The map.

Prairie Co-op Feed & Grain

Ruth Solberg manages it. Her mother Evelyn managed it before her.

Corner of Main and Third since 1947. Cinder block, corrugated roof, and a hand-painted sign nobody has repainted since Reagan. Seed, feed, chemical, and the coffee counter where the county decides what it thinks.

The Grain Elevator Tap

Katie Lindgren is behind the bar. Craig Anderson owns it.

127 Main Street. Built in the twenties as the grain elevator office and converted in 1985. Eighty-five people at capacity. The farmers hold court in the back booth.

VFW Post 4478

Rick Anderson calls the meetings. Thursday nights.

Across Main Street from the Tap. Wood paneling, folding chairs, coffee burned well past drinkable, and ceramic mugs nobody has replaced since the Carter administration. There is a memorial wall.

Anderson’s Fuel Station

Rick and Joe Anderson, brothers, since 2006.

Corner of Main Street and Highway 52. Tan brick, dark green trim, four pumps and one service bay, kept to a standard that tells you one of the owners was a Marine. Coffee group most mornings, seven to eight thirty.

First Fillmore Bank

Dave Coleman is the regional agricultural lending manager.

Brick face, flag above the door. Every operating loan, land contract, and crop insurance review in four counties crosses that desk. In a farm town that makes the bank a social institution as much as a financial one.

Carlson Insurance Agency

Bob Carlson downstairs. Jen Carlson lives upstairs.

Main Street, with the old “Prairie Insurance” still painted in gold on the window. Two bedrooms above it with a separate entrance, which is where Elena parks when she needs wine and honesty in the same hour.

Hansen’s Hardware & Lumber

Eric Hansen, third generation.

Tools, hardware, lumber, paint, and farm supply. Open seven days, which in a town this size is close to a public service.

Main Street Cafe

Linda Morrison. No relation to Jake.

Formica tables and a bulletin board. Open at five thirty on weekdays, because that is when farmers eat.

Countryside Cuts

Diane.

Main Street salon. Diane cuts hair and hears everything, which makes her one of the better-informed people in Fillmore County.

Red Owl

The grocery.

Everything a household needs, and nothing it doesn’t.

Millfield Books & Supply Book Two

Donna Larson has run it since 2001. The shop dates to 1978.

214 Mill Street. Donna keeps the Millfield stories on the front table, which is where she puts anything she intends to argue you into. There is a chair at the back, and a sign over it that reads “Life is hard. Read a book.”

First Lutheran Church

Pastor Karen Lindquist, about fifteen years now.

Service at nine on Sunday, Bible study Wednesday evening. Tom and Elena were married here. Matthew was confirmed here. Tom’s funeral was here.

Hartwell Farm

Elena Hartwell owns it. Three generations of Hartwells before her.

Two hundred and eighty acres off County Road 8, established in the twenties. Two hundred and forty acres in a corn and soybean rotation, twenty-five of pasture standing empty since 2009, a ten-acre farmstead and a five-acre woodlot. A quarter mile of gravel from the county road to the house.

The oak

Nobody. It was here first.

A bur oak two hundred years old, thirty yards south of the barn. It is dying from the inside, and has been since the storm in 2009. There is a flat stone set between the roots at its base with initials and two dates chiseled into it by hand, rather than by a monument company with a laser.

Johnson Farm

Jim and Carol Johnson.

Three hundred and twenty acres a mile and a half east on County Road 12, grain and forty to fifty head of cattle. Jim’s integrated operation is the living argument for the system Tom Hartwell was trying to keep: his fertilizer bill is a fraction of Elena’s because the cattle make the difference.

Swenson Place

For sale. It has been for sale a long time.

An abandoned farmstead on County Road 12, east of the Hartwell driveway, with a For Sale sign at the end of it that has been there a long time.

Williams Place

Debt free, which everyone knows.

North of Highway 52. In a county where the bank knows everybody’s business, being debt free is a kind of local fame.

Millfield Town Park

The town.

Two acres on Third Street. Playground, pavilion, horseshoe pits, and a farmers’ market on Saturday mornings. There is a gazebo at the south end, past the last row of booths, too far from the midway to be useful during Community Days — which is exactly why it is worth knowing about.

Millfield Pioneer Cemetery

The Lutheran congregation, mostly.

On County Road 12, east of town past the co-op’s satellite bins. Established in 1878 with the town itself. Also called the Lutheran cemetery by everyone who lives here.

The Historic Schoolhouse

The historical society.

School Road, a mile east of the current school. Built in 1892, in use until 1952. One room and a cloakroom, original floors, a pot-bellied stove, and a bell that still works.

Millfield Grange Hall

The Grange.

County Road 15, three miles west. Built in 1925 and still doing what it was built for: meetings, suppers, and agricultural education nobody calls that.

Miller’s Pond

A county park, kept up by volunteers.

Two and a half miles southwest, on the site of a grist mill that ran from the 1880s to the 1920s. Spring fed, three acres, fifteen feet deep in the middle. Stone foundations, an old dam, a wooden dock, and two weathered tables.

Sunrise Point

Nobody, officially.

Five miles northeast and about two hundred feet above everything around it, which in this country makes it a mountain. Gravel road, flat rock outcropping, an old oak, and a long local tradition of proposals happening up there.

The abandoned railroad bridge

The railroad, once.

Two miles south, crossing Miller Creek. A hundred and fifty feet of steel trestle, fifteen feet above deep pools. The line was pulled up in the eighties. Teenagers have been finding their way down there ever since.

Rochester

Forty-five miles north.

Where you go for parts you cannot get locally, for the hospital, and for anything that needs a city.

Chatfield, Harmony, and the Root River

Real places, on the real map.

Millfield is invented. The country around it is not — the bluffs, the river, and the towns along Highway 52 are where they have always been.