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From the winner of the 2014 Regional Emmy Award for A Farm Winter
with Jerry Apps Jerry Apps, renowned author and veteran
storyteller, believes that storytelling is the key to maintaining
our humanity, fostering connection, and preserving our common
history. In Telling Your Story, he offers tips for people who are
interested in telling their own stories. Readers will learn how to
choose stories from their memories, how to journal, and find tips
for writing and oral storytelling as well as Jerry's seasoned tips
on speaking to a live radio or TV audience. Telling Your
Story reveals how Jerry weaves together his stories and teaches how
to transform experiences into cherished tales. Along the way,
readers will learn about the value of storytelling and how this
skill ties generations together, preserves local history, and much
more.
Fans of Jerry Apps will delight in his latest novel, "Blue Shadows
Farm," which follows the intriguing family story of three
generations on a Wisconsin farm.
Silas Starkweather, a Civil War veteran, is drawn to Wisconsin and
homesteads 160 acres in Ames County, where he is known as the
mysterious farmer forever digging holes. After years of hardship
and toil, however, Silas develops a commitment to farming his land
and respect for his new community. When Silas's son Abe inherits
Blue Shadows Farm he chooses to keep the land out of reluctant
necessity, distilling and distributing "purified corn water"
throughout Prohibition and the Great Depression in order to stay
solvent. Abe's daughter, Emma, willingly takes over the farm after
her mother's death. Emma's love for this place inspires her to open
the farm to school-children and families who share her respect for
it. As she considers selling the land, Emma is confronted with a
difficult question--who, through thick and thin, will care for Blue
Shadows Farm as her family has done for over a century? In the
midst of a controversy that disrupts the entire community, Emma
looks into her family's past to help her make crucial decisions
about the future of its land.
Through the story of the Starkweather family's changing fortunes,
and each generation's very different relationship with the farm and
the land, "Blue Shadows Farm" is in some ways the narrative of all
farmers and the increasingly difficult challenges they face as
committed stewards of the land. Finalist, General Fiction, Midwest
Book Awards
Wisconsin licence plates hail the state as ""America's Dairyland"".
It would be equally appropriate if the plates read ""America's Beer
Garden"", because Wisconsin and beer-brewing are virtually
synonymous. The state has given the USA more of its most prominent
national brands - Miller, Blatz, Schiltz and Pabst, to name but a
few - than any other region. But within Wisconsin , beer-making has
been a thriving industry as well, from cottage size to colossus,
and it would be a brave person who would start a tavern argument in
favour of, say, Garten Brau, knowing that loyal defenders of Point
or Huber, Leinenkugels or Chippewa Pride, Rhinelander or Miller,
were all around. Indeed there have probably been more beers born in
Wisconsin than whiskies in Scotland. This book is their story. It
is the story first of the European immigrants who brought master
brewing skills to the frontier in the early 19th century and of the
origin and growth of the modern industrial giants. Between 1840 and
1960, Wisconsin saw a rich history of growth (and decline), of
technological innovation, of the emergence of the parallel
industries from agriculture to advertising, of movements such as
Prohibition and the Anti-Saloon league, of the struggle between the
independents and the conglomerates and of colourful personalities
in Wisconsin's history who enlivened the scene: Joseph Huber,
Valentine Blatz, the Miller and Pabst families and all the others.
All are brought vividly to life in these pages. Foremost, however,
this is a Wisconsin story: tiny rural communities that became
brewing metropolises, pioneers who built fortunes and traditions
that are part of Wisconsin culture to this day, the evolution of
the taverns, the brewery buildings themselves as period artifact
and art form, and the consumers whose thirst for beer made the
whole history possible. ""Breweries of Wisconsin"" also includes a
list of every brewery and beer in the state's history and quiz
items.
The year is 1955. The H. H. Harlow Pickle Company has appeared in
the small town of Link Lake, using heavy-handed tactics to force
family farmers to either farm the Harlow way or lose their biggest
customer - and, possibly, their land. Andy Meyer, the owner of a
half-acre pickle patch, works part-time for the Harlow Company, a
conflict that places him between the family farm and the big
corporation. As he sees how Harlow begins to change the rural
community and the lives of its people, Andy must make personal,
ethical, and life-changing decisions.
In this eminently readable story, Jerry Apps delves into the heart
of small-town America. Reckoning with timely problems and opinions
that divide us, he shows us the power in restoring our
relationships with nature and our communities.
When journalist Josh Wittmore moves from the Illinois bureau of
Farm Country News to the newspaper's national office in Wisconsin,
he encounters the biggest story of his young career-just as the
paper's finances may lead to its closure. Josh's big story is that
a corporation that plans to establish an enormous hog farm has
bought a lot of land along the Tamarack River in bucolic Ames
County. Some of the local residents and officials are excited about
the jobs and tax revenues that the big farm will bring, while
others worry about truck traffic, porcine aromas, and manure runoff
polluting the river. And how would the arrival of a large
agribusiness affect life and traditions in this tightly knit rural
community of family farmers? Josh strives to provide impartial
agricultural reporting, even as his newspaper is replaced by a new
Internet-only version owned by a former New York investment banker.
And it seems that there may be another force in play: the vengeful
ghost of a drowned logger who locals say haunts the valley of the
Tamarack River.
