A Book Review on Old Farm By Jerry Apps

By Joan Sanstadt News Editor
Thursday, October 23, 2008 7:18 AM CDT

For Jerry Apps the love of land has always been a given. A professor emeritus at UW-Madison, Apps has written many a book about farming, farm life and growing up on a Waushara County farm.

But in his latest book, Old Farm, the topic is really about the genealogy of land. That’s because he’s carefully researched the farmland his dad sold to him and his brothers for $1 back in 1966.

It’s important to point out the farm in the book is not the farm on which Apps grew up; it is adjacent to it. His dad bought the farm pretty much for back taxes and a couple of years later saw to it that his sons finally had some land of their own.

Much like the careful method James Michener used in writing his best selling books a few decades ago, Apps begins his book by describing how the receding glacier left the land.

“Our land is part of a moraine, or ridge of glacial deposit, that extends north to Stevens Point and south to Rock County,” he writes. The moraine is where the glacier stopped before beginning its gradual retreat.

The real meaning of a 1913 Wisconsin and Natural History Survey of the county “means we’ve got poor soil that requires lots of rain before crops amount to anything,” Apps says.

Not only is one of the book’s chapters called the “Terminal Moraine and Tension Zone,” Apps admits to using these words to conjure up “tall tales” for his grandchildren.

The tension zone even has a definition given it by biologists. “It’s an imaginary band 20 or 30 miles wide that passes through northwestern Wisconsin, then through the central part of the state, and on south, ending at Lake Michigan south of Sheboygan.”

More simply stated it’s the area of the state where plant species that are natural to the north overlap and grow along side species that are characteristic of the south. For instance, on his farm, Apps has found Burr oak, a southern species, as well as White pine, usually found only in the north.

Apps said he made heavy use of the Internet as he carried on his research. Not only can survey maps be found on the web n so can old Indian Treaties between native peoples and the U.S. Government.

People frequently remark how winding County Highway A is, Apps related. “Well, it was once an Indian trail.”

The author expresses a lot of empathy for the early surveyors who were sent out by the federal government to areas where there was no infrastructure. “They camped in tents and cut through brush with axes, all the while making their maps, measuring and writing notes about what they say.”

Incidentally, some of those original surveyor notes were also found on the Internet.

Interesting to learn that Rose Township wasn’t named for the nearby village of Wild Rose, nor for its abundance of wild roses; rather, it was named for Rose, N.Y., from where many of its earliest residents originated.

From the time of the 1862 Homestead Act, Apps has traced the ownership of the land. Before his dad bought the farm, it was owned by the Coombes family. As a boy, Apps knew the Coombes family and has interspersed some of the stories Ina Coombes told him into the narrative.

Wisconsin State Journal photographer Steve Apps, son of Jerry and Ruth, took the 100 photographs that are in the book. To get that 100, he took hundreds more. The hardest task was trying to get the photo of the Karner blue butterfly, now on the federal endangered species list.

Ever the educator, Apps has included an Appendix that lists “sources and tips for researching land and ancestors. He defines terms and gives contact information for his many information sources. Incidentally, those sources extend to identification helps for plants, animals, trees, birds, crops n and even a reading list “for background and inspiration.”

Not only is the book interesting to read, the photographs beautiful and inspiring, the authors he mentions are ones familiar to many readers including Rachel Carson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Aldo Leopold and others.

The book’s publisher is the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

Comments »

Comment on this story

Comments will be approved within 48 hours

Name:

Email: (optional)

Comments:

Image Verification: (Case sensitive)