Sunday, June 26, 2011

Dairy Breakfast

If you’ve been wondering how dairy farming—farming in general—has changed the last few decades, attend a dairy breakfast. Ruth and I traveled to the Pionke farm in western Waushara County to see some of these changes while we enjoyed flapjacks, ham, potatoes—a down home country breakfast served in a huge machine shed with live polka music playing in the background.

The Pionke farm, in the family since 1903, is currently owned and managed by Martin, Duane and Cheryl Pionke. When I was a kid, we would have called this a diversified farm because they not only milk cows, about 120 of them, and raise replacement young stock, another 120 head, they also grow cash crops besides feed for their cattle—125 acres of sweet corn, 95 acres of canning peas, 55 acres of snap beans, 40 acres of wheat, 25 acres of soybeans, 200 acres of alfalfa and 340 acres of field corn. Their farm is about 1,000 acres.

Now the comparison. Back in the early 1950s, on our home farm, which was 160 acres, we milked about 15 cows, fed 20 to 30 hogs, raised 30 acres of alfalfa, an acre of snap beans, an acre of cucumbers, and 20-30 acres of corn.

Although the numbers are dramatically different; yesterday’s and today’s farmers had the same purpose: Providing food for a hungry world.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Keep things simple. They’ll get complicated enough, soon enough, without you intending that they should.

UPCOMING EVENTS:
June 28, 5-7 p.m. Fitger’s Bookstore, Duluth, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

June 29, 2-4 p.m. Cherry St. Books, Alexandria, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

July 6, 6:00 p.m. Chilton Library, Chilton, WI Campfires and Loon Calls

July 10, 11-2:00 Pickle Station, Saxeville, WI. Booksigning.

July 26, Noon, Wis Historical Society Museum, on the Square, Madison, WI. Ringling Bros. Circus.

July 31-August 6, Writing Workshop, The Clearing, Door County.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Garden Report

It’s time for a garden report. As all gardeners in Wisconsin know, we started the season with cold and wet and never ending winter-like weather. I usually plant onions, radishes, lettuce, beets, cabbage and especially potatoes by mid-April. As most people remember, we had a major snow storm on April 20 with more than six inches burying my already too wet to work garden.

On May 8th, I finally planted the early vegetables. The last week in May, I planted the late season crops. Two days after I set out my tomato plants, planted green beans, cucumbers, squash, sweet corn and pumpkins—we had a freeze. Cold enough so the grassy areas around the cabin were covered with white frost. But for some unknown reason my little tomato plants survived.

This past week—way late—I replanted green beans, cucumbers, sunflowers, even some lettuce—vegetables that simply didn’t come up or came up with missing areas.
But I have good news. So far, this is one of my best potato seasons. Almost every plant came up and they are already knee high and almost too bushy to rototill. Late planting seemed to make no difference. The tomatoes that miraculously escaped the late May frost are doing quite well, too. I started them from seed and when we set them out the plants were a sorry looking lot, bent stems, scraggly, off color. I set out 45 plants—44 are alive, a few of the early ones are already in blossom.

We have enjoyed radishes for a couple of weeks, the leaf lettuce is ready to cut and the onions are well ahead of most seasons. If the warm weather continues and especially the timely rains, the sweet corn will easily make knee high by the Fourth of July—the standard for all mid-Wisconsin farmers.

One reason I continue gardening—we planted our first garden at our farm in 1967—is the yearly surprises. I never know which vegetables will do well and which will not. I’ve essentially gardened the same way every year, yet the outcomes are always different. May it always be so.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: You can bury a lot of troubles digging in your garden.

CHECK THIS OUT: Central Wisconsin book launch for Campfires and Loon Calls. Fundraiser for Patterson Memorial Library, Wild Rose, Wisconsin, June 24, 6:30 p.m.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

June 28, 5-7 p.m. Fitger’s Bookstore, Duluth, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

June 29, 2-4 p.m. Cherry St. Books, Alexandria, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

July 6, 6:00 p.m. Chilton Library, Chilton, WI Campfires and Loon Calls

July 10, 11-2:00 Pickle Station, Saxeville, WI. Booksigning.

July 26, Noon, Wis Historical Society Museum, on the Square, Madison, WI. Ringling Bros. Circus.

July 31-August 6, Writing Workshop, The Clearing, Door County.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Congratulations , Josh

Josh Horman, my oldest grandson, graduated from high school this weekend and is headed off to college in the fall. It’s been fun to watch him grow up, to attend his basketball games from the time he was a little shaver until he was part of his varsity H.S. team, to see him for the first time in football pads that made him look like a little triangle, and then, a few years later, watch him run back a kickoff for a touchdown on his varsity H.S. team.

Josh also helped with our garden at the farm. From the time when he was but a little kid, he helped plant the pumpkins and then harvest them in the fall, picking out the biggest one for his own special jack-o-lantern.

But what I remember most about Josh is how he would listen to my many tales about our farm, and then I would hear him repeat them to his little Colorado cousins, with considerable embellishment—sometimes well beyond embellishment. Such as a story about how the Indians did battle with the pioneers in the back fields of our farm in the early days, and how monsters were likely to live where the terminal moraine and the biological tension zone intersected at our farm.

Congratulations, Josh. Keep the stories coming.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Hard to beat a good story, doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.

CHECK THIS OUT: Central Wisconsin launch and fundraiser for Patterson Memorial Library, Wild Rose, Wisconsin, June 24, 6:30 p.m. Campfires and Loon Calls.

UPCOMING EVENTS:
June 24, 6:30 p.m. Patterson Memorial Library, Wild Rose, WI. Fundraiser featuring Campfires and Loon calls.

June 28, 5-7 p.m. Fitger’s Bookstore, Duluth, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

June 29, 2-4 p.m. Cherry St. Books, Alexandria, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

July 6, 6:00 p.m. Chilton Library, Chilton, WI Campfires and Loon Calls

July 10, 11-2:00 Pickle Station, Saxeville, WI. Book signing.

July 26, Noon, Wis Historical Society Museum, on the Square, Madison, WI. Ringling Bros. Circus.

July 31-August 6, Writing Workshop, The Clearing, Door County.

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Garden Planted

Last weekend we finished planting the garden. We set out the last of the home-grown tomato plants, broccoli, and cabbage. Planted more sweet corn, put in the squash and pumpkin seeds, planted the green beans and sowed more lettuce. Planted several hills of zucchini.

The garden is larger this year as three families are sharing--my son Steve’s and daughter Sue’s families plus Ruth and me. So we have 17 rows of potatoes—everyone likes homegrown potatoes. Forty tomato plants—who can resist homemade tomato soup, tomato juice and salsa. Long rows of green beans for eating fresh and freezing, and several rows of sweet corn. A few heads of cabbage—I’m the coleslaw lover in the family. Plenty of zucchini, too.

Each garden year is a challenge and a mystery. Some vegetables will do well, others less so. But after all the years that we’ve grown a garden at Roshara (since 1966) we’ve always managed to have plenty of fresh vegetables—and enjoyed many of them throughout the winter as well.

I’ve decided that gardening is one part skill, one part patience and one part hope. May it always be so.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Gardening is one way to be close to the earth, in more ways than you could imagine.

COMING EVENTS:

June 7, 7:00 p.m. Galesville Library. Horses and Barns.

June 24, 6:30 p.m. Patterson Memorial Library, Wild Rose, WI. Fundraiser featuring Campfires and Loon calls.

June 28, 5-7 p.m. Fitger’s Bookstore, Duluth, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

June 29, 2-4 p.m. Cherry St. Books, Alexandria, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.