Prairie Village News 4/30/2013

By Stan Rauch, Manager

We are about to be off and running with the 2013 season at Prairie Village and we anticipate that it will be another exceptionally good one.

This Sunday is opening day at the village. Our operating hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. The lingering winter resulted in a late start for camping throughout the area, but the season is now upon us and we look forward to hosting campers.

Next Monday morning we start our school tours with 116 students plus accompanying adults. During the month of May we will have a large number of eager elementary school students with us to learn about and obtain an appreciation for how eastern South Dakota rural residents lived many years ago. They will also have fun riding the train and carousel. School tours time is always fun for us as well as for the students. Seeing all the enthusiasm in the kids is a great way to kick off our season. We have been conducting the school tours program since 1968 and it’s alway nice to hear from adults that tell us that they were at the village as part of a school tour when they were in elementary school.

Our May 4 Consignment Auction has been rescheduled for May 18 due to weather related factors. We have a number of nice items already consigned such as tractors, farm equipment and vehicles and we will continue consigning items up until 9:00 a.m.the day of the auction although we prefer that all items be at the village by the evening prior to the sale. A complete list of consigned items can be seen on the Prairie Village website at prairievillage.org/auction and we update the list daily as items are consigned. The auction is a great opportunity to be a buyer or a seller. Last year we had a record high 354 bid card holders at the event which is an important fund raiser, the proceeds from which go to the preservation of the historic buildings.

The 2013 Prairie Historical Society board of directors includes George Lee, president (Madison), Tim Ramstad, vice president (Colton), Laura Palmer, secretary (Madison), Kelli Wollmann, treasurer, (Madison), Mark Bakker (Sioux Falls), Jeff Hansen (Lake Wilson, MN), Mickie Kreidler (Madison), Kent Petersen (Madison) and Jim Wallace (Clark). This season’s gift shop employees are Tracy Kierzek, Somer Kierzek and Paige Gaikowski. Maintenance is headed up by Bill Lutter with Cade Weeldreyer as assistant. Finance officer Ann Orman and myself as manager are the village’s two year-round employees.

We all look forward to making the upcoming season at the village be an exceptionally fine one.