Ponds on The Rise

Some ten thousand years ago, when the glacier retreated, it left behind huge chunks of ice that were buried by soil. As the land warmed, the buried ice chunks melted leaving behind a pond. We have two of these small ponds on our farm.

People in the know call these ponds “water-table ponds,” which means they mark the level of the aquifer. As an aside, our farm is located on the terminal moraine, meaning where the glacier ended. We are also on a water divide. The rivers and streams a couple miles west of us flow to the Wisconsin River, then to the Mississippi and onto the Gulf of Mexico. The waters making up the aquifer under our farm flow east, eventually to Lake Winnebago, the Fox River and ultimately to the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1966, when we bought our farm, our ponds had nearly dried up. But to our surprise, waters in the ponds rose a little more each year until they filled the valleys where they are located by the mid-1980s. But then starting in the early 1990s, they retreated again until each of the ponds was scarcely an acre in size.

This past year, with ample rains, sometimes more than ample (we received 15 inches in ten days in August) the ponds once more rose, nearly to the high water mark they had reached in the late 1980s.

In the above photo, my grandson, Josh home for the Holidays is working on the ice, cutting trees and brush that the pond overran last summer. The high water killed them.
I’m looking forward to 2019 and how our ponds will fare.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Never Curse the Rain.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

January 8, 9:00 a.m.,Wausau. Auditorium Main Bldg, Wausau Campus of University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Barns of Wisconsin

February 9, 2:15 Garden Expo, Alliant Center, Madison

February 10, 1:00 p.m. Garden Expo, Alliant Center, Madison

PURCHASING BOOKS AND DVDs:

How about an Apps book for the New Year? Order your signed Apps books and DVDs from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose, a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org
Popular recent Books:
Once a Professor
Old Farm
Farm Country Cookbook
Cold as Thunder (a novel)
Simple Things: Lessons From the Family Farm.
Whispers and Shadows
Never Curse the Rain

A Horseshoe for Luck in 2019

On the home farm, it was not difficult to find a horseshoe. After all, we farmed with horses until our first tractor arrived in 1945. Horseshoes are important for protecting horses’ feet, especially when they regularly walk on hard surfaces. But horseshoes had power beyond the practical application. Pa, along with everyone else, believed that a horseshoe meant good luck. Sort of in the same category as finding a four-leaf clover.

The horseshoe as a good luck piece goes back several hundreds of years. Some early Europeans believed that iron had magical powers, and had the ability to drive away evil. And many people had great reverence for the blacksmith, who was believed to have a lucky trade because he worked with both iron and fire.

Pa did not hang a horseshoe over the doorway into our farm house. He didn’t go that far in his belief about this bent piece of iron as a good luck charm. But many people did, and still do. There was some argument as to whether the horseshoe should be hung with the heels up, forming a “U.” Others argued that to be effective, the heels should hang heels down.

When hung with the heels up, all of your luck is kept from running out of the shoe. But if you hung it heels down, good luck would flow to everyone who walked under it. Seems to me, if you want to cover your good luck bases, you would have two horsehoes, one pointed up and the other pointed down. I must confess, that the horseshoe pictured here hangs on a nail in my garage, sort of pointed sideways.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Much good luck to all in 2019.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Happy New Year.
PURCHASING BOOKS AND DVDs:

How about an Apps book for the New Year? Order your signed Apps books and DVDs from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose, a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org

Popular recent Books:

Once a Professor
Old Farm
Farm Country Cookbook
Cold as Thunder (a novel)
Simple Things: Lessons From the Family Farm.
Whispers and Shadows
Never Curse the Rain

Plus Fifty and Still Blooming

My mother’s long-living Christmas cactus stood near an east window in our dining room on the home farm. By early November, all but three rooms on the first floor of our drafty farmhouse that we heated with woodstoves had been closed off. By Thanksgiving, the first blossom on the Christmas cactus opened, and by Christmas day, it was covered with blossoms, competing with the Christmas tree for its striking appearance. The cactus didn’t seem to mind the cold December mornings. After the woodstoves had gone out sometime in the night, a profound chill visited the entire house, including the rooms heated with woodstoves. On the coldest, windy days, it was mid-morning before the dining room reached a comfortable temperature.

The Christmas cactus pictured above came from that old cactus my mother must have had for at least 50 years. Interestingly, our present cactus, is well over 50 years old. It blossoms by Thanksgiving, and keeps on blossoming well into the new year. Then it rests. When the danger of evening frosts disappear in the spring, I take it outside, set it under a big maple tree and mostly forget about it. Until the danger of frost returns in the fall, then I bring it inside, set it by a east window, in a cool place, water it well and add a bit of fertilizer.

