Cranberries: Wisconsin No. 1 Jerry Apps Photo

 

This is the time of the year, when the trees are turning color and dropping their leaves, and there is frost is on the ground in the morning, when I think about cranberries.  Maybe it’s because, in 1955, the first job I had when I graduated from college was raking cranberries.  By hand in a bog near Wisconsin Rapids. It was before the modern cranberry harvesting equipment was commonly used by cranberry growers.

Wisconsin’s history with cranberries goes back a long, long way.  Cranberries are native to Wisconsin.  They were well known to the Native Americans long before the first Europeans arrived in the state.  They grew abundantly in marshy areas, especially in Waushara and Wood counties.  Native Americans ate cranberries fresh; they ground them and mixed them with cornmeal and baked the mixture into bread.  They dried cranberries with wild game to make pemmican.  Sometimes they mixed cranberries with maple sugar to soften the berries tart taste.

Native Americans also knew about cranberries’ medicinal qualities believing that they calmed nerves.   They also were used as poultices to draw poison from wounds.  These early people in Wisconsin used cranberry juice to dye blankets and rugs.

What is the source of the name for this tart, native berry?  It is believed that the early Dutch or German settlers called the fruit “craneberries” because the cranberry stem and blossom resembled the neck, head and beak of the crane.

Early settlers in Wisconsin, who lived within easy traveling distance of a wild cranberry bog, picked cranberries for their own use long before anyone grew them commercially.  Edward Sacket of New York is credited with starting the first commercial cranberry operation in Wisconsin.  Around 1860 he purchased seven hundred acres of bog land covered with cranberry vines north of Berlin in Waushara County.  By 1865 he was producing more than 900 barrels a year of cranberries that sold for $15 dollars a barrel.  Soon other cranberry growers joined Sacket and Waushara County experienced a bit of a cranberry boom.

In addition to Waushara County, wild cranberries also grew in Jackson, Juneau, Monroe, and Wood Counties. In 1871, the first cultivated cranberries in the  Wisconsin River Valley were planted near present-day Cranmoor in Wood County.  By1895, the center of commercial cranberry growing had shifted to Wood County.

At one time, cranberries were associated only with Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Not today.  Cranberry juice and dried cranberries became popular throughout the year.  An international market emerged for cranberry products, especially when the health benefits of consuming cranberries was promoted.  Starting in 1994, Wisconsin led the nation in cranberry production out pacing long-time leader, Massachusetts.  

Have you tried dried cranberries?  They make a great snack.  A glass of cranberry juice is a most refreshing drink. besides, it’s good for you.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Cranberries are a year-around treat, low in calories, high in flavor.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS

  To learn more about the history of cranberries, see my book, 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. 

Halloween at the Country School. Jerry Apps Photo.

 

Frost covered the country road, as my little brothers and I walked the mile to our one-room country school.  We made the walk every day during the school year, no matter if it was ten below zero, raining hard, or just a pleasant cool day like this one in late October.  It was a special day.  It was Halloween.    Halloween meant a party at school that afternoon, starting around 2:00 p.m. and going on until the end of the school day.  The mothers helped the teacher with the party, and it was always fun—if a bit scary for the younger students.

It was hard for me to concentrate on my studies that day, because all I could think about was the party to come, and what fun activities the teacher had planned. The first mothers began arriving at 1:30. One of them carried a big wash tub, the kind we used for taking a bath on Saturday night in front of the kitchen woodstove.  I knew what the tub was for.  Every year we bobbed for apples.  This meant the tub was filled with water and a bunch of shiny red apples were dumped in to float on the top.  To get an apple, you had to stick your open month on one of the floating apples and chase it to the bottom of the tub, immersing your entire head in the water.  Sort of fun if you didn’t mind getting a wet head.

When two o’clock finally rolled around, the party officially started.  My fellow students and I stayed out of the way as the various party activities were set up.  Then it all began.  The apple bobbing, attempting to retrieve an apple that hung on a long string—almost impossible to do as the apples would swing wildly. Blindfolded, we would take turns as the teacher explained feeling grapes in a bowl of water (ghosts’ eyeballs), smelling vinegar (a witch’s brew) and feeling cooked noodles in a bowl (a witch’s brain).

