This is a production of SDPB.

And might be a small community, but there's so much involvement.

Lots and lots.

It's amazing.

How small a town But how many volunteers we have here?

Everybody just works really hard.

The community is pretty supportive.

So if you need help, they were there to help you.

Join our crew as we meet the people who call Clear Lake home.

I like small towns and Clear Lake has been very good to me.

That's my hometown now.

Greetings from Clear Lake Greetings from Clear Lake Greetings from Humble Pig, Smokery in Clear Lake.

Greeting.

From Clear Lake.

Greetings from Clear Lake Greetings from Clear Lake.

Greetings from Clear Lake.

Greetings from Country Twisters.

Gymnastics.

Greeting from the Crystal Springs Rodeo.

Greetings to the rest of South Dakota.

From the Crystal Springs Rodeo.

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Hello South Dakota.

I'm Tim Davidson and welcome to Dakota Life and greetings from Clear Lake.

As the school year draws to a close, the third grade class and Clear Lake goes on an annual adventure to the museum.

First things first.

What are you doing?

We are at the Museum.

Learning about history in the olden days.

And now?

Are you here to museum in and learn about the history of Clear Lake Clutching their clipboards, these kids, decked out in braces and bonnets, are captivated by museum curators like Sandra Bendt.

Every year, the kids have been to school field trips.

And so we've been taking thes third graders through for years.

And we kind of do divide up and try to tell abou different parts of the museum.

The group we had today, we had 45 kids and we had some teachers, som helpers and our board members.

We have them rotate.

We keep them for like 20 minutes in each sectio and then we rotate them through.

So by the time we've gone through, five rotations, they pretty much know what's what's in here.

How do they like some of the stories we told them?

I was telling the story about the milk wagon, and they like that.

And the military guy tells stories there.

What's your favorite part about museums?

Maybe in the military area, Grenades that are diffused.

Shells for Artillery and a German World War I helmet.

Some of them are more into history than others.

I am into the military, and I like history about the militar And I want to be in the military And the fellow that was in there today, one of the kids asked him if he served with George Washington.

Okay, now let's g stand in front of the store and.

In the olden days, we didn't use electricity a lot.

How do you think you would do no having electricity?

I dont know They listened intently.

I think they're interested in it.

Just can't quite fatho how things were way back then.

It's tough for anyone to imagine life in someone else's shoes, especially in another time even if it's in the same place.

But lessons in history help us bridge the gaps in time and space and between each other.

They like the typewriters.

They really like the typewriters.

And.

I try to tell them it's the same thing they use when they do keyboarding, but they just can't quite get it the have to fling the thing back, you know?

And so they like that, and they like the old telephones.

You.

My favorite things are the pictures.

Photos, typewriters and telephones, all tools that help teleporter stories to far away future audiences or to the person right next door.

But these kids, the stor of how clearly it got its name remains a little murky.

Person who trains by the lak and I dont remember his name.

He saw the lake and it was really clear so he called it Clear Lake.

Of course, the story of this place started long before the railroad landed.

An engineer astutely name the and Clear Lake will continue long after these kids have their chance to make changes to its story.

Museum photos show u how time has changed Main Street and its businesses, each containing countless stories.

Sandra tells us about one of them.

My dad, he had a barber shop underneath the old original building.

When I would come home from school, I would go down to the barbe shop and my dad had two chairs and he was cutting one of the girls hair that was sitting in this first chair, and I was sitting in the other chair and the chairs have a break on it.

So if you release a break, you can turn them around.

So I go down and sit in the chair, twirl around.

Until until I got dizzy.

He barbered until he died.

He loved it because he had his own customers, and they sit around and visit chew the fat.

Businesses like this don't just provide livelihoods, they impact lives.

Businesses like filling stations and general stores eventually turned into coffee shops and tech manufacturing, not to mention farms that harness the power of the sun and wind and turn it into energy.

In this episode, we're going to take a look at several business venture and clearly both from the past and the present.

Our first stop is just down Main Street.

They built this building for the high school program.

They just had like a super tiny room in the high school gym.

They wanted to grow the program.

They wanted their girls to be able to compete and be safe, you know, competing.

So there was a group of parents that came together and fundraised and donated a lot of time to put up this gym.

They probably didn't know years from now, they're be hundreds of little girl coming in and out of these doors that they put up.

I was a state champion in high school gymnastics.

I pole vaulted at NDSU graduated, go married, started coaching again.

Like parents asked me to come here and open a gym.

So I was like, yeah, you know, that'll be good.