Without fail, by Thanksgiving time it shows off its first blossom. Every year. Including this year. For more than 50 years.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Few things are as dependable as our Christmas cactus.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

PURCHASING BOOKS AND DVDs:

Christmas is just around the corner. Order your signed Apps books and DVDs for Christmas presents from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org

For books and DVDS, with a Christmas message, consider the following (all are available for purchase at the library).

--One Room School (DVD)
--One-Room County Schools.
--Farm Winter with Jerry Apps,(DVD)
--The Quiet Season.
-Old Farm Country Cookbook.

History Tree

The Christmas tree is up. The tree lights are on. The tree decorations are hung with care. And the memories return. I remember the Christmas trees when I was a kid on the home farm. We had no lights at the time as we had no electricity. Pa would never think of putting candles on the tree. He was afraid of fire. He allowed no candles in the house, except for those that appeared on birthday cakes. Our tree was beautiful with big, shiny ornaments that my mother carefully stored away and brought out in early December to hang on the tree.

I must have been about four years old when I remember spotting a toy barn under the tree on Christmas along with toy cows and horses. It was likely the following year that I received my first and only toy train. It included a half dozen little red metal cars, and a black, wind-up locomotive. I still have that special little train, which I played with for years. It still works; it was built to last and last it did.

Today, and for the past several decades, our Christmas tree and its decorations have become a family history tree. Each year, Ruth writes down the essential happenings for the year and puts the information in a little matchbox that we hang on the tree. There are also unique ornaments for each of our children, grandchildren, and great grand grandchildren. To find the history of our family—we have three children, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren—inspect our Christmas tree.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Christmas trees can become history trees.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

December 15, 10 a.m. to 3:p.m. Macfarlanes, Sauk City. Presentation, radio show, and book signing.

PURCHASING BOOKS AND DVDs:

Christmas is just around the corner. Order your signed Apps books and DVDs for Christmas presents from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org

The following DVDs are available for purchase at the library. Each is about one-hour long and each was aired on Public TV.

• One Room School, Based on the book, One-Room County Schools.

• Emmy Winner, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps, based on the book, The Quiet Season.

• Jerry Apps A Farm Story, based on Every Farm Tells a Story

• The Land with Jerry Apps, based on Whispers and Shadows.

• Never Curse the Rain, based on the book with the same title.

The Perfect Christmas Tree

Dark and dreary. Chilly but not cold. Our day for searching out and cutting Christmas trees at our farm. An annual event for the past several years. Always fun, and ever a challenge as over the past couple of decades we’ve planted about twenty-five thousand trees to choose from. Most of them are red pine. A few of them Norway Spruce. A handful are jack pine. Add to this list several hundred Scotch pines that self-seeded and are of various sizes. The searching crew—daughter-in-law, Natasha (with the saw), daughter Sue, and two young lads that Natasha cares for.

And add several hundred, maybe thousand, white pines to the mix. When we bought the place in 1966, there was a former cornfield just south of our cabin. On the west and north sides of this field, previous owners had planted a white pine windbreak in the 1930s. This was during the depth of the Great Depression and the associated drought that raised havoc with the sand country in central Wisconsin.

Today, that cornfield, about six acres or so, is a naturally seeded white pine plantation, with white pine trees ranging from a foot or so tall, to those that are of timber quality. So the Christmas tree searchers had many choices: red pine, white pine, Scotch Pine. The spruce are still too little for consideration, and jack pines are in a class by themselves.

“How about this one?”
“Too scraggly?”
“This one?”
“Too short.”

And so the time passed as we searched, discussed, debated, and finally agreed on three trees. One red pine, one white pine, and one Scotch pine. What could be fairer?

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: What fun it is to tramp through the woods in search of the perfect Christmas tree.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Monday, December 3, 7:00 p.m., All Wisconsin public TV stations. One Room School with Jerry Apps.

December 9, 4:30-6:30. 702 E. Johnson St., Madison.
"Water, Woods & The Pioneer Life: Three Wisconsin Authors on Process & Publication" 702WI teams up with Wisconsin Historical Society Press to present a panel discussion with three Wisconsin authors: Jerry Apps, Kathleen Ernst & Marnie Mamminga. A book signing will follow. Tickets are $15 for the event only or $20 for the event and a copy of Telling Your Story by Jerry Apps. Purchase tickets online, www.702wi.com.

December 15, 10 a.m. to 3:p.m. Macfarlanes, Sauk City. Presentation, radio show, and book signing.

Christmas is just around the corner. Order your signed Apps books and DVDs for Christmas presents from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org
Featured books: You can purchase these separately, or as a package of four;
THE QUIET SEASON
WHISPERS AND SHADOWS
NEVER CURSE THE RAIN
SIMPLE THINGS: LESSONS FROM THE FAMILY FARM