After a long day working cattle in Cedar County, veterinarian Ben Schroeder came home one evening to discover his pregnant wife Erin wielding a sledgehammer.

The two had fallen hard for each other a few years earlier during veterinary studies at Kansas State. Erin was a freshman; Ben was a junior. For their first date they played basketball and grabbed a sandwich. Within two weeks, they were engaged. Within six months, they married. The newlyweds studied side by side until Ben graduated and went to work for a local animal hospital. They had their first son, Charlie, and, after Erin graduated, the family moved back to the rolling hills of Northeast Nebraska where Ben had grown up. Erin and Ben went into practice with Ben’s veterinarian father, Dr. John Schroeder, and bought a charming old farmhouse, where they anticipated the birth of their second child.

The farmhouse had a kitchen wall that Erin couldn’t abide a moment longer. It needed to come out that night.

Ben knew that once Erin made up her mind, nothing could stop her – just like when Erin was a 12-year-old girl and asked her parents for a horse.

Her father told her that if she filled two buckets with water and dragged them to the garden every morning at dawn to water and weed for a month without fail, he’d think about it. Erin not only got her horse, but she also earned the money to pay for its hay.

Ben loved his wife’s determination – even if it meant he had to knock out a wall after work.

Making their home a better place became a motif in the Schroeder’s lives in Cedar County. “Home” extended beyond the four walls in which their growing family resided. The Schroeders sought to improve quality of life for their community’s livestock and domestic animals, volunteered their time with their children Charlie and Chase’s schools, and bought and renovated historic real estate in downtown Hartington. More recently, as stars of a reality tv show, Erin and Ben have become de facto ambassadors for Nebraska and rural veterinary medicine.

 

Over the years, emergency calls sometimes interrupted dinner. One evening Erin and Ben, along their now teenage sons, Charlie and Chase, rushed to the Schroeder’s Hartington clinic, Cedar County Veterinary Services, to attend to a newborn deer. It had been hit by a lawn mower and couldn’t move its back legs or stand. Erin and Ben cradled the spotted fawn gently as they examined it. An x-ray revealed no fractures. They couldn’t rule out neurological damage. The fawn quivered its black nose and blinked its soft eyes.

For the next few days, the Schroeders shuttled the fawn between their home, where they could observe it overnight, and back to their clinic. They enlisted Chase to cuddle the deer at night. Ben bottle-fed it and gave it anti-inflammatories. Erin rejoiced one day when the fawn seemed to respond to the water therapy that she’d devised using a stock tank with a pool noodle assist.

Three days on, the fawn’s temperature dropped. Its legs felt cold to the touch, and it had no pain response. It was time to say goodbye. The fawn squeaked as Erin administered a shot to relax it. Ben took over the next part. When it was done, the couple cried and held each other.

These vulnerable moments played out in front of an eight-person film crew that tags along with the Schroeders for about six months of the year taping Heartland Docs. The show just wrapped filming its fourth season for National Geographic Wild, a network owned by The Walt Disney Company and National Geographic Society. Heartland Docs follows the Schroeders working at farms in Cedar County and at their Hartington clinic. It brings the small farming community of Hartington, population 1,500, into tens of millions of households worldwide and showcases the town’s thriving downtown, well-kept homes and natural beauty with poetic sweeping shots.

Heartland Docs doesn’t flinch from the hard choices people make or the copious poop animals make. It also reflects the truth that farmers – even those that raise livestock for meat – care deeply about their animals and suffer when their animals do. Erin and Ben’s tenderheartedness also radiates.

John Schroeder was certain his son would make a good vet because even as a boy Ben demonstrated that sensitivity. One day on a veterinary call with his dad, 10-year-old Ben spotted the family’s border collie Katie dead on the side of the road. Ben leapt from the truck and hurried back to the spot they’d seen her. Cradling her body in his arms, he ran the quarter-mile home sobbing.

Shortly after the deer’s death, Ben bought a fawn statue to memorialize it. “John Deer” stands on a coffee table in the clinic foyer.

Knowing love, knowing loss – it helped Ben support clients navigating difficult times.

 

Four fat grey geese patrolled a Hartington farmyard on a recent morning. Single file, they paced in front of a red barn and honked alarm. Sixty mile-per-hour winds rattled the chains on livestock gates and bent cedar trees sideways. A loose bucket rolled like a tumbleweed. Grey skies spit snow.

Inside the barn, cows lowed as Ben worked with farmer John Steffen on “preg checks.”

