Ruth and I attended a birthday party for 4-H last night in
Wisconsin Dells (We each were 4-H members for 10 years). More than 500 people from around the state
gathered to celebrate 100 years of Wisconsin 4-H. The festivities also involved inducting 98
people into the newly created 4-H Hall of Fame—volunteer 4-H leaders, county
and state-based 4-H professionals, business people who support 4-H, and early
founders of the organization.
Four-H, is an out-of-school educational program and part of
University of Wisconsin-Extension, which is in every county in the state. Four-H has enrolled thousands of rural and
urban kids over these 100 years.
We organized a 4-H club in my home community in 1945, only a
few months after the end of World War II.
We named it Chain O’ Lake, after the name of our one-room country
school. All of the members of our new
club were also students at the school.
I enrolled in the dairy and forestry projects. In the forestry project, I received 50 little
pine seedlings, which I grew out in a nursery I constructed back of our chicken
house. Two years later, I set the trees
out along the edge of our oak woodlot.
Today, I often drive by to see how these trees are doing. They are now nearly 70 years old, standing
straight and growing taller every year.
It was the 4-H forestry project that helped develop my life-long
interest in the environment—and my love for trees. Today, these many years later, I run a tree
farm, and continue to plant trees every year, sometimes only a dozen or so,
some years several thousand.
THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Happy Birthday Wisconsin 4-H
December
3, 7:00 p.m. Live on Milwaukee Public
TV. A Farm Winter.
December
7, 1:00-2:15 and 2:30-3:15 Kalahari Resort, Wisconsin Dells (Two sessions) Wis
Farm Bureau Meeting. Writing From Your Life for Children and Grandchildren.
December
8, 8:00 p. m. Live on Twin Cities Public
TV. A Farm Winter.
December
13, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Barnes and
Noble, La Crosse. Book Signing.
January
28, 2015 7:00 p.m. Stoughton Opera House.
A Farm Winter.
Purchase
Jerry’s DVDS and his Books from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose,
Wisconsin (a fund raiser for them): Patterson
Memorial Library
The
library now has available both of Jerry’s DVDs, Emmy Winner, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps and Jerry Apps A Farm Story.
Also
available are several of Jerry’s book including The Quiet Season (on which the DVD A Farm Winter is based), as well as Rural Wit and Wisdom and Old
Farm, (which are related to the DVD Jerry
Apps a Farm Story). Also available is Jerry’s new novel, The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County.
Contact
the library for prices and special package deals.
Patterson
Memorial Library
50
Division St.
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