Spring Garden Report      Natasha mulching tomatoes.  Steve Apps Photo

 

As of this past weekend, the remainder of the Apps vegetable garden at Roshara is planted.  Daughter-in-law Natasha and son, Steve, are now the garden managers.  I have been relegated to senior consultant.  I have a suspicion it means staying out of the way.

 

Following a practice we began many years ago, we make a map of our garden each year, and try to avoid planting anything in the same space as it was the previous year.  Also following a long-term practice, we mulch all the tomato plants as well as the cabbage, and broccoli plants. 

 

Last year we had a severe rabbit problem.  This year Steve added a third wire to our electric fence that surrounds the garden.  This third wire is but a few inches off the ground.  We’ll soon learn if it works.  If it doesn’t, we’ll have to install some woven wire around the rabbit loving plants.

 

We have planted a vegetable garden at Roshara, sometimes as large as a half-acre, since 1967.  Each year is different, some plants do better than expected.  Some don’t do well at all.

 

Here is what the team planted this year, row by row.

 

Sweet Corn -- short row

Sweet Corn

Sweet Corn

Sweet Corn

Skip a row

Zucchini / Cucumbers

Skip a row

Peas

Red potatoes

Kennebec White potatoes

Kennebec White potatoes

Onions (half row white and half row red)

Lettuce/Kale/Carrots and Radishes/Beets/Radish

Entry to garden -- walkway

Broccoli (8 plants) / Cabbage (6) / Pole beans

Bush bean / Pole bean

WI 55 Tomato (12) / Purple beans

Celebrity Tomato (2) / Early Girl (3) / Steak Tomatoes (3) / Purple beans

Magic Mountain Tomato (8)

Better Boy Tomatoes (11)

Better Boy Tomatoes (8)

Skip row

Squash - winter varieties

Skip row

Squash - winter varieties

Skip row

Pumpkins

Skip row

Gourds

Skip row

Flowers

Flowers -- variety / sunflowers

Flowers -- sunflowers

Flowers -- sunflowers and honey bee attracting flowers.

My dad always said, “Every vegetable garden should include some flowers.”

 

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Plant a garden.  You’ll enjoy fresh vegetables, and be surprised at what happens.                                                                                                                                 

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS:

 Learn more about gardening by reading my book, GARDEN WISDOM. You can buy my books at your local bookstore. order online from bookshop.org, Amazon.com, 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 Library500 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 have a large selection of my books. 

 

 

 

Remembering Early Potato Growing in Wisconsin

 

By the 1870s, many Wisconsin farmers turned to dairy farming and other crops (wheat growing was failing).   In central Wisconsin, in addition to milking cows, many farmers began growing potatoes.  According to the USDA Ag. Statistics Service, Wisconsin farmers grew 64,304 acres of potatoes in 1870.   That number exploded to 325,000 acres in 1922.

 

We grew potatoes on the home farm, 20 acres of them every year.  We planted them by hand, hoed them by hand, dug them by hand (with six tine-forks) and picked them by hand.  Our country school had a two-week potato vacation in October so all the kids could stay home and pick potatoes. 

 

Besides the potato bins in our farm house cellar, we stored them in a potato cellar built into the side of a hill just beyond the chicken house.  Every farmer had a potato cellar where the potatoes were stored in the lower part of the building and various farm machinery was stored in the upper area.  Potato prices were usually better in the late winter and early spring, thus the reason for storing them.  We kept a wood burning stove going all winter in the potato cellar to keep the potatoes from freezing.

 

Potato warehouses (with potato buyers) lined the railroad tracks of Wild Rose in those days.  In late winter, we spent many evenings after the barn chores were done, by the light of a barn lantern, sorting and dumping potatoes into gunny bags.  Pa hauled them to Wild Rose with a bobsled pulled by our trusty team. He selected a warmer winter day to haul the potatoes so they wouldn’t freeze on the four and half mile trip to the village.

