Remembering Winters Past Jerry Apps Photo.

 

            Several years ago, I wrote a book titled THE QUIET SEASON.  It was about winter.  Here is a little of what I included in that book:

            Many winters have come and gone since those days I spent growing up on a farm.  Although these stories happened many years ago, the details are as vivid to me as if I experienced them yesterday.

            I remember the feeling of walking back to the house after the evening milking on a below-zero night.  I would look upward and behold a sky full of start, for there was no light pollution, nothing to block out the tiny slivers of light punching holes in the black night.

            I remember trees in winter, the oaks and maples, aspens and birch, stark, thick gray trunks and bare branches like hundreds of skinny fingers reaching skyward, grasping for the unknown, embracing the unknown, embracing winter and allow it to paint ribbons of snow on their branches.  Everygreens became pieces of art: the spruces tall and pyramidal, covered with snow from top to bottom; the red and white pines looking a bit tortured as their limbs sagged under the weight of the winter white.

            I have always been intrigued by snowflakes, especially the large, cotton-like ones.  I like to watch snowflakes falling en masse, and I marvel at how quickly they can turn a drab and brown landscape into a world of white.  Most impressive to me is the close-up of a single snowflake: a frilly, fragile piece of frozen water that nature has arranged into the most intricate of patterns.

            Winter brings sounds heard only during those cold months.  A crow’s call in winter is one of my favorite sounds.  Crows are tough birds.  Songbirds pack and leave for the South in winter.  So do the wild ducks, Canada geese, and sandhill cranes.  But not the crows.  On a cold day when I’m out walking, I often hear crows calling, a loneseome, solitary sound.  When I hear it I am reassured; winter may be the harshest season, but the crows remain, withstanding the worst that nature throws at them.

            Perhaps the most striking and impressive sound of winter is the sound of silence.  In winter the birdsong and animal chattering and fluttering of leaves has ceased.  On a windless day there is often no sound at all.  I may not have understood the power of silence in those days, but I do today, when it is more difficult to find than it was when I was a kid.

            Of all the seasons, winter is the most influential on the lives of people who experienced it.  It is not just the length of winter that creates a group of people called “northerners.”   It is the less tangible, often mythical characteristics of winter that forge a true northerner.  Winter is much more than cold and snow.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS. Take time to remember how winter has influenced you.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Saturday, January 7, 2023, 1:30 p.m.  Patterson Memorial Library, Wild Rose, Wisconsin.  Presentation on my newest book: More than Words.  That book and other will be for sale and signing.  I plan to be there in person.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS (Including the Quiet Season). As you all know, books make fine Christmas presents. See my website, www.jerryapps.com, for a listing of my books. Buy my books 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. 

 

 

Finding the Perfect Christmas Tree Jerry Apps Photo

We started the tradition in 1967, the year after we purchased our Roshara Farm.  We have searched for the perfect Christmas tree every year in late November.  That first year, our kids were five, four, and three.   Finding the perfect tree was not a small task.  We began planting pine trees at Roshara in 1966, mostly red pines.  Some years we planted several thousand trees.  It takes about eight-to-ten-years for a pine tree to reach Christmas tree height. So, during those early years we searched among the trees that were self-seeded—meaning nobody planted them.  During the 1930s, the drought years in much of the country, the Coombes family who owned our farm at that time, planted two long rows of white pine trees to prevent wind erosion.  By the 1960s, when we bought the farm, these white pines stood tall and thick, and were dropping white pine seeds on our sandy soil.  Many little white pine trees were now appearing near these now “way too tall for a Christmas tree” white pines.

            White pines are beautiful trees.  They have soft, long needles that grow in clusters of five.  But they grow fast and the branches are too far apart for a perfect Christmas tree.  Sometimes there were exceptions, especially when they grew out in the open and had access to more sunlight.

We also have a considerable number of jack pines, which are native to this part of Wisconsin.  They are tough trees, able to withstand drought and whatever weather Mother Nature brings to our farm.  They have short, sharp needles.  But not candidates for Christmas trees.  And finally, Scotch pine trees grow wild on the farm.  They do make nice Christmas trees.