Like part time, super small again.

And then Jennifer came in shortly after we opened.

And the program just like grew ten year ago.

And Caitlyn started with, I think seven girls in the beginning.

She started in May and I came in June.

And by the beginning of that first competitive season, we had a great group of girls and it's just grown from there.

We had like very limited equipment and tools like we needed a pit bar.

Or if you're going to have, you know if you are going to have club Gymnasts like a safty aspect.

to learn these skill and right away with fundraising, parents pitched in and we got the pit behind us which was a huge training aid.

Sinc then, it's like we keep adding, you know, little by little I get all the time, like, Kaitlyn where are we going to put that?

You know, they're super blessed to be in this sport with the amount of equipment and, you know, the training facility that they have in this small town.

Yeah, it's a game changer t have a good facility, you know, and to be able to get girls to come from surrounding communities, to want to be part of what's going on here even though we're a small club, we really focus on technique and dedication and being positive role models for the girls and just trying to help them do the best they can.

I think that they take that ou of this gym into the community.

I've been coaching over 40 years, so when I was 13, the loca YMCA hired me as a coach to help pay my own tuition and go to the gym and, the atmosphere here is pretty unique.

Yes.

The way the girls with each other.

There's no jealousy here.

There's not bickering.

The girls really help each other.

The older girls will cheer on the younger girls.

And the younger girls, look up to the older girls.. Like you can just see it through the littles eyes.

You know, when they look up at an older girl and they say, good job, you know?

And it's like they just get like, lifted up, you know?

It's like way more cool to have their older teammates say good job and uplift them.

Then sometimes their coaches or their parents, you know, so we do really try to encourage them to like be good teammate and to have good sportsmanship.

And it's a really small community.

So like we're a smaller gym compared to other South Dakota teams.

But it's nice because you're so close.

So like your teammates and you coaches like actually know you.

It's one close big family.

I don't know what I would do without the gymnastics.

Just such a great business to have here in the community brings so many kids and you know, kids enjoy being here.

You know, they're someplace safe, having fun and learning something.

And then hopefully they take that with them.

Now let's look at another Clearlake venture that's in the business of twists and turns.

You take a highway an then you take a county highway and then a gravel road and then it turns into a trail, and then that trail turns into a duck pond.

That's now America's most natural rodeo bowl.

Right.

That is what EW says, where the pavement ends and the west begins.

its most natural rodeo.

bowl there is nobody else got the hills all the way around.

Like this is.

Back in 1945, when EW Weisel put on the first rodeo, he he was a promoter and he want the best of the best here.

And that's what we strive to keep doing her is having the best of the best.

And that's why we worked so hard to go ahea and keep that tradition alive.

You know, EW was one of the guys who got a lot of things done and.

He worked hard.

He helped a lot of people, and he always was dressed with his hat and white shirt and he was, He was just one of those typical boss guys figur out how to get something done.

And to do.

This rodeo, it means a lot t everybody that's on the board.

And, there's nothing else like it in the world.

When you see the crowds on a Friday, Saturday night, it's unbelievable.

It makes it all worth it.

This is my 39th year in the association, so I'm so the old guy.

And they don't take care of me.

They took care of the ranch for 30 years out here and take care of the cattle here for the.

And then I had my name in that section north.

I just lived three miles straight south of here, and I grew up there and, EWs grandson was in my class in school, and he comes over here for the rodeo.

Use to be the Sunday crowd was solid.

So many people mostly just stood up its all the room they had He claimed we had 10,000 people in here at one time.

And some doubted that.

And he took the pictures and said just start counting them.

here.

It's a pretty packed house up here.

PRCA, contestants, they won't be at this rodeo.

The cowboy from all over the United States.

Canada.

evenHawaii and Australia It's one of the biggest rodeos in the nation, and we have the best stock.

Come on.

Seeing stock come from Canada, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, North Dakota.

And with that, Bulls Cowboys beat on the best stock in the world.

The roughest bull they can get on that is the one they want.

To compete for.

Hefty prize money of, $250,000.

But Mother Nature brought a little extra entertainment this year that made the 2025 rodeo unforgettable.

The extra entertainment was, It was unbelievable.

It was just amazing that nobody got hurt.

We got told that we're gonna have ten minutes or even ten minutes for that led to rain, hail and, tornadoes are all around us.

It just dumped on us until this was it.

Everything tornadoes combined.

So we had to postpone the rodeo until the next day.

The community, law enforcement and fire department, everybody did their job and and, made sure everybody was safe.

And and it was just a blessing.

