Opening Day Steve Apps photo

 

OPENING DAY                               Steve Apps Photo

Opening day of the deer gun season.  Number 76 for me.  “You’re still deer hunting?” A question I hear on occasion.  “Yes,” I answer with a smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

I must confess that weatherwise, this opening day for the 2022 deer gun season was no prize.  The temperature hung around 18 degrees, the wind blew from the northwest, and snowflakes fell.  Fell so hard that at times I couldn’t see across the little field where I was sitting.  We already had two-three inches of snow at Roshara, and within a half hour or so we added another quarter to a half inch.  If you like to sit in a snowstorm—and believe it or not, if I’m dressed properly, and I was, I rather enjoy it.

In my early days of deer hunting, bagging a deer with bragging rights was always my goal.  Then for a number of years, filling the freezer with venison was the goal.  Especially when the family numbered five and my income was on the low side.  For the past 20 years or so, bagging a deer was a secondary goal, being with family was first, and being outside, no matter what the weather was always a goal.  I have always enjoyed the sights and sounds of nature—and deer season is one time to do that.

I remember so well the days when my dad hunted deer—he did it into his early 90s. In those days, the family hunters included my brothers, and my sons.  Three generations.  One of the stories passed on over the years was when my dad was 92, and he was standing on a little hill with my son, Steve.  They spotted three deer running across a field some 100 yards away, maybe more depending on who was telling the story.  “Is one a buck?” Dad asked.  “The middle one,” Steve answered.  Dad pulled up his 30-30 Savage rifle, and fired one shot.  The buck deer dropped, shot through the neck.  When asked why he shot it in the neck.  His answer, “Didn’t want to spoil any of the meat.” He said it with a big smile on his face.          

 This year the crew hunting at Roshara included me, my son, Steve, my brother Donald; his three sons Marc, Eric, and Matt, and Matt’s son, Ian.  Three generations once more.

I did not bag a deer.  My nephew Eric did.  He is a true deer hunter.  But once more, we all have stories to tell.  Deer hunting has always been and will always be storytelling—some of them even may be true.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS:  There is so much more to deer hunting than bagging a deer.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Monday, November 28, 7:00 p.m.  Watch “Jerry Apps: Food and Memories” on PBS Wisconsin.  An hour-long documentary with my daughter, Susan, and based on our book, OLD FARM COUNTRY COOKBOOK/

Saturday, December 10, 1:30 p.m.  Verona, Library.  Launch of my new book, MORE THAN WORDS.  I plan to be there in person.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS. Buy from your local bookstore, or buy online from the Wisconsin Historical Society bookstore, https://shop.wisconsinhistory.org/books, bookshop.org, or purchase from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering, or contact the librarian: barnard@wildroselibrary.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby, visit Dregne’s.  and look at their great selection of my books. Order a book from them by calling 1-877-634-4414. They will be happy to help you.  If you live in northcentral Wisconsin, stop at the Janke bookstore in Wausau (phone 715-845-9648).  They also have a large selection of my books. 

 

 

First Snow Jerry Apps Photo

 

The morning sky was slate gray; it was dark, and more than a little dreary.  Shortly after eight a.m. I saw snowflakes flying on the wind, just a few of them, and then more and still more snowflakes.   The first snowstorm of the season.  Within an hour or so, grassy areas turned from green to white, and snow was clinging to the bare branches of the trees.  The snow continued falling, reminding us that no matter what the calendar says, we have moved from autumn to winter.

And oh, how the memories have returned to the days of my youth on the farm.  The coming of the first snow was bittersweet.  On the plus side, it was time to crawl up into the woodshed attic and find our skis, sleds, and clamp-on ice skates.  It was time once more to slide down the big hill back of our one-room country school on our sleds, to slip on our skis and ski to the back reaches of the farm, often with a rifle in hand as we searched for a rabbit for supper, or just skied for the fun of it, leaving the rifle at home. Or maybe, with a few school friends, grabbing up our ice skates and walking the mile and half to Chain O ‘Lake where we shoveled the snow aside and skated.  We also would build a campfire on the edge of the lake, a place to put on and take off our skates, and to warm up a bit if the temperature, as it often did in those days, hung around zero.

On a snowy day like today, it was exceedingly quiet.  I so enjoyed walk in the woods, especially by a row of pine trees.  I listened for the subtle sound of snowflakes on pine needles.

The first snow had its down sides, too.  Because the cows were kept inside all day, the barn chores increased.  Besides milking and feeding the cows, there was always straw to carry for bedding, and manure to shovel from the barn’s gutters.  A major task was shoveling a walkway from one farm building to another.  From the house to the barn, from the house to the pumphouse, from the house to the chicken house.  From the barn to the pumphouse, from the barn to the granary.  From the chicken house to the granary.  And the driveway from the country road to the milkhouse so the milk truck could pick up our several cans of milk every day.

I always welcomed the first snowfall of the season— remembering how our lives changed as the seasons changed.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Each year, the first snowfall marked important changes for farm kids.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Monday, November 28, 7:00 p.m.  Watch “Jerry Apps: Food and Memories” on PBS Wisconsin.  An hour-long documentary with my daughter, Susan, and based on our book, OLD FARM COUNTRY COOKBOOK/

Saturday, December 10, 1:30 p.m.  Verona, Library.  Launch of my new book, MORE THAN WORDS.  I plan to be there in person.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS

  To learn more about winter, see my book THE QUIET SEASON: REMEMBERING COUNTRY WINTERS.  Buy from your local bookstore, or buy online from the Wisconsin Historical Society bookstore, https://shop.wisconsinhistory.org/books, bookshop.org, or purchase from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering, or contact the librarian: barnard@wildroselibrary.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby, visit Dregne’s.  and look at their great selection of my books. Order a book from them by calling 1-877-634-4414. They will be happy to help you.  If you live in northcentral Wisconsin, stop at the Janke bookstore in Wausau (phone 715-845-9648).  They also have a large selection of my books. 

