Journey back with us to a simpler time...

Inside the Historic Preserve Barn Event Room

Franlo Farm

Saturday December 7, 2-4 we'll be gathering in an old hay barn now called the Preserve Barn.  The barn is going to be such a great venue as the book "The Last Dance" we're launching feature family farms in the story.

The Preserve area was originally homesteaded by William Nesbitt in 1891.  Like most of the land in Eden Prairie, the prairie is transformed into farmland.  The Nesbitt family farmed it for three generations.  Ironically the first Pine Crescent novel "Timber; Fire in the Pines" begins about this same time about 2 hours north near the Hinckley area.

The male protagonist Thor Nilsson logged the magnificent white pine timber until The Great Hinckley Fire in 1894.  Four hundred square miles were decimated.  Eventually the fictional Nilsson family begins to farm the charred landscape.

"The Last Dance" story picks up 75 years later and the Nilsson family still farms the land.  But the land proves that the soil its better suited to growing pine trees than crops.  The family begins to sell real estate and develop some of their land into a lodge resort.

We hope you will join us to journey back to a simpler time in "The Last Dance" and to this historic old barn this weekend!