FALL FESTIVAL IN FROHNA SATURDAY

FROHNA -- Apple butter cooking in 30-gallon copper kettles, soap making, cider pressing, quilting, spinning and other pioneer skills will be featured Saturday during the 18th annual Fall Festival at the Saxon Lutheran Memorial in Frohna.

The event is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Among other arts and crafts to be demonstrated are broom making, wood carving, corn cutting, knitting, nut cracking, cross-cut sawing and picket splitting, explained Verna Thurm, who serves on the Memorial's advisory council.

"The festival honors our forefathers for coming to the New World for religious freedom in 1839," Thurm said. "We are trying to preserve our Lutheran heritage."

The memorial sits on land acquired by one of the immigrant families. Log cabins built by or inhabited by immigrant families are preserved.

A visitors center and museum also provide information about the region's German Lutheran history.

The fall festival raises money for upkeep and expansion of the project. During the past year, a four-room, two-story log cabin was moved to the memorial grounds and will be on display.

Local and regional artists and crafters will demonstrate their skills, and the 1998 Festival Artist will be chosen from exhibitors.

The Country Store will provide traditional items for sale, including canned and baked goods and garden produce.

Plate dinners of German potato salad, cole slaw, porkburgers, bratwurst and sauerkraut, along with coffee cakes and other sweets, will be sold.

Apple butter will be available for sale throughout the day.

A "kinderchor," a choir of school children from Concordia/Trinity Lutheran School in Frohna will sing a medley of German folk songs.

Adult members of the church choir will act out the German play "Schnitzel Bank."

In the past, Thurm said, the memorial has never counted those who attended. "This year we will be asking for a donation as people enter the grounds, and we hope to be able to count them this way," she said.

Parking is free.