The Beauty of Fall

As a farm boy, I allotted one-word descriptions to each of the seasons:
Spring: Planting, Summer: Growing, Fall: Harvesting, and Winter: Resting.

Each season is much more than can be described in one word. Take my favorite season, fall. Of course, it involved harvesting. I remember so well when I was a kid. Pa cut our 20-acre cornfield with a one-row, McCormick corn binder, pulled by our trusty team of horses. The binder spewed out bundles of corn stalks, neatly wrapped with binder-twine. It was my job, and when the corn was all cut, Pa joined me, to stand the bundles into corn shocks. What a sight to see at day’s end when the cornfield had become an Indian encampment, with teepees standing in neat rows—or so it appeared.

It was hard work, but it also had its high points. By this time in the fall, the trees were in full fall color. The maples brilliant red and yellow. The aspens had turned to yellow, and the oaks announced a soft, natural brown.

And the smells, oh how I enjoyed and still do, the smells of fall. The subtle smell of drying cornstalks, the clear, clean smell of an early morning when frost coated the grass and caused the last geranium and other flowers still alive to wither and die.

With the corn in shocks, it was off to the woods for the first round of wood cutting, making wood we called it. Hard work, but also filled with the smells of drying oak leaves, the sight of a clear blue sky, and the feeling that summer had become a memory as we moved deeper into fall.


THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Appreciate the beauty of fall, wrapped around the hard work of the harvest.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

--October 20, 6-8:00 pm. American Legion Post 306, 518 Water Street, Green Lake. Fund Raiser for Princeton Public Library. Phone 920-295-6777 for ticket information. Simple Things book.

--October 21, 1:00 pm. Readers Realm Bookstore, Montello. Simple Things book.

Purchase Jerry’s signed DVDs and books from the Library in Wild Rose, Wisconsin (a fundraiser for them):
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.org
www.wildroselibrary.org
Phone: 920-622-3835
DVDs: His latest Public TV show, One-Room Country School is now available. It’s based on his book, One-Room Country Schools (also available). Emmy Winner, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps (based on The Quiet Season book.)
Jerry Apps a Farm Story (based on Rural Wit and Wisdom and Old Farm books.)
The Land with Jerry Apps, (based on the book Whispers and Shadows,)
Never Curse the Rain, (based on his book with the same title)
The library has several of Jerry’s signed books for sale including Jerry’s newest nonfiction books, Once a Professor, Every Farm Tells a Story, Living a County Year (reprints), One-Room Country Schools, Never Curse the Rain and Old Farm Country Cookbook, and his novel, The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County. Also Wisconsin Agriculture: A History, Roshara Journal (with photos by Steve Apps) and Telling Your Story—a guidebook for those who want to write their own stories.
Contact the library for prices and special package deals.