Rarely do I regret choosing journalism as my career, something I knew I would pursue even as a teenager growing up here in Freeman. But there are times I wonder what my world would look like if I had instead taken up my second love — cooking.

The four candidates running for two spots on the Menno School Board of Education have given voters living in the Menno School District a gift — they have given them a choice. In a textbook display of the democratic process, incumbent Jon Schempp is being challenged by Jackie Vaith, Joel Rempfer and Molly Huber in next week’s election, which will take place on Tuesday, April 11. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the fire hall on Menno’s Fifth Street.

Dear Schmeckfest guests, If this is your first time to Freeman, welcome! If you’re coming in for a repeat visit, welcome back!

Ida Sayler age 104 of Menno, S.D., passed away early Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at the Scotland Good Samaritan Center, Scotland, S.D.  A funeral service was held Saturday, March 18 at Peace Christian Reformed Church, Menno, S.D., with Rev. Ryan VanderWees officiating. Burial was in the Menno Cemetery. 

Since it opened as a 16-bed hospital in 1952, the health care facility known today as Freeman Regional Health Services (FRHS) has been serving the people of the Freeman community and surrounding area with services that have changed with the times. That included a 30-bed addition to the hospital in 1959, the addition of an extended care and rehabilitation center in 1971 and countless other improvements in the years and decades that followed — including what was known as “The Connection Project” that was completed in 1994 that set the local health care facility up a new era to come.

For many, the reality that summer is drawing to a close is an unsettling prospect. Fleeting are those long daylight hours, those backyard barbecues, the relaxation that comes with camping and boating and the childhood freedom that even adults can still feel. While I harbor some of those thoughts, I’m ready to say goodbye to the days of summer and welcome a new season. Fall is, after all, my favorite of all the months.

I first met Kahlen Salis in 2012 when I interviewed her and her family for a three-part series I was writing called “Life & Death.”

The juxtaposition between “The joy of being jolly” printed this week as a historical piece from 1902 and the two guest columns written by rural Freeman resident Ashley Holzwarth dealing with mental health struggles that appeared in the past two issues of The Courier couldn’t be more striking. The former from 120 years ago urges everybody to “smile on, smile ever,” to “quarantine your feelings,” and that “people with ‘bad spells on them’ and the ‘dismals’ will cheer up, be chirk and get well.’”

It’s a real duty, and the violation of it ought to subject anyone to fine and imprisonment. What right has anyone to go about the community lachrymose, woebegone, with “tears in ‘s eye, distraction in ‘s aspect!” What right has he to distribute the bacilli of depression, gloom, dumpishness, and general “forlornity?” A fellow may have corns and porous plasters, and boils and styes and spasms, and freckles and moles, and eardrums and quinine pills, and an utter absence of joy in the stomach regions, but he needn’t hire the town-crier to go about with a bell proclaiming it.

“If Freeman didn’t have a team, I’d be playing somewhere else. I can’t imagine a summer without baseball.” That’s what Jake Weier, player/manager with the Freeman Blacksox, told me when I visited with him about his team’s run through the District 6 Amateur Baseball Tournament and upcoming trip to Mitchell for the Class B state tournament. It’s also all you need to know about Jake’s love for — and commitment to — America’s Game.