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

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Coming up on the next "Off 90," we witness the World Snow Sculpting Championship in Stillwater, visit a small-town grocery store that has serviced Southern Minnesota for over 100 years, and check out some of the area state parks and the exhibits that are on display.

It's all just ahead on the next "Off 90."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (lively music) (lively music) - This is the World Snow Celebration.

This is our fifth annual event in Stillwater, Minnesota.

Bringing this event together, art, culture and community, we have 15 different countries represented here.

Snow sculptors from all around the world and the USA are here to compete for the title of World Champion.

Hi, I am Stacie Jensen, communications and programs manager for the Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce.

These teams of sculptors, there's three on each team, 16 teams total, at 9:00 AM this past Wednesday they have tools up so they can all start sculpting at 9:00 AM on Wednesday, and they sculpt through 2:00 PM on Saturday, when tools go down.

They can sculpt all day, all night.

They take breaks when they need to, but they put in a lot of hours, putting together creations that they chisel out of a 10 by 10 by 10 block of snow.

- Hi, I am Steffie Talks, and I'm the team captain of Team Denmark.

We've been working as Team Eastwood for many years together, three people.

We came together as a team because we compliment each other very well.

My role on the Team Denmark is to keep everybody working, and keep the mood up.

And we're very good in our team at discussing the things, and deciding everything together.

But we do have different separate roles.

Somebody's better at measuring, somebody's better at being on top of the artwork.

Somebody feels more comfortable on the bottom.

I like to change, so I walk around a lot, and draw, and look very important.

That's also good.

So yeah, on the team, we have different assignments, but we do compliment each other very well, and we have a great team spirit.

- Hi, I'm Niki McKenzie, and I'm here with Team New Zealand.

So the snow world is quite small.

There's not that many people that can take this much time off work, and there's not that many people that are this crazy.

So I know about half the teams here, and I've made friends with the rest, and I'm just so excited to see them out and about in the place.

- Actually, this snow sculpting community does forge a lot of friendships and relations, and for our team, the snow sculpting has brought marriages and lifelong friendships.

- This is my third time in Stillwater.

This is my definitely my favorite festival of all of them, just because of the absolute hospitality that we receive here.

I've been twice before under the banner of Team Canada, and this is my first time representing my own country, and I feel very proud.

- For me, the competition part has been a little bit hard to understand, because I'm already feeling like a winner just being here, getting this opportunity.

You really do feel that everybody's working for the same goal, and that is to make a very good experience for everybody when they get here.

Not only for the artists, also for the visitors, and also for the people actually working on the project.

You feel the love, you feel that you are welcome here.

If we go to the cafes and the sponsor events, and it doesn't matter where you go, you get the feeling that you're welcome.

And that to me makes Stillwater very special.

- We really did it to embrace winter.

You know, we're a small community, and we have a wonderful main street, so we thought let's bring this great event here as a way to get people to, you know, enjoy and embrace winter.

We started five years ago, we became aware that there was a snow sculpting competition in Wisconsin, and there wasn't a world competition, so we thought why not bring it here to Stillwater where we already have a wonderful community, and art and culture represented.

And it just took off from there.

And five years later we have a big event, and just been a great opportunity to have this here in Stillwater.

- So for Team Denmark, it's one person making the design, and that mostly would be the team captain.

We start by making a sketch, and we submit that sketch into the competition, and we cross our fingers that we get selected.

We were lucky.

Next step is to make a model.

We use plasticine, which is a material that gets hard when it's cold, and yeah, then we try to transform our model into a huge snow block.

And the model for us in Team Denmark is very important, because when there's one person made the design, having to explain a 2D drawing, "What were my thoughts on the backside?"

It's much easier to visualize it.

- We generally sit down over a few beers and discuss ideas, concepts.

We're all creative in our own ways.

When we first started, we did a lot of things based on Maori legends, like my culture, and now we've sort of switched to doing statements about like the state of the world, or things that have happened to us, experiences, that sort of thing.

We love our sculptures to tell stories.

- [Steffie] We have many different tools.

Well we could call them a gigantic fork, which is like very sharp and on the stick.

