In this week’s update: Millfest is Saturday, Pavilion repairs move outside, school group visits, and more!
In our weekly update, keep up to date on what staff and volunteers at the Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum are working on to lift up the history of Lindsborg and the surrounding region. This weekly update both looks back at what happened last week and looks ahead at what’s coming.
For April 21 – 27, 2025:
- Millfest 2025 is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. THIS Saturday on May 3! We look forward to welcoming everyone here for the biggest and most exciting museum event on the calendar!
See the Old Mill IN ACTION with a guided tour, enjoy the art and crafts fair, listen to live music, select a delicious meal, and much more!
NEW attractions this year: artistic face painting from “Just Face It” in the afternoon, an antique tractor show from the local International Harvester Club, and a performance by Randy Baldwin Band.
See the full day’s activities and attractions in the program below.
Staff members progressed on worked on many points of important preparations for Millfest and Millfest for Kids, including:
Adam printed tour safety and information sheets, printed more Old Mill history “Yellow Books,” brought in clipboards for the Silent Auction fundraiser, and picked up completed Millfest programs. Aubrey and Lenora finalized and sent out the Millfest for Kids schedule (on May 2). Aubrey also worked on emailing volunteers, cleaning the Academy Building, and arranging needs for volunteer lunches.
- Perfect Blend Construction to completed the physical structural repairs in the rafter areas of the 1904 World’s Fair Swedish Pavilion and have now moved to the repairs outside on the north face of the building!
This week, we’re featuring a gallery of new pictures showing this extensive work now happening on the “backside” of the Pavilion.
The work is estimated to be completed by early summer; and when completed, this will allow us to safely reopen the Pavilion to the public! Thanks to everyone who donated to help us reach the $151,500 needed for these critical repairs! Tax credits are still available for the 2025 tax year, with proceeds going to help with a new planned Pavilion roof! Learn more at www.oldmillmuseum.org/save-the-pavilion.
- We were pleased to have two school groups come to tour last week: a homeschool group on Thursday and a large group of nearly 60 from Plainview Christian School on Friday! Thank you for coming!
- Last week we welcomed the creators of the new “See Taste Do” series from KPTS public television out of Wichita. Each episode features one thing to “see,” to “taste” and to “do” in a community. The museum is slated to be the featured “See” attraction on the Tuesday, May 13 episode about Lindsborg, along with Indigo Moo’d ice cream (“taste”) and Hemslöjd quadcycle rides (“do”). We hope you take some time to see Lindsborg being featured in such a prominent way!
Also, check out last week’s Lindsborg News-Record for a front-page story about the Swedish Pavilion Restoration. - Two upcoming genealogy workshop events are coming soon and are now open for registration! (Please note that we are now using a new process with the Eventbrite platform for registration and payment.)
Sue Schlichting with Pursuing YOUR Past will present “Inspiring the Next Generation of Genealogists” on Saturday, May 31. It is free for museum members or just $10 for non-members. Register and pay for the presentation at the link HERE.
Then on Saturday, June 7, we’ll have our next virtual Swedish Genealogy Workshop with four great sessions, including the return of Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective. The cost is $50, or $30 for museum members. Register and pay at the link HERE.
- We have an opportunity to help the museum while picking up a great computer tablet for yourself! THREE of these have already been sold; get one of the TWO remaining before they sell out! (We are going to put any of them remaining in the Silent Auction for Millfest this weekend.)
We used grant funds to purchase five Lenovo P11 (2nd gen) tablets to implement our first augmented reality tour of the 1898 Smoky Valley Roller Mills, only to discover that Lenovo sells slightly different builds of the tablet under the exact same model name. Unfortunately, that slight difference – most likely in the GPS location services – means it won’t work with the Wintor augmented reality app we’re using for the tour, and Amazon is not accepting a return of the tablets.
This means a great opportunity for you! You can purchase one of these never-used tablets (specifications here) with charging cord and AC adapter, plus a heavy duty protective case (with hand strap, shoulder strap, and kickstand) for $265, which just represents the cost we paid for each tablet and case. This will help us to recover the grant funds and purchase different tablets that will work with the tour app.
Contact us at oldmillmuseum@gmail.com to make arrangements for your purchase!
- Adam submitted our application to be part of Sunflower Summer 2025 in July.
- Lenora met for coffee at Sunflower Terrace to gather local oral history.
- Aubrey, Adam, and Lenora worked on edits to the concept design for the new back gallery display in the main museum building.
- Aubrey worked on the mini exhibit about Pleistocene fossils that will be opening soon.
- Aubrey and Adam began on planning a “grant re-opening” event of the Swedish Pavilion to coincide with Svensk Hyllningsfest in October.
- Adam made a few minor updates to the press area of the website.
- Adam sent member renewal letters for May 2025.
- Adam processed a donation that was split between renewing business membership and a Millfest sponsorship.
- Adam updated Homestead National Park in Nebraska about how their help and information resulted in an accurate restored windmill restoration.
- Adam represented the museum for the 2025-2026 Arts Commission General Operating Support grant online questions panel last Wednesday.
- Tyler and Lenora continued working on the Svensk Hyllningsfest photo project. Last week was about organization, assigning ID numbers, adding metadata to images, and uploading them to Flickr.
- Lenora started processed a batch of photos dropped off at the museum last week.
- Lenora continued to work on Swedish research for a visitor from Oregon.
- Lenora and Tyler worked on the Svensk Hyllningsfest scanning project and on assembling a bibliography of books and papers written about Lindsborg or by Lindsborg authors.
- Adam made several updates to the website to make its information more current.
- Lenora has continued working on an indexing project under contract with ArkivDigital (10 hours)
- Need a great gift for the genealogist or history enthusiast in your life? NEW in the museum gift shop, you can now purchase a gift certificate good for a free registration to one of the museum’s Online Swedish Genealogy Workshops anytime in 2025 ($50) or a 2025 Pursuing YOUR Past presentation ($10). Your gift recipient will receive a one-time-use code by email or mail good to pay for the registration fee for one of these popular sessions!
Thank you to our museum volunteers!
Last week, this included Dakota Johnson, Jerry Hammerton, Mike Koch, Karmon Almquist, Leland Nelson, Lydia Escalante, and Julie Ann Neywick!