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Tami Howland, dala horses

Posted on by Pat Melgares
Red painted dala horse in front of Welcome to Olsburg sign
Olsburg dala horse

The horses are out! They’re all over town!

But these horses aren’t running away; they are standing strong for their community.

These are dala horses, the beautifully decorated horse-shaped figures that are a symbol of Sweden. Today we will visit a rural Kansas community that is using dala horses to beautify the town and engage its people.

Tami Howland is president of Olsburg’s Kansas PRIDE program, now known as Kansas Community Empowerment. Howland also works at Union State Bank in Olsburg.

The town was founded in 1880 by an immigrant Swede named Ole Thrulson. Originally named Olesburgh, the name was later shortened to Olsburg. One Swedish tradition is the display of dala horses: wooden carvings of horses that are painted and displayed outside homes and businesses.

PRIDE members wanted to enhance the community. In 2021, they received an anonymous donor’s gift to be used for beautification.

Using the Swedish theme, PRIDE members decided to launch a public art project consisting of large dala horses to be decorated by local businesses and organizations. The project received a matching grant from the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, which is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. PRIDE members contacted a Nebraska company that produced fiberglass dala horses 3 1/2 feet tall.

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Curtis and Lori Swenson, C&L Crafts

Posted on by Pat Melgares
Lori and Curtis Swenson
Lori and Curtis Swenson

The design cut into the wood is beautiful, detailed, intricate – and handmade. It was not produced with a laser cutter or computer-aided design, but rather, entirely by hand by a remarkably skilled craftsman in rural Kansas.

Curtis and Lori Swenson are founders and owners of C&L Crafts in Miltonvale. They grew up in the Randolph area, met in school and were married. They would ultimately have four children.

Those children, now grown, have also chosen to live in rural Kansas. They now live in Miltonvale, population 440; Mayetta, population 348; Olsburg, population 218; and Idana, population 54 people. Now, that’s rural.

Curtis took a job in Nebraska where he suffered a terrible accident in which his back was broken in two places. He would have 22 back surgeries, the first of which was 8 ½ hours long. He made a full recovery, but it was a long recuperation.

“I was going stir crazy,” Curtis said. He looked for something he could do with his hands.

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Dave Dreiling, Booth Creek Wagyu

Posted on by Pat Melgares

Building better beef. That’s one goal of an innovative Kansas entrepreneur who is using a unique breed of cattle and careful quality control to create a remarkable beef-eating experience for consumers.

Man holding packaged cuts of Wagyu beef
Dave Dreiling

Dave Dreiling is the founder and owner of Booth Creek Wagyu. As we have previously profiled, Dave is a successful entrepreneur who studied business at K-State. He met and married Kristen Spaeth. Dave founded GTM, the sportswear company, and also owns numerous restaurants.

In 2008, he bought a Pottawatomie County ranch, primarily for deer hunting. Through the years, he expanded the property, now known as Booth Creek Ranch. Meanwhile, Dareiling’s uncle raised greyhounds near Abilene and had started raising beef cattle as well, including some cows that had been bred to a bull from a Japanese breed known as Wagyu.

“We got some of this beef and fell in love with it,” Dreiling said. They found it to be especially tender and flavorful. Dreiling went to his uncle’s dispersal sale with the intention of buying one animal, but ended up purchasing four full-blood Wagyu and 28 Wagyu embryos. “My intent was to buy a few head to have great beef for family and friends,” he said.

The more Dreiling learned about Wagyu, the more he became convinced about the potential of the breed and the opportunities to upgrade beef consumption. “There aren’t a lot of Wagyu producers,” he said. “One was a cattle company in California that was shipping them to Kansas to be fed, and then shipping them back to be processed.”

“Kansas is a better place to raise cattle,” Dreiling said. “Why couldn’t we do this here, all the way through?” Continue reading “Dave Dreiling, Booth Creek Wagyu” →

Craig and Amy Good, Good Farms

Posted on by Pat Melgares

Today let’s go to Lupa Osteria Romana, a high quality restaurant in the heart of New York City. The restaurant is serving delicious pork.

Where was it raised? On the Good Farm, half a continent away in Kansas.

Craig and Amy Good, portrait
Craig and Amy Good

Craig and Amy Good are the owners of Good Farm, the source of this specialty pork. Craig, the son of Don and Jane Good, grew up in Manhattan. He graduated from Manhattan High and earned a degree from Kansas State in animal science. Craig met and married Amy who earned her degree in what is now called health and human sciences.

After graduation, Craig worked for Fred Germann, who was an innovator in producing Specific Pathogen Free hogs. After five years, with Fred’s blessing, Craig and Amy moved to a farm near Olsburg and started producing breeding stock of their own.

“My passion is to make the next generation of production better than the last,” Craig said. He worked hard on improving the family’s swine herd and selling quality breeding stock to other pork producers.

Then the hog market crashed in1998. The market dried up for Craig’s boars and gilts.

“We went through a brief time of blaming others,” Craig said. “We could blame the packers or blame the corporations, but the blame game serves no purpose.”

Craig and Amy came up with possible alternative crops for their farm and approached K-State agricultural economist Vincent Amanor-Boadu. He looked at the alternatives but ultimately said to them: “Do what you’re good at, and that is raising hogs.”

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