They worked in batches, coaxing about a dozen mostly Holstein and some Jersey cows at a time along a walkway into a smaller area, where they closed the gate with Ben inside. He shouldered for space among the 1,500-pound behemoths.

Holding an ultrasound probe, Ben inserted his glove-covered arm into each cow. A visor on his head displayed the images.

The cows muscled for position in the tight space. Pressed by the weight of the animals, Ben held his ground, using the full force of his 6’4” frame. But one cow whipped her backside hard against him, and for an instant, he rocked on his heels. His hands scrambled for the back of another cow to regain his footing.

“You alright there, Ben?” Steffen yelled from the door ledge above the gated area.

Ben grimaced and asserted yes.

Ben had his first dangerous encounter with a cow when he was 8 years old doing rounds with his dad. A cow put her nose down and chased him around the family truck. Ben’s dad scooped him up and tossed him on the battery box out of harm’s way.

Steffen and Ben didn’t talk about what could have happened if the vet’s manure and snow-slicked boots had gone out from underneath him.

Instead, they got back to work.

On a clipboard, Steffen noted the animals’ ear tag numbers and the gestation results Schroeder called out, cow by cow.

“This one’s five, six…whoa girl, easy…This one’s six, close to seven….This one’s open.”

Five or six meant the cows were that many months bred. Open meant not pregnant. It wasn’t what Steffen wanted to hear. Especially on that day.

After 32 years as a dairy farmer, Steffen was getting out. This was Ben’s last time coming to his farm for a preg check.

It was a bittersweet day for the farmer.

“And there’s going to be a lot more days like this one,” Steffen said.

In the distance, a truck rumbled. Tires crunched on the gravel driveway.

“There’s the trailer,” said Ben, without looking up from his work.

A man from another Nebraska dairy operation had come to load Steffen’s cows.

Steffen loaded the ones scheduled to go that day. Hooves thumped and bodies shuffled and clanged against the aluminum sides of the trailer. The truck engine fired, and, just like that, his cows were gone.

The fat grey geese marched and marched and screamed at the wind.

 

Back at the clinic, dressed in scrubs, Erin performed what she jokingly called “brain surgery.” In fact, she was neutering and spaying feral kittens a farmer had brought in that snowy morning. She also removed a tiny tip from each kitten’s ear – a recognized indicator that an animal has been altered. This kind of routine daily work doesn’t make the show. Producers create a 52-minute episode from 150 hours of taping. Having an eight-person filming crew around hasn’t affected how the Schroeders do business. If there was an emergency, the crew had to hustle, too. One benefit of wrapping the season and saying farewell to the film crew was that staff could listen to music in the clinic again. Music messed with editing tape.

Finished with the kittens, Erin tucked them into a warm towel and placed them into a carrier. She paused a moment to stroke their little heads and coo, but she didn’t have time to linger. The white board in the hallway still had unfinished tasks, and she had to leave early to apply stage makeup for her high school kids’ one act rehearsal in Wynot.

Next up, Erin removed a cast from a dog who’d been hit by an ATV. The little white dog shivered on the stainless-steel table as Erin worked. When Erin was done, she put the dog on the floor. It gingerly became a four-legger again.

“Animals amaze me with how adaptable they are,” Erin said. “I stub my toe and complain about it for a week. Three legs, or a leg in a cast – animals are so dang resilient.”

As if on cue, Spaghetti Bob loped into the room. A Department of Transportation worker had brought the kitten in a few weeks back. Its tail was degloved – the fur and skin stripped away – and Erin had to amputate it. Spaghetti Bob – named because he goes limp as a noodle when petted and Bob, because, well, his new tail – had become a clinic kitty and will make his debut television appearance on the fourth season.

Erin has navigated plenty of her own life twists and turns. Like Spaghetti Bob, she landed on her feet. About nine years back, Erin felt weak and cold at the clinic. She lay down on the floor. A client gathered her and rushed her to the doctor. Erin had contracted an infection from the bacteria that causes the respiratory disease strangles in horses. She spent two weeks in the ICU. Her Nebraska community rallied around her. She wasn’t a native daughter, but she was their daughter. With their help and love, she made a full recovery.

Erin grew up on a farm in Upstate New York. When she went to vet school in Kansas, she wasn’t sure where she’d end up.

She credits her Nebraskan father-in-law for her introduction to the community she would serve and call home.

In the early days of her relationship with Ben, Erin bonded with his dad John on calls down gravel roads deep in the country hills.

