Steak is back!

The  Hartland Fire Department's Steak and Sweet Corn Feed on Saturday, Sept. 19 over the dinner hour gave area residents a chance to enjoy delicious food and also see the city’s new base of operations, the recently completed community center.  According to Brandon Flatness, “For the first hour and half I stood outside holding the door open because the line never went down.” The event was free of charge with free-will donations accepted.

 

Everything in the Community Center kitchen, the stove, the sinks, the mats on the floors, were brand new and in use for the first time. Many of the guests were also entering the building for the first time and the compliments flowed freely: “It’s so beautiful in here,” or “I like what they’ve done with the place.” Karen Flatness, Hartland City Clerk, was the first of the city personnel to move her office into the new community center. She kept a tally of all the heads through the door and revealed, “Right now we’re at 330, but we still have a half hour left; we very well could see 350 people show up today.”   The Star Eagle entered through the back door and had to walk through a wall of smoke from the grills set out there. Firemen armed with tongs and spatulas were watching steaks with eagle eyes as runners made their way inside carrying containers filled with cooked meat. 

 

Hartland firefighter Eric Grunzke said, “We went up to New Richland this morning to help, that was around 7:20 a.m., ran a lot of hose and moved sump pumps. Some of the guys were blocking and rerouting traffic.” Brandon Flatness added, “I believe Waldorf was there helping also. All the Hartland firemen were back in town to start working on the steak feed by 2 p.m.” Councilman Kyle Reed was at the dinner with his wife Jodie. He observed, “Five years ago we never had this many people show up; back then we were lucky to get 200 in the door. We were really blessed with the weather the way it’s been, we could’ve been hit a lot worse, too bad for New Richland. For weeks leading up to today people were talking about coming here. The steak feed was really missed! I know I missed it.”