After the “fun” activities, we all enjoyed Kool-Aid and cookies and shared with each other how much fun or scared we had been.  There was no “Trick or Treat” in the evening.  Only tricks that some of the young men in the community took part in—such as tipping over outhouses and harnessing a neighbor’s cows with horse harnesses.

Walking home that afternoon, I thought about when we would have our next party at school, and which cookies I liked best.  They were wonderful, fun breaks from reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: The Halloween party was a memorable break in the fall routine at the one-room country school.

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. 

 

 

Memories of Preparing For Winter Jerry Apps Photo .

 

With the turning of the leaves and shorter days, my childhood memories on the farm come flooding back.  In those days it seemed that almost everything we did was in preparation for the winter that never failed to come with its frigid temperatures, deep snow, and cloudy, dreary days.

By late October, the oat bin was full, as was the corncrib and the silo.  The hayloft was piled high with hay, the straw stack stood tall outside the barn.  We piled straw around the foundation of our farm house.  “Keeps the cold out of the house,” Pa said. 

We spent several days in the oak woodlot north of the house, cutting dead oaks with ax and crosscut saw.  Making wood, it was called. We heated the house with two woodstoves, heated the pumphouse with a stove, and kept another stove going in the potato cellar to keep our potato crop from freezing before they were sold. The cellar under the house was filled with garden vegetables: potatoes, rutabagas, onions, carrots, and several shelves of canned fruits and vegetables that Ma had worked so hard on preparing during the hot days of July and August. A huge crock of sauerkraut stood in the pantry.

Usually, in late October, a cold rain began in the morning and continued all day.  Pa would say, by late afternoon on such a day, “Looks like we should keep the cows in the barn tonight.”  This meant carrying in forkful after forkful of straw so the cows in their stanchions would have a comfortable place to spend the night.   Now I knew winter was close at hand, as the cows had been outside from late April, coming in the barn only for morning and evening milking.

The last reminder that winter was just around the corner was when we dusted off the woodburning stove that spent winters in the dining room and summers in the woodshed.  With the help of several neighbors, we hauled the Round Oak heater, which was about five feet high into its winter place in the house.  With the stove and its stovepipes in place, Pa opened the stove’s door, tossed in some rumpled-up paper, a few sticks of wood, and lit the fire.  “By golly, she’s workin,” Pa said as a smile spread across his face.

We were ready for winter.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: When I was a kid, preparation for winter consumed much of our time spent on the farm.

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. 

 

 

Let's Hear It For Onions Steve Apps Photo

This was a good year for onions at Roshara.  Much better than last year.  I have many memories of onions as a kid. I will never forget the first county fair I attended, which was in 1938 when I was but a little shaver. I remember so well the sights—cattle judging, the Midway.  The sounds—the music coming from the Merry Go-Round, the roosters crowing in the poultry building, the ducks quacking.   And the smell of onions frying in the food tents—or how I liked it and will never forget that smell.

Looking at this year’s onion crop, I realized that I knew little about onions and their heritage. And why they continue to be popular in the diets of many.  As a kid I took onions for granted.  I knew my mother grew them in our big farm garden.  But they were no near as popular as tomatoes, potatoes, and sweetcorn—at least I never heard anybody in the family waiting for the first onions to be pulled.

So, I did a little checking and learned some interesting things.  There is some debate about where onions were first discovered.  Central Asia, Iran and West Pakistan were the likely places.  Wild onions were in early humans’ diets before farming as we know it started.  Onions have been cultivated for more than 5,000 years. One of the reasons for their popularity as a food was because they were less perishable than other foods, they were easily transported, and they would grow in a variety of soils and climates.

Onions, down through the ages, had many uses beyond food.  Early Romans believed onions helped restore vision, induced sleep, and cured toothaches.  In the Middle Ages in Europe, people believed onions prevented headaches and prevented hair loss.  The first Pilgrims arriving in America on the Mayflower, brought onions with them.  Onions became a popular commercial crop in New England.

Of course, onions remain popular today. The top five onion producing states are California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and New Mexico. Wisconsin ranks number 11 among the states in onion production.  I continue to enjoy the smell of onions frying.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Onions have remained a popular food item down through the ages.

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.