The tornado dropped right here on top of us.

Saturday night we're expecting 70,000 people.

Everybody was scattered and everybody kept their calm.

And, it turned out that we got really lucky that it landed two miles fro us instead of right on top of us Luckily the worst injury in dual county that day was a broken leg, but it did leave a trail.

Broken hearts in its wake.

Farms like these are built over generations.

Now we follow the floodwaters south of Clear Lake.

to talk history on a farm in the Hidewood.

The hidewood creek comes on a Clear Lake.

And then, as southwest develops into a valley.

Hidewood is a derivative of Hidden Woods.

And I had the state forester, one time and he went through and he said, yeah, it's it's a natural, Burr Oak trees You've, heard of Sica Hollow up there This is the same thing what I have on my property back in the early 1860s, they had the Minnesota uprising where the Indians revolted and they loote and burn their way up this way.

And, the story is Chief Little Crow and forty braves and hid in this draw of mine until things all quieted down.

And him and his two sons, they walked up to Canada and he was out there for, I know, a year or two, he was walking back dow and the settler recognized him and shot him, because there wa a $500 bounty on him, you know, and then the state of Minnesota on his always had his his remains.

And then we had a gu by the name of Alan Woolworth.

He become the head of the Minnesota Historical Society.

And he got the stat to release Little Crows remains And so the he took them down to Flandreau.

And that's where he's buried now Keith Diekman has a clear passion for history.

Yeah, I like history.

And it's it's, he says a lot about it.

And he shares it in several ways, including through his work at the Clear Lake Historical Society, but also through sharing his extensive collection of historical farm equipment.

It's all stuff I grew up with.

And rural life in the Hidewood Valley, which his sister Diane has documented in her book The Farm in the Hidewood.

This has been my home for 76 years now Dad moved here in fall 46.

And then the mom was living next door to the west, they got together and got married in 1948 and my family ended up being a military family because dad was in the army.

My mom was in the Navy.

I enlisted in the Navy, but they didn't want me.

And while Keith stayed home to run the family farm, his siblings Kenny, Kayo, Diane, and Ronald served a combined total of 85 years in the military.

When dad started out, there was no no power at all.

So we milk about ten cows by hand and then we got electricity and then we got a milk machine and we added another 10 cows and we always had stock cows.

It was stock cows and milk cows and crop farming.

Like mom she always went out and fielded cultivating and plowing and then when those kids got old enough, then we started hauling hay by ourselves.

Life was always just a family affair.

Well, I used to enjoy farming, but as time went on, the fun all left and then it was time to go on and do something else.

You know.

These days he spends less time farming and more time caring for county roads.

Every two weeks I blade two townships.

But also sharing his passion for pasque flowers.

I've always been a fan of the like the growing southwest side of it.

You know that.

That's where they first.

come up where the ground has never bee tilled or anything like that, you know?

Each year we give about 500 away, so may people my age grew up with them uses, just something they used to admire.

Producer Gre Beasley takes us from the farm to a table back in town.

Doing good barbecue is no easy feat, but there's a lot of love and passion for the product, as well as the process for Sam and Wade Solem.

Their love of barbecue came from Popular Sioux Falls event.

I think we went to Ribfest in Sioux Falls and just kind of got interested in the whole process.

The barbecue, the smell, you know?

And I went and got this cheap smoker, and that's how we got started.

A lot of research, Like a hobby.

Found he had a really good talent for it.

The Solems would move up to Wades hometown of Clear Lake in 2016, and decided his talent needs to be shown off.

Thus the humble pig smokery was born.

He was born, while the low and slow barbecue process can lead to some long hours as well as a labor of love, and includes Wade waking up during those cold winter mornings.

His earliest 3 a.m. to start the smoking process.

The passion for providing the hard working people the area, how much that keeps the embers burning at the humble pig.

So, you know, we have a community of blue collar workers.

You know, there we got half an hour to ge from where they're coming from to here to out the door to back to work with them, you know, a 30 minute time.

So, you know, it's either burgers, fries, you know, gas station kind of stuff.

And we're like, you know what?

This town does need something a little more high end, I guess, but yet affordable and casual dining as well.

Like we have farmers who come in and we have business people that come in and everyone fits really comfortably.

So comfortably.

The humble big sells out most days.

So the small batch barbecue is big for us.

So we make what we think we can sell on a day like we are the trailblazers in the area.

For that, we're the first one that has like sold out signs.

Clear Lake is known for its hard working people, and at The Humble Pig, there's no exception to that rule, as every member of the Sole family has their role in helping to keep the communit full and happy for the meat man.