- [Niki] We have a lot of quite thick heavyweight chisels attached to hockey sticks and canoe paddles.

- [Steffie] Soon we'll be done with using those tools, and we'll move on to using polishers and grinders.

- We've got a couple of sheep shearing shaving guys.

We've got pieces of sanding blocks.

We have an old paintbrush with a piece of flat metal stuck to it.

- [Steffie] So a lot of different tools we use, and all of them have their charm.

- This event has been wonderful for our local businesses.

It brings in a lot of our locals back downtown that maybe don't come down here in the summer months when all the tourists are here.

We get our restaurants and our local businesses involved in this event as well, so that they're kind of feeling like they're a part of the event.

And now they're jam packed for the month and loving it.

- The reason why I continue coming back making snow sculptures at these events is because I'm having the time of my life.

I get to create next to very inspirational people.

I get to meet this community, I step aside and out of my own life for a while and see everything from a distance.

I make friends across the globe.

And it's really just the time of my life.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (lively music) (door bells chiming) (lively music continues) - This grocery store is actually the first business on Main Street here in Ellendale.

We've been here since 1901, and the building was built by Andrew Lerberg, who was the original owner.

The first building that was here on this corner was a wood structure.

And then after they outgrew that, they tore that down.

And then in 1914, the building we're currently in was built.

So these floors, these walls, ceiling, have all been here since 1914.

And then we've just underwent many, many changes in the store since then.

But that's kind of the history of the store.

(lively music continues) - My grandfather started it in 1901.

He was originally in business in Hartland in partnership with a guy in the grocery business.

And then he heard the railroad was coming through here.

So he sold his partnership over there and moved to Ellendale.

And that's how that started anyway.

So the rail started the town, and he was one of the first businesses here on the same corner where we're at.

Folks had an apartment which is still there above the business, and that's where I grew up.

So I've been on premise most of my life.

- It went from Andrew Lerberg to his sons, and that would be Art Lerberg and his wife Marge ran the store here for many, many years.

There was also an uncle that was in there that helped during the war, work here at the store.

And then the store was passed on to Andy Lerberg, and I worked for Andy for a number of years.

I started here in 1976 working for the Lerberg family.

I graduated in 1981 and in the year 2007, that's when I bought the store from the Lerberg family.

- It was a good feeling, you know, somebody that take it over, and Ross had worked here as a young man as carry out, and came back and was interested, and it was good for the community.

(lively music) - Challenges, just, I don't know, we do have a lot of loyal customers here, and we're very thankful for them.

You know, we advertise weekly.

We have a full grocery store.

We have groceries, produce, frozen food, dairy, fresh meat.

So we do whatever we have to do to bring the customers in.

We're really famous for Jan's Potato Salad.

Everybody comes here.

There's a gal just outside of town that sells, she does her own catering out of her home, and she makes a potato salad that's just out of this world.

And so we kind of have the corner on that here at the store, and so we sell a lot of potato salad.

I always warn people that before they try it, just so that they know they're never gonna want another potato salad.

It's that good.

It's a very good potato salad.

Other than your mom's, because your mom's is always the best, right?

Otherwise, whatever you find at the big grocery stores, you're gonna find it here at Lerberg's.

(lively music) One thing that we're pretty famous for here at the store is that we have a moose hanging on the wall over there.

And everybody always asks us about the moose.

And the moose was shot by the original store owner, Andrew Lerberg, in 1919.

He was brought down here by rail, and they brought him up here to the store, had the head mounted where he still is today.

And I understand that the meat was cut up and distributed to anybody that wanted some meat.

After I took the store over, I thought that the moose didn't have a name.

And so we, a few years ago, came up with a name for him.

His name is Dale, and we figure that his wife's name is Ellen, which is Ellendale, and that's how we came up with his name.

(lively music) You know, the nice thing about a small-town grocery store, and being in a small town, is you know your neighbors, and they know you and you know, everybody that walks in the store, I'd say 99% of them I can call them by their first name, and they all know me.

Morning, Mark.

It's really nice to be in a small town and in a smaller atmosphere.

We have a lot of elderly people that live in town here too that find it a lot easier shopping here than in the big-box store, because they don't have as far to walk, and we're a full-service store.

