It has been a very busy Summer at the windmill and quite a while since we’ve been able to provide an update on everything going on! Despite the travel season being slightly down compared to last year, sales have continued to reach new heights at the mill. We’re hopeful that trend sticks through the rest of the year. More improvements have been made to the gift shop and we are in the process of preparing our next import shipment from Denmark.

The windmill participated as a RAGBRAI vendor in July when riders came to Atlantic. From 8am to 11pm, Shaun and Julie managed a booth alongside Kringleman Pastries telling everyone our story and selling dozens of our bike-themed rubber duck.

We also debuted our new capital campaign: Back on the Grind, which readers of our newsletter have expressed much excitement for. We’re still a long way from our fundraising goal, but we’re hopeful we can get there before the end of the year. We’re at least relieved that this important work is being done and that the security of our windmill is assured from some serious threats. In case you missed it, head on over to danishwindmill.org/grind where we will continue to post updates about the project(s) as they develop.

Taking a different turn, our local area paper, Rolling Hills Community News, in which these updates have regularly appeared over the last two years, is on hiatus. In response to this, we are excited to announce for the first time that we are taking it upon ourselves to produce a paper in its place, the Daily Grind. This paper will be published once per month starting in September. You can expect the usual content from us as well as a number of other local columnists that were staples of the original paper. These papers will only be available locally in Elk Horn and Kimballton, but our distant followers will be able to access all issues online soon. We want to thank Steve and Dusty Turner for their work towards keeping the original paper going for as long as they did. We would also like to thank our contributors for sticking with us and Jack and Nancy Krogstad for taking on their delivery roles again for those that need it.

Finally, we have some very exciting news to share. Our virtual tour is finally ready! See and experience the windmill in ways that have never been done before and head over to danishwindmill.org/virtual-tour to check it out. We’re very excited about this new resource and its potential for our organization. We hope you are, too!