(slow piano music)
(engine noise)
- Do you see any cranes or anything over here?
- I... Not this...
I haven't this morning so far.
One of the interesting things that I experienced as a kid was,
my father was one
who was curious about a lot of things,
especially was he curious about the out of doors.
And his way of showing me the out of doors,
"Come along with me
"and we're gonna take a walk today."
And these walks happened generally on Sunday afternoons
because we were farm people,
and there was farm work to do all week long.
And we would check the oat crop
and the corn crop and the hay crop.
And we would check as to whether or not
the cows had enough to eat for the next while in the pasture.
We would walk slowly,
and we would keep our mouths shut.
My dad was a stickler for
walking slowly and quietly.
He said, "What you need to do,
"if you really wanna understand nature,
"is not pay so much attention
"to what everybody else pays attention to,
"the loud noises and the stuff that's easily seen."
He said, "Learn how to listen
"for the whispers.
"Listen for what is not ordinarily heard."
And the second thing he said,
"Don't just look where the bright light shines.
"Learn to look in the shadows.
"Because it's in the shadows
"that there's a whole 'nother world.
"Learn to look in the shadows
"and listen for the whispers
"because the extent to which you do that
"is the extent to which you will come
"to know nature and know it deeply,
"know...
"far more important
"than simply becoming acquainted with.
"Further,
"whether it's an old barn, a field of corn,
"or an oak woods,
"the extent to which you know it
"is the extent to which you will take care of it."
That's a powerful message, and I've never forgotten that.
(slow piano music)
(rhythmic guitar music)
- The Land with Jerry Apps
was funded in part by
Holiday Vacations,
Ron and Colleen Weyers,
Stanley J. Cottrill Fund,
Carol Gainer,
and the National Endowment for the Humanities,
(rattling noise)
- Here's your seeds.
- Are you drilling them or what?
- Let Grandpa tell you what to do.
- I just realized that I don't know much about onions...
- Lettuce?
- Yeah, don't mess with the lettuce yet.
(laughs) We're gonna do the onions.
See there? Start with that.
Each take a handful.
- That's good.
- All right, so why don't one of you go down one row
and one of you go down the other row?
And plant 'em a little closer together than those are.
Plant 'em about like that. - This okay?
- Yeah. - Okay.
- You wanna go in that row, Ben, over there?
- My earliest memories up here
are actually playing in the garden
and taking Gator rides
and walking around up here
learning 'bout stuff
that I didn't really notice before
back at my own house,
about different trees,
about seeing a caterpillar,
wondering what it's doing,
wondering where it's going,
how it is related to everything else around it.
Back when my grandfather was young,
everybody was on farms.
And now, essentially,
like less than 5%, 2%,
and not as many people are as intertwined with nature
as back then.
- My Dad's knowledge of nature
was something, I think,
that was just a part of him.
I've never been able to figure out really
why he had this interest, other than
he was a farmer,
he had limited formal education, fifth grade!
Something else he always said,
"Just because you have a lot of education
"doesn't mean that you know anything."
He told me that often.
(laughs) He told me,
as the years went along,
he kept telling me that. (laughs)
You see a little on the maple right there.
See that?
He wanted to share what he knew,
and his way of sharing was to show me.
And he would quiz me all the time.
"What kind of a tree is that?" - "Geez, I don't--"
- "I just told you last week!
"That is a black oak.
"Remember this. That's a black oak.
"And what's a black oak good for?"
- "I don't know what a black--"
- "It's good for firewood.
"It's good for lumber."
- "Oh, really?" And we did that...
...again and again. Okay, you guys.
This is a quiz now.
- All right. - [Jerry] Right behind you,
what is that little tree right there?
- Is that a oak?
- No.
- Is that an Aspen?
- It's a black cherry.
- Oh, the black cherry.
- Yeah. (laughs)
You know, but you could just tell by looking at it.
- I'm not so good with the trees.
Birch is the one I can tell. (laughs)
But besides that,
it's pretty hard for me to do that.
But yeah, it's good.
I like the quizzes; keeps me on my toes.
With my age and my group, I mean,
if we wanna know something,
we can just Google it.
And so, I think a lot of times,
we have all this information, yet...
with all the trees
and getting to hear the sounds of the water,
the sounds of the leaves crackling,
the sound of the wind,
you don't get that when you're just at home
in front of your computer, in front of the TV.
- What's interesting about the oaks,
and this is an old thing that my dad taught me,
when the oak leaf is the size of a squirrel's ear...
Do you know the size of a squirrel's ear?
(laughs)
Then it's time to plant your corn.
- Oh, okay. - Yeah.
So you check--
First off, you have to know the size of a squirrel's ear.
- Yeah. - If you don't know that...
- I'm assuming pretty small.
- If you don't know that, you're lost.
But (laughs) you check the oak tree.
When it's about that big around,
that's the time to plant your corn.
- Oh. - Yeah.
And that's really kind of interesting
because my dad never paid any attention to the calendar.
(slow piano music)
See the maples? - Yeah.
- See the red on the maples?
Those maples now are in
early spring bloom.
That's the red that you see.
That's really a flower.
The maple flower comes out first.
- I'm just really curious about biology in general
and about how the biology of life works.
It's all very interesting to me.
It goes back to the curiosity
of what my grandfather was talking about with his dad.
- He just loved to sit under a tree
and listen to it talk to you.
Because every tree, just like the land,
has a message that it wants you to hear.
A tree talks to you in a language of the tree,
but it's speaking.
