or they'll send us a note with some pictures, show us the animals that we adopted out playing with their new siblings or whatever, with the kids and the family and so we get to see that happy ending every so often and that's what makes it worth it.

I think that's what keeps the people coming.

And then for some of our volunteers as well is, I mean, when they're here, they're working and cleaning and stuff like that, but then they always take some time to just spend time with the animals and interact with them.

Well, I think it's probably a little bit different for everybody, but I think we joke around a lot that we all have the same defective gene.

We're just unable to look away for animals that are in trouble, but I think at the core, it's just people who love animals and we care about their welfare and we just find it really rewarding to save an animal from the streets, especially if it's injured or hurt and, you know, and been abused and bring it in and give it a place to have a warm bed at night and food and water and get it vet care and get it taken care of and have it go to a home where it's gonna be cared for properly.

It's just a really rewarding experience when you get to see the whole span of that cycle.

(gentle music) - It is been a while since I've typed.

(typewriter keys clicking) - You're not writing about us.

- I am, yeah.

Somebody's filming me from my hometown TV station, so this is all a pretense and I feel really stupid about it.

(Brad laughing) I'm Brad Zellar and I'm a writer, originally from Austin, Minnesota, and I presently live in St. Paul.

When you made the little books in grade school where they say you wanna grow up to be a fireman or a policeman or whatever, my mom loves this.

Mine was I wanna be a writer and I've never deviated from that.

I worked as a journalist for almost 15 years at "City Pages" and then a couple magazines.

(typewriter keys clicking) I pace around, I play records, I look at books and I come back and write some more, then I pace around and I...

It's not a recommended way of working at all.

I'm interested in pretty much everything so my books have been somewhat a mix of journalism, fiction, documentary, and these sort of little impressionistic series of things where I tried very hard to incorporate photos and text.

Before I actually tracked down and met Irv Norling, I went to the Bloomington Historical Society and I found this vast, incredibly obsessive archive, photographic document of like the history of Bloomington from the late '40s through the late '60s and into the '70s.

It was in file cabinets and boxes in this storage room at the Historical Society.

There was every aspect of a community life, parades, pancake dinners, car crashes, first baby of the new year, ribbon cuttings, graduations, Thanksgiving dinners.

The story got more fascinating all the time.

It turned out, all of his photographic enterprises, the whole family was involved.

They would all go together to these events and to these crime scenes and car accidents at all hours of the day or night.

Their house was wired with police scanners and they all had a lot of great stories about the stuff, but none of them looked at it as anything significant.

He didn't consider himself an artist.

He scoffed at that notion.

He was documenting.

We talked to the kids and it turns out like a lot of these pictures in this book and in the exhibit were taken either by the kids or the wife.

I have had this really great long-term association with this photographer, Alec Soth, who's one of the most amazing photographers in the world right now.

He called me one day and said, "I have a favor.

I wanna go out and try to be Irv Norling and make a little small town newspaper."

So we started driving around together through exurban Twin Cities, looking for the kind of stuff Norling took pictures of.

We were really coming close to that mysterious sort of Norling vibe, but I was there as a reporter so I could talk to the people.

Turns out he got some financial opportunity to do some work in Ohio, so we decided to turn that into, we would do our project, the dispatch on the road in Ohio.

We'd spend 10 days in Ohio driving around, so like a moose club, a little horror hotel convention.

(playful music) German restaurant.

We did seven of these little publications that are very uniform.

They have the same number of pages.

They're newsprint, black and white photos and text, stories, storytelling about America beyond the freeways.

We are always off the freeways.

So we would just drive out into these places where sort of that had been most insulated from all the corrosion of the 21st century.

(gentle music) I always was writing fiction.

I mean, I was being pigeonholed as a guy who only wrote with photographers and with photos, which is fine 'cause I love it.

I have got this project, these black books where there are, you know, there's racks and racks, stacks of 'em everywhere.

I try to write 1,000 words every night.

All these, they go back to 1995.

I've never missed a night, and there's more in the house.

(gentle music) (typewriter keys clicking) I had been working on this really long novel.

I mean, at that point it was like 850 pages typewritten.

I finished it about a year ago.

They love that people take an interest in their lives or are curious about who they are, what they're doing.

(upbeat jazzy piano music) I consider, you know, always a kind of a blessing or a gift if somebody is as takes an interest in my life, you know, like it's, and there are a whole lot of people in this world that never, ever, they're invisible.

(upbeat jazzy piano music continues) (gentle music) ♪ See the (indistinct) when I close my eyes ♪ (mellow rock music) ♪ When the hill open, I'll see the moon rise ♪ ♪ Time is passing me by ♪ - I'm from the area, I grew up in Albert Lea between Albert Lea and Geneva back and forth a couple of times, and really wanted to have something here for young people to explore and to latch onto and to grow and share together, and I didn't really have that as I grew up.

And in my travels as a young man, discovered there were places in the world where people could gather, to share, and I wanted to create that here.

Yeah, I'm Jay Sullivan, owner of Harmony Park Music Garden.