“I’d joke with him that he couldn’t die because I’d never find my way out,” said Erin. “And he knew everybody. He’d say, this is so-and-so, who is so-and-so’s nephew, who married so-and-so’s daughter, who works at so-and-so…”

John Schroeder retired, but he still liked to ask Erin and Ben about people’s farms and animals. Many times, Erin and Ben had to break the news – like Steffen, those farmers got out. They worked in town now.

 

In downtown hartington, lunchtime diners dug into steak sandwiches and turkey cobb salads at The Globe Chophouse. Owner Kate Lammers walked among the tables greeting guests, helping waitstaff and assisting an ad salesperson from Cedar County News, which operates across the street.

The corner-facing Globe Chophouse sits at East Main Street and North Broadway Avenue. Natural light pours in from oversized windows. Wood floors, black walls, and a silver-painted tin ceiling with enormous metal ceiling fans create a dramatic effect. Upstairs is a second dining area with exposed brick walls and a “Globe Clothing” sign. Rebuilt in 1901 after a fire devastated much of downtown Hartington in 1888, Globe Clothing was once a shopping destination for people in the tri-state area until it closed at the end of 2016.

“Everyone in Hartington has a memory of renting a tux or buying a dress from Globe Clothing,” Lammers said. “Everyone has a story connecting them to this place.”

Erin and Ben Schroeder do too. After Globe Clothing closed, they took over the building and began renovating it. They created a loft apartment for their family in the space above the first two floors and refinished the building’s hardwood floors and tin ceiling. Each morning, they rose early to carry out the plaster they’d chipped off the brick interior.

People noticed. Other new downtown businesses opened, like Uptown Charm, a clothing and décor store, and Leise Tax & Bookkeeping, which later underwent its own ambitious historic renovation. Owners spiffed up established businesses, too. Broadway Lanes refreshed its façade. The gym REPS replaced its windows and door.

Downtown Hartington doesn’t have empty buildings. It has a family-owned pharmacy, a local grocery store and a bank. It has shops and eateries and pedestrian sidewalk traffic. Lammers said the Schroeders helped ignite downtown Hartington’s revival.

“Their tremendous passion showed every entrepreneur the possibilities,” Lammers said.

Lammers bought the Globe building from the Schroeders at the beginning of 2021, put in an extra restroom, a wooden bar and a special occasion booth and opened her restaurant in late spring. She moved into the upstairs apartment with her three children. It’s perfect for their needs, except for those hard-to-reach custom-built kitchen cabinets and counters.

“The previous owners were both at least a foot taller than me,” Lammers laughed.

She hopes that like Globe Clothing before it, her restaurant can not only serve the local community but draw tourists. For that reason, she’s grateful for another business that launched across the street around the same time hers did.

Big Hair Brewhaus resides in the building that once housed Surge Sales & Equipment, a dairy and machinery equipment company. Cousins Brett Wiedenfeld and Reed Trenhaile bought the building from Erin and Ben who’d redone the floors and put in new windows during the year they owned it. Wiedenfeld and Trenhaile knocked out an office and constructed a bar in its place. They installed a brewing room, built a beer garden out back and decorated the interior with historic Hartington items, like the original Surge sign and a scoreboard from Hartington City Auditorium. Trenhaile brews beers with ingredients like a domesticated version of a wild Nebraska hop and local honey.

After the business opened, the widow of the man who ran the Surge business visited. She ordered a gin and tonic and marveled at what the young men had done with the space. The stainless steel, the décor, the drinks and the way they’d kept that “garage” feeling – it would have made her husband so proud.

When other visitors said, “This could have been out of Omaha or Lincoln,” Wiedenfeld’s response was always the same.

“Why couldn’t it have been out of Hartington?”

 

Some places couldn’t have been from anywhere else. That’s why Erin and Ben took on the three-story historic Hotel Hartington just before the beginning of 2018. They’d hoped to restore the 1915 beauty to her former glory. But now, in the freezing dark, staring at a sinkhole the size of a tractor, Ben was having some serious second doubts. He’d been jackhammering to install a new septic line in the basement when he hit a spot so soft that he nearly lost his power tool. Concrete crumbled into an abyss.

Early estimates to fix the sinkhole ran $100,000. In the same month, the Schroeders were told they needed to put in an elevator to make the building ADA compliant. That would run them another $300,000.

“We were just like, ‘what have we done?’ We had so much hope,” Erin said.