When the Alstage Mining Company proposes a frac sand mine in the
small Ames County village of Link Lake, events quickly escalate to
a crisis. Business leader Marilyn Jones of the Link Lake Economic
Development Council heads the pro-mine forces, citing needed jobs
and income for the county. Octogenarian Emily Higgins and other
Link Lake Historical Society members are aghast at the proposed
mine location in the community park, where a huge and ancient bur
oak - the historic Trail Marker Oak - has stood since it pointed
the way along an old Menominee trail. Reluctantly caught in the
middle of the fray is Ambrose Adler, a reclusive, retired farmer
with a secret. Soon the fracas over frac sand attracts some
national attention, including that of Stony Field, the pen name of
a nationally syndicated columnist. Will the village board vote to
solve their budget problems with a cut of the mining profits? Will
the mine create real jobs for local folks? Will Stony Field come to
the village to lead protests against the mine? And will defenders
of the Trail Marker Oak literally draw a battle line in the sand?
Wisconsin has not always been the dairy state, but cheese is a
notable part of its heritage. Capturing the voices of farmers, milk
haulers, makers, and graders, Jerry Apps provides a rich view into
the history of cheese in the state, beginning with its humble
origins in farmhouse kitchens. As he explores the extraordinary
diversity of cheese products, he peppers his lively narrative with
obscure lore. In this updated edition of a classic, Apps examines
tumultuous changes in the business over the past twenty years,
including the impacts of corporate megafarms and the rise of
artisanal producers. Vivid historical photographs and striking
portraits of modern family-operated factories reveal the delicate
balance between art and science that goes into the process of
turning ordinary milk into a wide variety of flavors, from the
ubiquitous cheddar to sublime delicacies. Through these stories, we
can come to better appreciate the remarkable farmers and producers
that shaped cheesemaking into the thriving industry it is today.
In 1910, when Olaf F. Larson was born to tenant livestock and
tobacco farmers in Rock County, Wisconsin, the original barn still
stood on the property. It was filled with artifacts of an earlier
time--an ox yoke, a grain cradle, a scythe used to cut hay by hand.
But Larson came of age in a brave new world of modern
inventions--tractors, trucks, combines, airplanes--that would
change farming and rural life forever. "When Horses Pulled the
Plow" is Larson's account of that rural life in the early twentieth
century. He weaves invaluable historical details--including
descriptions of farm equipment, crops, and livestock--with wry
tales about his family, neighbors, and the one-room schoolhouse he
attended, revealing the texture of everyday life in the rural
Midwest almost a century ago. This memoir, written by Larson in his
ninth decade, provides a wealth of details recalled from an earlier
era and an illuminating read for anyone with their own memories of
growing up on a farm.
The year is 1955. Andy Meyer, a young farmer, manages the pickle
factory in Link Lake, a rural town where the farms are small, the
conversation is meandering, and the feeling is distinctly
Midwestern. Workers sort, weigh, and dump cucumbers into huge vats
where the pickles cure, providing a livelihood to local farmers.
But the H. H. Harlow Pickle Company has appeared in town, using
heavy-handed tactics to force family farmers to either farm the
Harlow way or lose their biggest customer--and, possibly, their
land. Andy, himself the owner of a half-acre pickle patch, works
part-time for the Harlow Company, a conflict that places him
between the family farm and the big corporation. As he sees how
Harlow begins to change the rural community and the lives of its
people, Andy must make personal, ethical, and life-changing
decisions. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the
American Association of School Librarians, and Outstanding Book,
selected by the Public Library Association
The fourth novel in Jerry Apps's Ames County series, "Cranberry
Red" brings the story into the present, portraying the challenges
of agriculture in the twenty-first century.
As the novel opens, Ben Wesley has lost his job as agricultural
agent for Ames County. He is soon hired as a research application
specialist for Osborne University, a for-profit institution that
has developed "Cranberry Red," a new chemical that promises not
only to improve cranberry crop yields but also to endow the fruits
with the power to prevent heart disease, reduce brain damage from
strokes, and ward off Alzheimer's disease. Ben must promote the new
product to cranberry growers in Ames County and beyond, but he
worries whether the promised results are credible. Was Cranberry
Red rushed to market?
When the chemical does all that the university claims it will do,
Ben is relieved . . . until disturbing side effects emerge. Can he
criticize Cranberry Red and safeguard farmers and consumers without
losing his job, or will Ben's honesty get him fired while his
community continues to get sicker?
Finalist, General Fiction, Midwest Book Awards
Since the Eagle Party took power in the United States, all schools
and public utilities have been privatized, churches and libraries
closed, and independent news media shut down. Drones buzz overhead
in constant surveillance of the populace, and the open internet has
been replaced by the network of the New Society Corporation.
Environmental degradation and unchecked climate change have brought
raging wildfires to the Western states and disastrous flooding to
Eastern coastal regions. In the Midwest, a massive storm sends Lake
Michigan surging over the Door County peninsula, and thousands of
refugees flee inland. In the midst of this apocalypse, a
resourceful band of Wisconsin sixty-somethings calling themselves
the Oldsters lays secret plans to fight the ruling regime's
propaganda and show people how to think for themselves.
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