 

Travelers in central Wisconsin can easily spot these little potato cellars as many of them remain standing. These little buildings have many stories to tell.

 

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Wisconsin still grows lots of potatoes, third in the nation among all the states. Idaho and Washington State rank number one and two.

                                                                                                                                          

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS:

 Learn more about Wisconsin potato growing by reading my book, WISCONSIN AGRICULTURE: A HISTORY. You can buy my books at your local bookstore. order online from bookshop.org, Amazon.com,  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 have a large selection of my books. 

 

 

 

May Basket Memories

 

One of the fun things we farm kids did during the month of May was to make little paper baskets at our country school and then play “May Baskets.” It was game where a couple of us kids, unannounced to the rest of neighborhood, would fill our little paper May Baskets with flowers.  Anything we could find, violets, apple blossoms, even dandelions.

 

Then in the dark of night, we would begin visiting the neighbor farms with kids.  We’d hang a May Basket on their kitchen door, yell “May Basket” and then run like the dickens.  The kids at the place where we hung the May Basket, would run after us, eventually catching us and joining us as we walked to the next farm.  The farms were a half mile apart, so before the night was over, we would have walked several miles.  But what fun it was on a warm May night, with all the sounds and smells of spring hanging in the warm air.   It was a way to share the spring spirit with our neighbors.

 

Our biggest challenge, as we walked from farm to farm, was dealing with the farm dogs.  Some were friendly, but a few of them would just as soon tear your pants off and chew you on the ankle as allow you to pet them.  I knew the names of most of the farm dogs, and tried to calm them as we hung a May basket on their master’s kitchen door.  Afterall, one of the dog’s jobs was to prevent the very thing that we were doing.  Sneaking up to the kitchen door in the dead of night. I don’t remember any serious dog confrontations, but a farm dog could never be ignored.

 

The May Basket tradition goes back as far as the 12^th and 13^th centuries In Germany.  Some believe the ancient Romans practiced the tradition.  Flowers have long been a symbol of the coming of spring, and thus should be celebrated.

 

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Sharing flowers is one way to celebrate the coming of spring.

 

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS:

. You can buy my books at your local bookstore. order online from bookshop.org, Amazon.com,  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 have a large selection of my books. 

 

 

 

A Tonic for Spring Susan Apps-Bodilly Photo.

When I was a kid the first thing to pop out of the ground after the snow disappeared and frost left the ground was rhubarb.   It’s tough stuff.  I don’t remember it ever not coming up.

I grew up liking most everything on my plate.  But there was and continues to be an exception: rhubarb sauce.  That stuff was awful.  Pa insisted we eat it.  He said it was necessary to cleanse our body from winter and be prepared for spring. Ma’s recipe was simple:

                        3-4 cups chopped rhubarb

                        1 cup sugar

                        1/3 cup of water.

Put rhubarb pieces in a medium cooking pot, add sugar and a bit of water.  Start with medium heat, and then reduce to let it simmer as soon as it begins to bubble and boil.  Let simmer until the rhubarb cooks down, which should take about 25 minutes.  Let cool and keep in refrigerator.

            Curious as I am about these things, I begin wondering if my dad was onto something with his insistence that eating rhubarb sauce was a way to prepare our bodies for spring.   Five thousand years ago, dried Rhubarb roots were considered a medicine by the Chinese.

 It is a mild laxative.  But on the plus side, rhubarb is a good source of dietary fiber, has lots of vitamin C and K, plus calcium and potassium.  And as much as I detest rhubarb sauce, rhubarb crisp ranks right up there with apple crisp. And don’t forget about strawberry-rhubarb pie, rhubarb muffins, and rhubarb cake. But don’t eat the leaves as they are poisonous and can cause breathing difficulty and burning in the mouth.  Rhubarb leaves are not poisonous to the touch.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Eat your rhubarb sauce.  It’s good for you.

            .

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS:

To learn more about rhubarb, go to my daughter and my book, OLD FARM COUNTRY COOKBOOK. You can buy my books at your local bookstore. order online from 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