And I'm the side chick.

I have all the meat, smoke all the meat, and I do some sides.

and she does some sides Our son just recently developed our logo design on our hoodies and t shirts.

Now we came up with the slogan best Barbecue from Alaska to Nebraska.

And our son, he's 11 right now.

Shout out to Ben.

He took that and ran with it.

And he created the designs o our most current t shirts.

Now.

Barbecue has a certain arom and when that scent hits your nose.

your mouth instantly begins to water.

It's an amazing feeling that the humble pi wants to make sure you can have every day in your own home by doing somethin as simple as washing your hands.

My good friends.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, has a natural skincare line and reached out to her to see i there is something we could do that would be like specific t humble pig is actually done over fairly well.

I didn't know how it was going to go because barbecue, restaurant and skincare.

But it's another unique twist.

Skin care isn't the onl unique twist at the humble pig.

The style barbecue blends together, forming a new style that can appease all barbecue consumers.

Like what she got to offer here barbecue.

And clearly, yeah, yeah, you're not Kansas City.

You're not Texas.

I'm pretty confident that we ca hang up there with those guys.

So it may not be exactly like Texas Barbecue or Kansas City or whatever, but we call it South Dakota barbecue.

Fresh South Dakota style barbecue to go along with freshly made sides plus making, manufacturing and selling your own homemade barbecue sauces.

Like me.

A lot of work.

But for Sam and Wade, it's just a regular day at the Humble Pig.

They love to see people full and happy with a smile on their face.

There's like, really no better reward and it's not even a monetary thing at that point.

It's just you fulfilled some of these need.

But yeah, family getting together, bringing the community together, a communal plac for everybody to come and grab some really good food and hang out for a while.

The humble pig may be a new start up, but other family businesses in Clearlake have been around, while producer Jackson Thorson takes us to one that just celebrated a big milestone.

Yeah, just always liked the outdoors, and when I was a kid, I always had a little garden.

For 70 years, Liz Begalka has been caring for plants and sodak gardens.

Anything like this.

Back in the 1950s, she was a kindergarten teacher in Marylan while Leon worked in the Navy.

And he was in the back seat of a car.

He didn't own a car, and when they pulled up, this is what he told me.

That's the one I want and there I was The one he wanted and he worked on it.

He didnt have to work to hard because he was a good one.

Leon and Liz Laid the seeds for what would become a great servic to the community of Clear Lake.

Oh, I love plants and I love people.

I just love to visit with the people that come and and I love having, you know, the greenhouse.

So I'm always there rearranging or fixing or something.

I hope it's important to the community.

And I think to most people it is because you've taught gardening or you need a plant or whatever.

And SoDak garden comes up.

because we've been here.

Unfortunately, Leon passed away in 2004 at the age of 73.

I had the best husband ever and people won't ever believ this, but we never went to bed angry.

We actually never fought.

We just agreed.

And if we had a probelm w settled before he went to sleep.

I had a wonderful.

Grace.

Today that the family continues to keep Leon and Liz's vision open for business.

Their son, Tim now runs Sodak Gardens.

He's always had a knack for plants.

And I'm her daughter Kathy, standing in for my brother, who is the owner and operator here.

Tim Begalka, who's on vacation this week.

So the greenhouses are here.

There are four big greenhouses, and a lot of, things are done here in the spring mostly.

And then at Christmas time again, we have evergreens and Christmas trees.

And then in here is the, shop where we sell a lot of pesticides and fertilizers, plant care items.

It's the end of the planting season.

We have a lot of bull seeds, s we sell a lot of seeds in bulk.

And we only sell, the seeds that are good for this area.

So the nursery stock is out here, and then we have something very unusual.

And so the gardens and that is we have a root cellar that my father, decided to dig in 1954.

It's down there.

All the trees you see were planted by him and his brother Elroy back in the 50s.

Oh, my.

thats pretty Look at those flowers.

There's dad.

Oh, that's when I was young.

And at 94 years old, Liz has learned a few gardening tips.

Well the first thing you have to do is have to make a commitment.

Because it's work.

But it's fun.

Work and, plant early if you can, and just take care of it.

Keep the weeds ou and enjoy the fresh vegetables.

Do you have a favorite plant?

No, I love them all.

Thank you for watching.

Dakota Life If you've misse any of our stories here today, or just want to go back and take another look, you can visit us at sdpb.org/dakotalife For all of us here at SDPB here in Deuel County, Clear Lake.

Thank you for watching.