In Orange City, Iowa, if you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much

Whether it’s in their blood or they are just Dutch at heart, some 100,000 people flock to northwestern Iowa for the annual Orange City Tulip Festival, a three-day celebration of the area’s Dutch heritage that has been held for over 80 years.

Basin Electric Class C member North West Rural Electric Cooperative is headquartered in Orange City and serves the rural homes, farms, and businesses surrounding the city. While the Tulip Festival doesn’t take place on co-op lines, the impact it has on its members is immeasurable, both financially and in terms of community pride.

Junior and Kim Hoogland are members of North West REC and are co-owners of Woudstra Meat Market, a business that has been a fixture in Orange City since 1926. The store is located on the street where most of the events are held, so it sees tremendous traffic during the festival.

“The Tulip Festival is a way for our community to celebrate our ancestors and how hard they worked to get here,” says Martina Hoogland, Junior and Kim’s daughter and Woudstra’s marketing manager. Many locals and visitors dress in traditional costumes and local children learn Dutch dances in physical education class from first grade through high school.

North West REC Executive Assistant and Human Resources Coordinator Renee Wynia has lived in the community since graduating from college 25 years ago and has volunteered her time during the festival ever since.

“It takes a lot of community volunteers to put on something like this,” Wynia says. Over the years she’s volunteered in many capacities, but for the last several years she has  worked at the Little White Store making and selling poffertjes, a Dutch treat resembling mini pancakes. At the Tulip Festival they are topped with rum butter and powdered sugar and served with a little Dutch flag.

Martina Hoogland says at the parade at the end of the festival, alumni are invited to play with the band – the same song they played when they were in school – and it symbolizes the end of another year’s festivities. “Every time I hear it I get goosebumps on my arms and tears in my eyes,” she says.

Find out where one visitor hails from (hint, it’s halfway around the world), what brought airplanes to the event, and several other stories about how North West REC members and employees are involved in the event in the story, “North West Rural Electric members contribute to the success of annual tulip festival” in the spring/summer issue of Basin Today. You can also see more photos of the festival in a reel on our Facebook page.