So we are here to help them shop if they need help, we carry their groceries out to the car for them.

Another thing that we offer here at Lerberg's is free home delivery on Fridays.

We have a lot of shut-ins in town here that just aren't able to get out.

So they give us their orders on Friday mornings, and then we put their orders together and deliver them to their homes.

And a lot of times even put them in the fridge or the freezer, wherever they need to have it done.

But we try to take care of each other.

I watched Andy and I watched his wife own the grocery store, and I just got to watch them interact with the community always.

And I just thought, "Yeah, that's something I would enjoy doing."

And Andy was a really good mentor for me, and I learned a lot from him, probably more than I did going to school for running a business.

And so how to work with customers, how to treat customers, and just all of that stuff I learned from Andy Lerberg.

- You just can't beat a small town.

You know everybody.

My wife had clothing and gifts next door, and so work clothing and Red Wing boots, and things for the rural people, you know?

And then she decided we should shift gears.

She'd been going to a fitness center in Owatonna, and she thought maybe that'd be a good thing to switch to.

So she had another good idea.

And we did, and it is going good, and our daughter and son-in-law have it now, which is great, because they're both been teachers here in the local school, and are into coaching and physical fitness.

So it just went smooth.

(lively music) - I've heard so many people say, you know, a lot of people will say "Thank you, we're so glad that you're here."

You know, and I go back to the years of COVID when people were very thankful that we were here.

And I guess, I would hope that it's very important to the community, and that they would wanna continue to support us so that we can move on.

I'm getting to that point in my life where I would like to find a successor here at the store within the next couple years.

And so I would like to see this store remain a part of this community moving forward.

I will say that owning a grocery store is a big commitment.

You're tied down.

A lot of farmers around here will compare it to milking cows.

You are pretty much tied down.

I'm not saying you don't ever get away, 'cause you do, but it's a commitment, and you have to be willing to put the time in and the effort into what it takes to own and operate a grocery store in a small town.

(lively music) You know, I go think about all the people that have through the years that have shopped here.

You know, we've had some really awesome people in town here, and in my mind they're famous, you know, you might not even know who they are, but, you know, they were just really pretty awesome citizens of Ellendale, so.

- We're so thankful for the people that support the business here, and for all the good employees we've had.

It's just been wonderful.

(lively music) (lively music) (upbeat music) - Minnesota State Parks and Trails is always working to improve our exhibits, and improve our non-personal education.

And that means that we've always got exhibit projects in the hopper.

So Sibley is our most recently finished, and in the future we can look forward to new exhibits on Mille Lacs Kathio and Gooseberry Falls State Park.

We've got a lineup of new things coming down the pike, and every time we learn more, we make it more engaging, more interesting, and more accessible to a broader number of people.

(lively music) (water rushing) (gentle music) - Whitewater State Park is one of the larger and most-visited parks within Minnesota here.

This has been a park that's been around for quite a while, where a lot of the users that we have come back year after year.

The group that's really being able to come through, and what we like to focus on, are the families that really pop out to the park as one of our main audiences.

And with the campgrounds that are here, we get a lot of those overnight visitors too.

Plus a lot of different activities, such as the trout fishing brings a lot of people out here for the fishing, and of course the beautiful bluff land with a lot of the prairie flowers and just sites that you don't normally see through other parts of the state.

(gentle music) There is a number of visitor centers that have the exhibits.

A lot of those are in the same parks that we have our naturalists.

So when we have people come in, they're able to look at those exhibits, start to get some interest in what's happening.

And that's really what a lot of what our interpretation is, is to provoke, is to make you wonder, you know, what else is there out there?

What can I learn, you know?

Why is this important?

And then our naturalists can further their knowledge in that next step.

- Welcome to Whitewater State Park.

My name is Jeremy, I'm the park naturalist here.

And today we're standing inside of our visitor center in our discovery room.

And the space that we're in today is meant to kind of introduce people to the outdoors and the features of the park.

Behind me, we've got a campsite, and this is geared towards children to play in.

We're very fortunate to have thousands of school children, beyond our campers, that come and visit our park every year.