 

 

Red Sky in The Morning Steve Apps photo

 

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On my recent, daily, early morning walk, I noticed the red sky stretching from horizon to horizon. I remembered my father’s words, “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”  The meaning-- foul weather was on the way, be prepared (whether you were a sailor or a farmer).  Two hours later. the storm clouds moved in and rain began.  Cold, autumn rain, but nonetheless, appreciated rain.  On the home farm it seemed we never had enough rain—our sandy soil required it; nothing much grew without goodly amounts of rain.  When one of my brothers or I would complain about a rainy day, Pa would say, “Never curse the rain.”  I have never forgotten that admonition, no matter how hard it rained, or how wet I got. 

Rain was something we always appreciated—and this year, 2022, is no exception as we read about barges on the Mississippi getting stuck on the bottom of that mighty river because the water level is too low.  The West and Southwest continue to experience severe drought.  I also recently read that Texas cotton farmers have suffered because of the drought. Cotton is Texas’ largest crop.  Cotton farmers are expecting half their normal annual yield this year.

In Wisconsin, for the most part, the rains have come regularly this year.  At my farm. I had green grass in my lawn all summer-long.  Often, by mid-summer the rains stopped and the grass turned brown until it rained again. 

Checking the National Weather Service, Wisconsin State Records, I discovered that Wisconsin has had some record rainfalls in recent years.  In 2019, 44.6 inches of rain fell, followed by 39.7 in 2018. The least rain fell in 1910—20.5 inches.  During the Great Depression, the country saw the least annual rainfall for a five-year period, 1929 to 1933.  These were the years of the dustbowl when the dry winds of summer filled the air with the soil from thousands of acres of farmland.  The wettest five-year period for annual rainfall in Wisconsin was 2015 to 2019.  The greatest 24-hour rainfall, in Wisconsin, 11.72 inches fell in Mellen, WI on June 24, 1946. 

As farmers, young and old, have long known, ample rainfall can make the difference between success and failure on the farm. Remember, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, Red sky in the morning sailors take warning.”

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Watching the sky is one good way of predicting the weather.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Saturday, December 10, 1:30 p.m.  Verona, Library.  Launch of my new book, MORE THAN WORDS.  I plan to be there in person.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS

  To learn more about rain, see my book: Never Curse the Rain. Buy from your local bookstore, or buy online from the Wisconsin Historical Society bookstore, https://shop.wisconsinhistory.org/books, bookshop.org, or purchase from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering, or contact the librarian: barnard@wildroselibrary.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby, visit Dregne’s.  and look at their great selection of my books. Order a book from them by calling 1-877-634-4414. They will be happy to help you.  If you live in northcentral Wisconsin, stop at the Janke bookstore in Wausau (phone 715-845-9648).  They also have a large selection of my books. 

 

 

Pictures Have Stories to Tell

 

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  For me, a picture is also worth many stories, stories that may not have been told for many years.  A couple weeks

ago, my brother Donald and I gazed at the picture of the home farm’s buildings.  It was an aerial photo taken in the late 1950s, after my two brothers and I had left the farm, but our father and mother continued farming.

We looked at the photo of the old barn, really two barns in one.  We had moved the larger barn to the farm shortly after World War II.  What a task it was to move a barn of that size.  Pa had purchased the barn from near Heffron, which was about five miles north of our place.  Don and I talked about how we spent several days trimming back tree limbs along the country roads where we would haul the barn.  Not an easy task.  Then we talked about the day that the barn was moved.  The mover had attached wheels to the corners of the big structure, and then with his truck along with our Farmall H tractor and our neighbor, Bill Miller’s John Deere B, we pulled the huge barn—it took up the entire road—from Heffron to our farm.  It moved along at about three miles an hour.  And what a sight to see.  A barn moving down the road.

We noticed the big straw stack just beyond the barn, and commented that that the photo had been taken shortly after we had threshed.  This brought back memories of threshing machines and threshing dinners, and moving from farm to farm during threshing season.  Pa and Bill Miller owned a threshing machine together, so we had first had experience with that complicated machine with its pulleys and belts running every which way.  We remembered how important the straw stack was to our dairy farm operations, as the straw providing bedding for the cows that remained in the barn throughout our long, cold Wisconsin winters.

We commented on the brooder house, just west of the barn, where we started all the baby chicks that arrived each spring by train.  We looked at the machine shed on the west side of the farmstead, with its crooked doors built by a carpenter who had celebrated a bit too much the night before he worked on our shed.

So many stories buried in one picture.  Stories of farm life in the1950s, when there were family farms everywhere.  Now, all but a handful of them are gone.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: So many stories from old photos—stories that should be told, and remembered.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS

  To learn more about family farms, see  Wisconsin Agriculture: A History. Buy from your local bookstore, or buy online from the Wisconsin Historical Society bookstore, https://shop.wisconsinhistory.org/books, bookshop.org, or purchase from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering, or contact the librarian: barnard@wildroselibrary.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby, visit Dregne’s.  and look at their great selection of my books. Order a book from them by calling 1-877-634-4414. They will be happy to help you.  If you live in northcentral Wisconsin, stop at the Janke bookstore in Wausau (phone 715-845-9648).  They also have a large selection of my books.