JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER Meeting in special session Friday afternoon, Sept. 3, the Freeman City Council voted to advertise for bids for the infrastructure of the Westward View housing development that will be built just off Cedar Street west of the city’s water tower.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER While Menno’s enrollment is up slightly in town, its overall numbers have dropped from what they were at the beginning of last school year largely because of a significant decline in students at Maxwell Colony, according to numbers provided by the business office at Menno Public Schools.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER A significant jump in the number of students attending school in Freeman Public School District 33-1 has Freeman’s overall enrollment as high as it has been in more than a decade. According to preliminary numbers released by the Freeman Public business office early this week, enrollment has climbed from 335 at the start of last year to 374 this year.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER In the same way he was when he played basketball for Freeman High School nearly 50 years ago, Bob Pidde will be in the limelight this Saturday, Aug. 28 when he is formally inducted into the South Dakota High School Basketball Hall of Fame. Pidde is one of 13 men and women who make up the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020; the induction ceremony scheduled for last year was postponed following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

JEREMY WALTNER - PUBLISHER Meeting in regular session Tuesday, Aug. 17, the Freeman City Council unanimously signed off on a Resolution 2021-07, which supports Dakota Protein Solutions and its plans to build a “protein and related products” processing facility one mile east/southeast of Freeman on the location that currently serves as home to Dakota Rendering.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER An hour-and-45-minutes. That’s how much time it took for 450 racks of ribs, 24 brisket, six pork butts and a couple hundred hot dogs to disappear at last year’s Freeman Volunteer Fire Department Firehouse Rib Cook-Off held at the Swimming Pool Park. “That’s a ton of food gone in a short period of time,” said Chad Soulek, founder and chief organizer of the event that will return this Saturday, Aug. 14 for the eighth time in as many years. “That was crazy.”

JEREMY WALTNER - PUBLISHER When students from Freeman Public and Menno return to school for another term next week, it will be business as usual. Classes begin at both districts Wednesday, Aug. 18; while it will be a full day in Menno, Freeman Public will dismiss at 1 p.m. Freeman Academy will begin the 2021-22 school year on Wednesday, Aug. 25.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER Joann Smith and other organizers of the South Dakota Chislic Festival stood in awe as they gazed out the east windows of the Freeman Prairie Arboretum visitor’s center late Saturday morning, July 31. Just beyond them, hundreds upon hundreds of men, women and children of all ages had clogged the festival’s main artery past the food booths and into the beer tent, and turned the grounds of the 40-acre site into one giant ant farm.

JEREMY WALTNER - PUBLISHER Tabitha Schoenwald will be the newest member of the Freeman City Council.

JEREMY WALTNER  - PUBLISHER The city of Freeman won’t fully agree to move forward with a proposed rebuild of Main Street — or decide against it — until the bids come in early next year, but the council made its biggest move yet in favor of the estimated $3.2 million project earlier this month.