The sweet taste of Strawbale
Like the 30 mostly fruit wines made there, Strawbale Winery has a sweet flavor. Banty roosters strut among red, yellow and blue Adirondack chairs on a rolling green lawn that proves the prairie is not completely flat. Beneath a large box elder tree, a yellow tomcat preens as he’s petted by four women sitting in a circle sipping wine and socializing. Kittens, presumably the offspring of the tomcat, cavort, occasionally coming nose to beak with a chicken.
Special events are front and center at Don and Susie South’s place, 12 miles from downtown Sioux Falls. Take Winey Women, for example, a Thursday night gathering for girlfriends. Its following is loyal; women look forward to yakking, sipping wine and having some fun. In October, they decorated pumpkins as they partied.
The winery’s Alf Day is a birthday party for all, a tribute to the orphan bachelor who farmed this land for decades.
He never had children because he couldn’t bear the thought that they could be orphaned as he was, but he was devoted to the young people in the area. He built merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters and invited families to bring their children to the farm for birthday parties.
Decades later, Don says adults still ask, “Isn’t this Alf’s old place? I had my birthday party here.”
Groups can tag on to one of the winery’s events, or they can plan their own. There is plenty of room to set up tents; smaller groups can use the winery’s bottling areas and tasting room.
The Souths built their winery with sustainability in mind.
Family and friends got together on a very hot July day in 2006 to stack and stucco hay bales that are the super-insulated walls of the tasting room and gift shop. Countertops are black slate chalkboard, once used in an area high school. The white-pine floors are from a tree that was felled by a storm in northern Minnesota.
www.strawbalewinery.com
The falls really rocks
For more than a year, SMMC delegates had been marveling at photos of the Falls of the Big Sioux River. Could such a beautiful site really exist on the edge of downtown Sioux Falls, they wondered?
The answer is a resounding yes, they learned, as delegates visited Falls Park on Monday night for a pre-dine-around reception.
Gray skies turned blue, the sun shone, and temperatures warmed for the early-evening event, just before sunset at Falls Park’s Overlook Cafe.
The cafe is in a vintage brick building that was once the quarters of the Light and Power Co. Positioned at the base of the tiered falls, the cafe has become a premier event site. SMMC delegates grabbed their drinks and appetizers and made for its roomy back balconies, possibly Sioux Falls’ most scenic overlook. From the balconies, they could walk up paved paths that run alongside the series of waterfalls that cut through boulders of russet Sioux quartzite, a stone that is seen throughout Sioux Falls’ downtown and that was used to build many of its handsome buildings.
Even in person, the Falls of the Big Sioux is hard to believe, rushing and roiling through the 123-acre city park along a rocky path that almost seems man-made. As she stared at the almost surreal scene, one delegate seemed stunned. “You mean it is real?” she said.
As the sun set, delegates made their way up the hill a few blocks, by motorcoach or on foot, into downtown Sioux Falls for an evening of shopping and dining at local shops and restaurants that stayed open late to welcome the visitors.
www.visitsiouxfalls.com
www.smallmarketmeetingsconference.com
