Grandy, Minnesota 55029

A small town, a good place to live

 Businesses were started. "Tourists Hotel" was built. There was a hardware store, a dress shop and a blacksmith. Eastern Railroad Line came through town at the turn of the century. There was a church and a school, a drug store and a bank. Grandy had begun. 

 The basis for the growth in those days was Isanti County's sandy soil-- and the crop it nurtured so perfectly--the common potato. "This whole country was built on potatoes," says Eben Dahlman, founder and former owner of Dahlman Manufacturing Company, builders of potato diggers and pickers for the most part of thirty years. "A man could make a good living for his family on 10 to 15 "acres of potatoes."

 "Kids were brought up to pick potatoes in those days," Dahlman  reminisces. His father, Peter, moved his family of five children to a "big" 40 acre farm northeast of Grandy. They hired help (for $1.50 a day) and the children worked. "I thought that was awfully hard work," Dahlman says, "and one day I said to my dad, 'There's got to be an easier way,' and, we built our first potato picker."

 Dahlman began manufacturing potato pickers and diggers at their farm. They were horse-drawn implements at first and eventually became self-propelled. They built 12 machines one year, then 50, then 115, and in 1928, times were good--they built 300, Dahlman recalls. And, they kept on farming and selling _potatoes. "I got married in 1929 and in 1930, we had a good crop. Then in 1931, the disease came. 1 don't know what they called It, but the potato looked just fine on the; outside and inside it was hollow and rusty," Dahlman said.

  "Besides the disease, the Depression hit. I bought some chickens and peddled eggs for six years just to keep-my family alive. Times were tough, but a man keep going if he wanted to."

  Grandy, along with many other would-be cities, declined. Businessmen and farmers went elsewhere. Some, like Dahlman, stuck it our.  "I paid $800 for this shop in 1940," Dahlman said last week while revisiting the first home of Dahlman Manufacturing Co. It Is now a large, mostly empty building, painted yellow and bearing its newest name, Spannar, Inc., on a large sign on the roof. "It was an old potato warehouse, We had a furnace and one of the best chain benders you ever saw," he added. In 1949, Dahlman had 24 men working at the factory. They made his personally designed pickers and diggers, wide chain from metal rods, and self-propelled potato combines and truck beds which Dahlman designed to unload conveniently without bruising potatoes Dahlman takes pride in the fact that his machines were designed efficient, practical use for the farmer. "I could never have built machines like this," he says, "if I not been a farmer first. Some fellows designed equipment on paper--they worked, but mine worked because I knew what the farmer needed Dahlman sold his business, name and all in 1954. Now the company is located in Braham.

 Dahlman lives near Stanchfield now. He remembers vividly when Grandy was "quite a place." "See those trees over there," he says, gesturing to a small hillside 300 yards north of the old yellow factory building. "There used to be creamery there, and I've seen farmers lined up all this way with wagonloads of potatoes to be sold. Grandy had a dozen warehouses and buyers would come up from the cities. This was a busy place." Now there are innovative and creative young people on the west side of the tracks who are attempting make Grandy a "busy place" again. There's the new "Gathering Place" and the Ceramic Coach. Jim Webster's rosemalling artwork and Milt Gauger's tooling company not far away. There's Judd Johnson's Construction company and the antique shop. "Yep," Glenn Johnson said last week, "Grandy's going to grow." Perhaps there might be a spot for a roadside stand for Eben Dahlman again. He grows potatoes in his lovely garden in Stanchfield. "You ought to see my potatoes this year. They're already this big,"  says, forming a fist. "I night sell some."