She made some calls. If they couldn’t find more affordable options, the hotel would become another grassy lot. The city provided a grant. The Schroeders secured an economic development loan. They got a substantially better bid for the sinkhole repair. They committed more personal funds. They pushed through their despair to find solutions. It was a skill they’d honed as vets, as parents and as athletes. (Erin played Division 1 basketball at Syracuse University; Ben was a competitive intramural player. Both coached the sport.)

Today, the hotel shines. Original wallpaper in the lobby received a cleaning and mending. Look closely enough, and it’s possible to see the tiny fissures where bits were glued back together. These are the grand dame’s smile lines. The cracks in her original tile recall the people she’s welcomed. Glowing wood floors and a regal staircase creak their greetings. Erin designed each of the rooms and gathering areas in the hotel’s four wings and furnished them with a mixture of thrifted and new items.

The National Geographic film crew stays here when they are shooting. On a recent weekend, a bridal party booked one of the wings. The pandemic forced some changes. The Schroeders closed their onsite restaurant – now it’s the site of Chasin’ Charlie’s General Store – and the lobby coffee shop. Erin and Ben offered Elsie Driver, the coffee-loving teenager who’d worked as their barista, their Italian espresso machine in exchange for help cleaning rooms. The home-schooled girl accepted the offer. With the machine, she rented a spot at a boutique a couple doors down and opened Elsie’s Sassy Brew. She was 16 years old. A year into her venture, customers line up at 7 a.m. for Elsie’s lattes, cappuccinos and Italian sodas to-go.

 

Recently, the newest Hartington business launched across the street from the hotel by another photogenic couple. Racheal and Travis Folkers bought their building from Erin and Ben in 2021. Travis needed space for his painting business. The building had a basement and a garage that fit the bill, but there was more space to work with. The Folkers created a community gathering place. There is a spacious wifi lounge for people to hang out, play board games or get some work done. Admission is a rotating free-will donation that goes toward local organizations, like a women’s shelter or a food bank. The Folkers constructed for-rent office spaces and study cubbies and are putting the final touches on an Airbnb rental upstairs. Like Erin, Racheal is the one in her relationship with the artistic vision.

“I just say what I want, and Travis makes it happen,” she said.

Together, the Folkers took the plaster off the wall brick-by-brick.

It seems it’s just the way Hartington’s young entrepreneurs operate.

 

Erin crossed her last task off the clinic whiteboard. Ben would be leaving shortly to work on one of the couple’s latest renovation projects, a big red barn. Erin was heading to Wynot Public School to help with stage makeup for the high school’s one-act rehearsal of “The Jungle Book.”

Before Erin and Ben split ways to conquer their own undertakings, they took time for a proper kiss goodbye. After renovating 10 buildings in Cedar County, serving farmers and pet owners for nearly two decades, championing other local entrepreneurs, taping a beloved show, and raising two well-adjusted kids, their marriage was still a top priority.

Erin grabbed her makeup bag and jumped in her truck. Being on television hadn’t changed how people in their community interacted with her. She was just another mom running slightly behind schedule.

Inside the gym, teenagers shouted, laughed and ran around. Wynot has one building for all its grades. The elementary scent of crayons mixed with the tang of teenage sweat. Forty-five of the 60 high schoolers at Wynot were involved in the production. And it sounded like it.

“I don’t have my leggings!”

“I forgot my t-shirt!”

“Who’s going to do my makeup?”

Erin started with her oldest son, 18-year-old Charlie, who was playing the bear Baloo. She put a hairnet on his head and traced black lipstick around his nose. What was the role’s biggest challenge for him?

“Mom has always told me to stand up straight, but Baloo slumps,” Charlie said.

After the bear was finished, Erin worked on her first of 10 monkeys, her 16-year-old son Chase. His favorite part about taping the show was meeting crew members from across the country. As the baby born into that first farmhouse renovation project, Chase joked that it’s totally normal for him to have a sink in his bedroom or a stove sitting outside his door. He’s not surprised if his parents ask him and his brother to help move furniture at 10 p.m. This is what they do to relax. He said he’ll probably be the same way someday.

Erin used the steadiness of her surgeon’s hands to whip through her barrel of monkeys just in the nick of time. The drama coach called the kids to the stage. Erin sat in the front row to watch.

When the house lights went down and the stage lights went up, her sons helped their classmates tell a beautiful story.

It was a story about belonging to a community and contributing your unique gifts to it.