♪ When I looked and I saw ♪ ♪ Day is passed and night's gone ♪ ♪ When it's all said and done ♪ (lyrics indistinct) ♪ Gonna take the time forget ♪ ♪ These all will sleep their whole life ♪ ♪ If I'm moving forward ♪ ♪ Don't need to apologize ♪ - When I was a boy, I'd ride my mini bike through here, when it was a VFW park, and my dad played softball out here, there's softball diamonds out here, so I've grown up on this property since I was little and chasing frogs and turtles and just enjoying the place while my dad's playing softball or just goofing around back here, so I'm connected to the property from a long time ago.

In the early '90s, I had a couple of retail stores in Minneapolis and we specialized in hemp products and we wanted to host an event with some music and speakers and legitimize some of the legalization movement.

And this was in the early '90s when you tried to promote the movement was a little different than it is these days, and so that was the birth of Harmony Park as it is now.

These trees are 150, 200, 250, 300 years old.

They've been around a long time.

They've seen a lot of storms.

They've seen droughts, they've seen floods, they've seen a lot of cold winters.

These things have been around a while and there's definitely something about that energy that I feel, and I think a lot of people do.

I absolutely feel like this becomes a, it's definitely community and it's fun to see the same people come, like I said, and they bring friends and they grow and they share and some of them will fade away for a few years or come back and new people come and it does, it becomes its own little community and it's much more broad than just Harmony Park.

These folks that come here every show or every year, they're connected way outside of the park.

They've all become good friends.

They're family friends, they travel together.

It's really a community.

It's so much more widespread than just this property.

- My favorite thing about coming out here is being able to be myself and be with the people that I love and look people in the eyes 'cause I can't do that where I live.

(gentle upbeat music) ♪ Paradise ♪ ♪ When I lay me down, goodnight song ♪ ♪ Day has passed, the night's gone ♪ ♪ The dreams, they go on ♪ ♪ When it's all said and done ♪ (lyrics indistinct) - We've done the hoop building, which we call the Harmonium, which is really nice for light projection, so we put a stage inside of that and we have people, it's in somewhat indoor space, it's covered space, and so it's kinda like our version of the Sphere.

(chuckling) Tiny, but it's really a lot of fun, people really enjoy it.

And then because we work under the conditional use permit where there's no amplified music after curfew, what we've done now is people that wanna stay up and dance and do their things, we have, it's called the silent disco.

They wear headphones and there'll be a DJ on stage so everyone can hear the music that the DJ is creating and dance and do their thing inside this well-lit dome, and from the outside you can't hear it at all.

(ethereal music) (ethereal music continues) We had a moment in time when we were challenged to continue on with our conditional use permit, for instance, so in front of the County Board of Commissioners, we had basically a trial to decide whether or not Harmony Park could continue in business under the conditional use permit that we work with.

Lot of complaints from the neighborhood, or not a lot.

We had some co complainers from the neighborhood, so they were present.

I was really surprised at how many people came to speak on our behalf and to support Harmony Park.

And one of the most moving speeches that was presented that day was a woman who was a meth addict.

And she came out here to work and, before I knew all this, she came out here to work, great person.

She got into meth, she was a victim of that, almost lost her life, almost lost her children, you know, this whole story of meth addiction.

And came back to me and said, "Look, I really need to, this place is healing to me and I really would love a second chance to be part of this."

We gave her a second chance.

She's a tremendous person.

She's the 1%-ers who, she's lived through the meth addiction and she testified in front of the County Board of Commissioners that she would not be alive today if it weren't for Harmony Park and the family that she's got here.

So we've saved lives here.

It's amazing.

- That's quite a story.

- Truly amazing.

- [Interviewer] I didn't expect that, that was pretty heavy.

- Yeah, it's real and it's moving.

♪ I'm living with chicken bird ♪ ♪ I'm living with the bird ♪ (lyrics indistinct) (upbeat music) ♪ I've living with the bird ♪ ♪ I've living with chicken bird ♪ ♪ I'm living with the bird ♪ ♪ I'm living with bad bird ♪ ♪ I'm living with Steve Balboni ♪ ♪ I'm living with that bird (indistinct) ♪ (upbeat music continues) - I've owned the park since 1996 and we've hosted things from biker rallies to religious retreats, to music festivals and lots of weddings and company picnics and all kinds of stuff.

And then we've also hosted an event where it's training for fire performers and aerialists, acrobats, things like that, so we've host a camp.

It's a one-week camp where people that are enthusiasts with that or professionals with that can train and teach.

(upbeat music) I gotta tell you something that's really special to me is that this place means so much to so many people that their wishes are after they pass away, that their ashes be spread here.

Some people I know, some people I don't.

And for me to be able to be in the position that I'm in, to host a space that means so much to people, is just, I'm honored.

I don't know how else to put it.

I'm just completely honored.

I've dedicated my life to this 'cause I love this.

I love the land, I love the people, I love the community.

I'm a machinery junkie.

I love playing with machines, from a lawnmower to tree equipment, and I love trees and I love working on them.

I love tree mechanics, I love learning new things.

This place has provided all of those things for me 'cause I can't get a real job.

(laughing) Let's keep going.

- [Interviewer] I love that, I really do.

(Jay laughing) (rock music) (rock music continues) (rock music continues) (crowd cheering) (upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.