During those early years the kids, with Sue, who was the oldest, leading the way on the Christmas tree hunt. “How about this tree?” Sue would ask, standing by a tree that was many times taller than she was.  “It’s a dumb looking tree,” Steve would say, as Jeff tagged along not saying anything.

            And so it would go as we moved from tree to tree, until we found one that the kids agreed would make a decent looking Christmas tree.  We did this for many years, eventually including grandchildren in the hunt. A couple weeks ago, my son-in-law, Paul Bodilly, and I went searching for the perfect tree. By now we had planted more than ten-thousand trees at Roshara.  They were of every size and shape.  So, selecting the “perfect” tree was no small task. “What about this one?” Paul would say as he stood by a Scotch pine.

            “How does it look on the other side?” I asked.

            “A little thin,” he said, as he began looking for different one.  And so the afternoon went until Paul had decided on two good looking trees, both Scotch pine.  One was little, one was big. Upon returning home he brought the little one into their house.

            “Isn’t the tree a little small,” Sue said with a bit of a concerned look on her face.

            Before going too far with his little trick, Paul brought the larger, beautiful tree into the house.  Sue was smiling. The tradition of searching for the perfect tree has remained intact.  Hard to believe that we have been doing this for fifty-five years.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS:  Searching for the “perfect” Christmas tree is a fun thing to do.

Talk About Crows Steve Apps Photo

 

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Back when I was a kid on the farm, maybe ten years old, I remember one Saturday Pa asking if I’d like to ride along with him to see a fellow farming on the other side of Plainfield.  “Sure,” I said.  Saturday usually meant lots of work to do, and riding along with Pa seemed a great way to leave behind the several chores I ordinarily would have to do on a Saturday.

“The fellow has something I want you to see,” Pa said.

“What?” I asked, always interested in stuff that Pa wanted me to see.

“It’ll be a surprise,” Pa said, smiling.

Now I was really curious, as I wondered what a farmer west of Plainfield would have that was different from what we had on our farm.  Soon we were driving through the village of Plainfield and into farm country. Not long later, we pulled into a driveway of a farmstead, similar to many in the area.  Nothing special here, I thought.

We got out of the car and the fellow Pa wanted to see came out of the house and began talking to Pa.  I stayed near the car.  I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but Pa motioned for me to come with them as they walked toward the corncrib.  Seemed like an ordinary corncrib.  We had one just like it at our farm.

The fellow pulled open the corn crib door and entered, with Pa and me following behind.  Then I saw it, a big black crow sitting on a little perch in the back of the corncrib.  The farmer said to crow, “Hello.”

The crow, with a rather high-pitched voice, said, “Hello.”  Wow!  A talking crow.  Then the farmer said, “Jimmy Crow,” And the crow said “Jimmy Crow.”  I had never seen anything like it—a crow speaking words I could understand.  This is what Pa wanted me to see and hear. I’ve never forgotten the experience.  Now so many years later, I did some research on talking crows.  One report I read said that a crow living in close company with humans can be taught to repeat as many as a 100 words and phrases.

A few weeks ago, on one of those summer-like autumn days, I was sitting outside the cabin at the farm, enjoying the day.  “What are you doing?” my son, Steve, asked.  There was work to be done and I was doing little of nothing.

“Listening to the crows talk to each other,” I said.  And they were.  Several of them were perched in the windbreak just west of the cabin, and several more were in the pine trees a hundred yards or so south of the cabin. Both groups were cawing loudly.  Crows are highly social birds and they do try to stay in constant communication with each other.  In addition to keeping in touch with each other, they have a variety of calls, including one indicating danger may be near. Crows are highly intelligent birds—it’s easy to ignore them and take them for granted.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS:  There is much about crows that we don’t know.

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. As you all know, books make fine Christmas presents. See my website, www.jerryapps.com, for a listing of my books. Buy my books 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. 

 

 

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. 

 

 

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.