It’s hard to believe that Tivoli Fest is already behind us, but we hope everyone else had as much fun as we did! What a weekend! We had the mill turning, about 40 vikings camped outside, our usual troupes of folk dancers performed on our stage, and we met a lot of new people this year! We could not believe the crowds and this may have been one of our best festivals in a very long time.

Our staff has since recovered as we prepare for our two busiest months of the year, and we would like to thank some of our volunteers for helping us out during Tivoli. Nicole Butler, Jon Adams, and Sarah McDonald helped sell our craft sodapop outside during the festival which made a tremendous difference with lowering traffic in the gift shop. Lily Bricker was with us both Saturday and Sunday, donning her mom’s Danish dress to give guided tours of the windmill. We’re especially thankful to have Lily with us and look forward to working with her and other EEHK student-volunteers this Summer. Any one interested in volunteering should get in touch with us. We have a number of different opportunities for people to get involved and scheduling is entirely flexible.

We also sold out of Tivoli shirts almost immediately. In order to fulfill outstanding requests, we are working with the Tivoli Fest Committee to get one last order of shirts in until next year. Orders can be placed at danishwindmill.com or by calling us at 712-764-7472. We are accepting orders until June 15 upon which time we will order the remaining sizes needed and send them out. We also want to remind everyone this shirt isn’t a product of the windmill and all proceeds go back to funding Tivoli Fest and the Committee’s select fundraising campaigns.

In other news, work is underway to replace our entertainment building. Justin Nelson of Kimballton poured the concrete for us and we expect to have our new building installed soon. As anyone who has been in our basement knows, we do not have adequate storage onsite, and this new building will help us both provide better outdoor entertainment on our grounds and store equipment and other things that take space away from product for the store.

Finally, we are excited to announce that Møllebygger Petersen of Denmark will be working on our windmill again this Fall. Erik Batenburg and his associate, Roland, will be working on the mill for approximately two weeks in mid-October. Their first tasks will be to adjust the cap frame’s rollers which are riding too tight along the rail, and also to try and address the issues with our new windshaft that was installed in 2018. Once these issues are taken care of, we can go about improving the operation of the mill by adding a brake cable to our catwalk alongside the shutter chains, as the mill originally had in Denmark. We will also be adding a grease hub that will enable us to grease the external points of the fantail without having to climb outside. Finally, if there is enough time, the crew will help us install the new friction wheel for our sack hoist, rendering the mill fully functional in its original capacity. All of this work constitutes the first phase of our new Back on the Grind capital campaign, our final push to restore the windmill’s authenticity, make it safer to operate, and address the emergent issues from previous restoration work.

More information on this campaign including visual aids will be available at danishwindmill.org and we will be mailing out appeals soon to help with the cost. This kind of work is always very expensive and there are few capital fund grants that cover it including none of the ‘historical preservation’ grants currently offered by the state of Iowa. We are doing all that we can to make this work possible, but we need all of the help we can get and any amount helps. Learn more about this campaign and how to donate at danishwindmill.org.

One final note: we have changed our Sunday hours from 12 – 5 to 10 – 4. Please plan accordingly and we look forward to seeing faces new and familiar this Summer.

Learn more about our capital campaign this year here.