And this is an opportunity for them to play and kind of get a chance to experience some of the things that they could experience by visiting a state park or being out in nature.

(lively music) We feature the different animals that call this place home.

The wild turkey in Minnesota was reintroduced in the Whitewater Valley.

So if you see one, it more than likely came from just down the road.

At the low part of the table, we see a lot of touch elements, again for the kids to be able to experience, everything from beaver pelts on to deer antlers.

And then talking a little bit about the unique topography that's down here in some of the unique plant communities like Algific Talus Slopes, which are just found a few places in the world, bluff prairies that are homes to things like golden eagles and timber rattlesnakes.

And so the kids are able to continue to explore the space, and learn a little bit about what makes this area unique.

(lively music) And this is displaying kind of, as Europeans came in the area and they cleared our hill slopes, it let rain, which is represented by our marble in this case, be able to get down to the bottom of the valley very, very rapidly, and reach the rivers, which causes a lot of flooding inside of our valley.

So pretty easy to see that.

So this would be the post-European state of the valley.

On the other side, we see what it would've been like before Europeans came into the valley, where that hillside is still well-vegetated, and there would've been a lot of opportunity for that water to get pulled into the ground before it could ever reach the river at the bottom where the communities were.

So it's a really easy way for kids to kind of gain a sense of that difficulty of the water to travel down to the bottom.

And then the words here at the top kind of explain the narrative of what's going on.

(lively music) - Over the time as the landscapes changed, as states has been able to purchase lands, that park continues to grow.

And we're always looking for possibilities, because this is a space for the public to come into and enjoy.

And we want to be able to have as much land in protection for a lot of these rare species that are here, but also for the public to recreate it.

(lively music) (water rushing) - History is something that we try to teach our visitors about while they're here, because a lot of things have happened in our state parks over time, and there are things that are important for the public to learn about, even if they may not be really obvious.

And sometimes that data can be a little hard to dig into, such as the data that's being studied right now, and gathered about the blue-spotted salamander, and the effects of climate change that are happening to it.

But that's when art comes in, and helps us to capture the imagination and the interest of the visitor.

So they might walk into a space like this, and see a gorgeous sculpture, and be drawn into that, and be wondering then why a salamander?

And that's our window to get into our topic.

(gentle music) - You'll see a little bit of how these animals are changing, whether that be through migration patterns, to how they reproduce in more males versus females, as well as how some of their appearances are changing.

And then it looks too at how those, how our climate changes are sort of changing the biological makeup of our area.

For example, salamanders and turtles, they need water in their life, and as we lose certain water areas, or they become polluted, such as our wetlands, those animals can have a harder time surviving.

So as you start putting the pieces together, some of them are pretty obvious, and some things are less obvious.

(lively music) - These exhibits, once you're in here and be able to read them, and know what they're all about, you're gonna be able to see that it is changing, it's changing at a faster rate.

We are getting warmer and wetter.

We are having these extremes at closer periods of time than we have in the past.

We have an impact on that.

And hopefully when they come here and they read these exhibits, they're able to take away something that they can, a little bit more knowledge that they didn't have before they stepped into here.

There's parts of the park in every single one of these, so that they can look at the exhibit, think about the exhibit, and then they go right outside these doors and actually experience what the exhibit is actually talking about.

(gentle music) - I love seeing people's smiles.

When they come into a place like this, one of the best indicators of if I've done my job, if my team has done our job, is when a group walks in here, and they split, and one of them goes in one direction and says, "You've gotta come and see this."

And they drag somebody across the room, and they go and explore and experience, and they touch, and they feel.

They're using their multiple senses.

They're smiling, they're saying, "Ooh."

And they're saying, "I didn't know that."

And sparking that curiosity, and bringing that emotional component into it, that joy and wonder.

And that's really, for me, the measure of if we've done our job.

(gentle music) If they can walk out of a space like this, and have had that emotional experience made, that positive memory, had something that made them think a little deeper, and when they walk away, if they've got one nugget that they remember from the content, from the facts of the exhibits, that's enough.

- So let's see if I can try my hand at this.

And success, I caught me a rainbow trout.

More than likely from the hatchery just down the road.

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