The Wood Makers

Last Saturday was our annual “wood making” day at Roshara. We bring as many volunteers from the family who are available, sometimes the number reaches a dozen or so when kids and grandkids are there. But Alas, the grandkids had seen fit to be elsewhere this year. So it was back to the long-time reliables. My daughter, Sue and son-in-law, Paul worked on Saturday along with brother, Don who lent a helping hand. My son, Steve and daughter-in-law Natasha worked on Sunday.

A note on the weather. Saturday was a beautiful, sunny day. No wind and temperatures hanging in the high forties. Sunday was a miserable, cold, all day rain. But weather or not, wood making went on. Earlier I had spotted two trees that were close to the trail. One dead, and one nearly so.

With Paul on the chainsaw and Sue helping with the cant hook, by noon we had a pile of blocks ready for splitting. I was in charge of hauling, an easy task. I drove a four-wheel drive all-terrain vehicle with a dump box. When I was a kid we toted limbs and tree trunks to the farmstead from the oak woods with our trusty team of horses and a steel-wheeled wagon.

For years we split the blocks with a splitting maul, with Steve becoming an expert at doing it. But now, as we all are older, I purchased an electric log splitter that does the job twice as fast with a fourth of the effort.

The splitting continued on Sunday, in the rain (the splitter was in a shed). Sue on Saturday and Natasha on Sunday (in the rain) created a neat woodpile outside the woodshed, where it will dry until next summer when we will carry it into the woodshed.

With sore muscles all around, one more annual farm task is completed. Aside from the hard work, there is a certain beauty to the work (I never thought I would say that). The smell of freshly cut trees, and the artful pile of split blocks. Plus of course a great feeling of accomplishment.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: There is much more to making wood than cutting down a tree and splitting the blocks.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

November 13, 6:00 p.m. Patterson Memorial Library, Wild Rose. Central Wisconsin launch of SIMPLE THINGS, LESSONS FROM THE FAMILY FARM.

December 15, 10 a.m. to 2:p.m. Macfarlanes Sauk City. Presentation, radio show, and book signing.

Christmas is just around the corner. Order your 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

Jerry’s latest books are:
• Simple Things: Lessons From the Family Farm
• Once a Professor
• Cold As Thunder (A Novel)

Jerry’s most recent Public TV show (DVD)
One Room School (Aired on Public TV stations)(Based on the book, One-Room County Schools.

Additional DVDs of Public TV Shows (DVDs)
• Emmy Winner, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps (based on The Quiet Season book.)
• Jerry Apps a Farm Story (based on Every Farm Tells a Story)
• The Land with Jerry Apps, (based on the book Whispers and Shadows,)
• Never Curse the Rain, (based on the book with the same title)

The library has several of Jerry’s signed books for sale including several of Jerry’s nonfiction books:
• Every Farm Tells a Story (Revised edition)
• Living a County Year (Revised edition)
• One Room Country Schools
• Never Curse the Rain
• Whispers and Shadows
• The Quiet Season
• Old Farm Country Cookbook,
• Wisconsin Agriculture: A History
• Roshara Journal (with photos by Steve Apps)
• Old Farm: A History
• Telling Your Story—a guidebook for those who want to write their own stories.
• Horse Drawn Days

Additionally, the library has for sale Jerry’s six published novels:
• The Travels of Increase Joseph
• In a Pickle
• Blue Shadows Farm
• Tamarack River Ghost
• The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County.
• Cold as Thunder