It’s been another typical February at the mill, not nearly as many visitors but the same amount of work. We’ve been busy gearing up the gift shop for Spring, preparing new exhibits, and chipping away at the new Education & Preservation Center. Shaun’s been putting in extra time on weekends to try and move things along and MoDA’s interim executive director, Erik Andersen, has also been around to help. We’re still waiting for the electricians to finish the second leg of work, and for a warm day to replace some of the windows.

Behind the scenes, the windmill has finally begun the anticipated work of building a new website. While not much can be said yet, we know this will be a welcome change for our supporters and customers alike. Due to budgeting constraints, the project is being broken up into distinct phases. Our attention will be first focused on building a new public-facing site with our updated content and branding. Once that is published, we will begin working on overhaulling our ecommerce platform. This project will complete the merger of our two websites: danishwindmill.com/.org and increase the ability of our visitors to make full use of the site on mobile platforms.

Separately, the basalt rock for our new millstones has been cut at a quarry in the Netherlands and delivered to Bas Batenburg for shaping and dressing. We’ll be sharing pictures once we have them as the new millstones continue to move along in the production process. We’re excited to hear more and will share once we do.

The windmill’s livestream on YouTube is also, finally, live and has now been public for a record-breaking seven days. You can find the livestream on our YouTube channel: @danishwindmill1848. The camera features the windmill from the Southwest, almost directly opposite METC’s millcam. It is also hooked onto our backup power, so that in the event of storms, provided we have internet, it will remain live. The Museum of Danish America has also published a prairie cam which can be found on their YouTube channel.

The windmill is also partnering with Iowa Western Community College this semester. Two student interns have been tasked with building a software for us to pair with our Welcome Center guestbooks. This software will offer us a better means of converting and maintaining our guestbook data in digital form. Once finished, we will be able to use our guestbook entries to determine visitor patterns including where most of our visitors are coming from and how this might change over the course of the year. Unfortunately, the state of Iowa hasn’t been interested in developing such a tool on behalf of its Welcome Centers, but we’re happy to partner with IWCC to make our own.

In the gift shop, we’ve brought in a few new items including new styles of the ever-popular Gry & Sif felt flowers. Varieties now include roses, hydrangeas, hyacinths, coneflowers, and cosmos. Complete the floral ensemble with some of our new paper decorations from Livingly. We quickly sold out of our Livingly Christmas-themed paper decorations and had to bring in some of their Spring items including single-and-multi-flowered mobiles as well as butterfly mobiles.

Tivoli planning has also begun and we have already spearheaded some new twists for this year, which is not only the windmill’s 50th anniversary, but also the 50th anniversary of the celebration that became Tivoli Fest for good by 1980. We will be hosting a breakfast buffet on Sunday, May 24 at the Hygge Inn and food will be provided by Master Grillers. In conjunction with this, work is underway to revive the Tour de Tivoli bike ride which looped to Prairie Rose and the mermaid. More details to come. The Tivoli Committee is looking for volunteers for this year’s festivities. Look for event details at tivolifest.com.

And speaking of bikes, news was broken that Iowa’s annual RAGBRAI event will be passing from Harlan to Guthrie Center on Day 2 of the event. Specificities of the route including the designated pass-through towns are expected to be announced in April.