JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER While Menno’s enrollment is up slightly in town, its overall numbers have dropped from what they were at the beginning of last school year largely because of a significant decline in students at Maxwell Colony, according to numbers provided by the business office at Menno Public Schools.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER A significant jump in the number of students attending school in Freeman Public School District 33-1 has Freeman’s overall enrollment as high as it has been in more than a decade. According to preliminary numbers released by the Freeman Public business office early this week, enrollment has climbed from 335 at the start of last year to 374 this year.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER For those who want to see Bob Pidde in action, there’s a pretty good chance he can be found behind the deli counter inside Jamboree Foods, Freeman’s downtown grocery story he operates with his son, Brett, and Brett’s wife, Kelsey.

This was the scene at Dakota Rendering one mile east of Freeman around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, Sept. 1 as the Freeman Volunteer Fire Department worked to contain a structure fire. The department was called to the scene around 6:30 a.m. after a shop with a wood frame and steel sheeting caught fire; firefighter Cody Fransen said the cause was unknown, but the contents of the building included waste oil drums and propane tanks. "There very well could have been an explosion," he said.

Firefighters from Freeman were on the scene of a fire at Dakota Rendering one mile east of Freeman around sunup Wednesday morning, Sept. 1. The crew was working to extinguish what appeared to be a smoldering structure fire around 7:30 a.m. Cody Fransen, a firefighter on the scene, said nobody was hurt. This is a developing story.

Water could still be seen standing in Freeman Tuesday afternoon following another rain that moved across the area on Monday and into the overnight hours of Tuesday. The latest rainfall dropped more than in inch in town, contributing to what has been a wet recent week.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER In the same way he was when he played basketball for Freeman High School nearly 50 years ago, Bob Pidde will be in the limelight this Saturday, Aug. 28 when he is formally inducted into the South Dakota High School Basketball Hall of Fame. Pidde is one of 13 men and women who make up the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020; the induction ceremony scheduled for last year was postponed following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

JEREMY WALTNER - PUBLISHER Meeting in regular session Tuesday, Aug. 17, the Freeman City Council unanimously signed off on a Resolution 2021-07, which supports Dakota Protein Solutions and its plans to build a “protein and related products” processing facility one mile east/southeast of Freeman on the location that currently serves as home to Dakota Rendering.

  JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER John Kneifl doesn’t have near the experience cooking ribs as he does fighting fires. Whereas he’s been with the fire department in New Castle, Neb. for 33 years and currently serves as chief, he’s only been smoking ribs for the past two years, a process he says he’s been been trying to improve upon. He’s either a quick study or downright lucky. It’s probably a little bit of both.