And the red pine and the white pine and the aspen,
each speak differently.
The aspen is all excited and the leaves flutter,
and the white pine
has a soothing quiet message.
These are the sorts of lessons that he taught.
He didn't call 'em lessons.
This pond has a pair of geese nesting on it...
somewhere.
In fact, it was a nest right over here at one time,
but it may have flooded out
when the water came up.
- I think my favorite part
is usually like the ponds area.
I mean, I always remember coming down to the ponds
because that's where all the wildlife gathers,
that's where everything comes together,
and I think I enjoy just kind of
sitting near the pond and listening to...
You have birds meet there.
You have little frogs.
You have, every once in a while,
you can see the fish swimming through.
I hope that it can be like this
for my kids and my grandkids
because, I mean, everything is involved
and intertwined with nature,
so I think it's not as high a priority as it should be.
Do geese just pair
or are they just pairs when they come and nest,
or do they have lots of geese?
- What's interesting about Canada geese
that a lot of people don't understand,
they pair for life.
- Really? - Really?
- Yep. They're monogamous.
They're really interesting in that respect,
different from ducks.
(geese honking)
And one of the things that I still enjoy very much
is the geese coming and going.
I know everything is right with the world
when the geese are flying in the spring
and flying south in the fall.
When they quit flying...
They're like the canary in the mine, I think.
If we don't see the geese flying north and south,
then something is wrong with the environment.
Out here, I tell 'ya, I really enjoy them
because sometimes you come down here on this pond
and just sit for an hour,
and you'll hear them talking to each other...
the pair.
I don't know what they talk about.
I suspect they're worried about if eggs are gonna hatch
and all that sort of thing, but they do.
"How's your summer, Mabel?"
"Oh, it's pretty good.
"How about yours, John?" (laughing)
I mean, that's what I think they were saying.
I don't know what they were saying.
"How are the young ones?"
- He always has stories to tell. He always talks about how
different animals are communicating in different ways,
how they have their own little conversations going on,
how they're always thinking about
what they're going to do, and how their home life is.
Similar names, but different species.
(laughing)
I go to James Madison Memorial High School,
and when I say that I'm going up to a farm,
they don't really know what that means generally.
They just think I'm gonna go camping
in some campsite.
But, no, I'm just learning about the outdoors.
It's almost an infinite amount of knowledge
that you can actually get from nature
just by walking around out here.
- This very patch of ground
is 10,000 years old.
How do I know that?
That's when the last glacier retreated.
And we happen to be standing on
the terminal moraine,
the end of the glacier.
That's why it's so hilly,
and there are a lot of stones here.
And the ponds were big chunks of ice
left over from the glacier.
And when the ice melted,
it dropped down,
and that formed the ponds.
- Yeah. - Well, the history of this place now:
10,000 years ago, there was nothing here.
The glacier had scraped everything.
There were no trees,
nothing.
And then, I don't know how many thousands of years ago,
the Native Americans came into this country,
and many, many years later,
this was still Menominee Indian country.
The Menominees traveled
from their trapping grounds in Adams County,
through this very land right here,
to Berlin, which is on the Fox River,
where there was a trading post.
And they camped, I suspect, right up in here.
Now one of the stories that I learned,
the person who owned this place ahead of us, the Combs's,
Mrs. Combs was in her 80s when I was probably 16,
and I would come down here,
and she would tell me stories about how the Menominees
would travel through here and would come up to the house
and trade
maple syrup and maple sugar
for salt because they were always short of salt.
And I thought she was just telling me a story.
I really did.
And then, when I did some
historical digging on this property
and looked at the first survey map,
which was drawn in 1851,
a squiggly little line, and the surveyor had written,
"Indian Trail."
- Right through here? - Yeah.
I mean, it's unbelievable how
she was not spoofing me at all.
She was telling me what she remembered as a little girl.
(slow guitar music)
Every piece of land has a story to tell.
You just gotta know
how to look for it.
The story is in the trees.
The story is in the land.
The story is in
where these two ponds maybe went together.
And it's such fun to stand and wonder,
"What's this land trying to tell me?"
And sometimes
you come up with exactly the wrong answer,
but it gives you a starting place,
and that's why it's kind of fun.
We've got to learn how to listen.
We don't know how to listen to the land.
Sounds a little corny, but that's what we have to do.
(engine roars)
(engine shuts off)
- That smells good. Burgers?
- Hungry? - Oh, yeah.
(man laughs)
- A Black-eyed Susan in full bloom.
See that, right there?
Isn't that a beautiful wildflower?
- Yeah, it is.
- Black-eyed Susan.
Your mother's name is Susan,
and she always called these
"Black-eyed Susies." It's just kind of a cute flower.
On to the black cherry.
Growing a crop, you do that in terms of the seasons.
There's a planting season,
there's a growing season,
there's a harvesting season,
there's a planning season,
and then you do it over again.
It's a yearly cycle.
But growing a piece of land
is not a yearly cycle.
It's a multiple-year cycle.
And it probably goes in circles.
I don't know what that circle is.
I don't know where we are on this property, after 40 years.
I don't know if that's the beginning,
if that's in the middle, if that's halfway.
I don't know that, and I don't care.
My grandkids, they'll have to come along after me
and ask the same questions.
"Where are we in that cycle?
And if they're smart about it,
they would say, "But it really doesn't matter."
(engine roars) (slow music)
This is a very interesting piece of history for this farm,
this hump of dirt.
People will say, "What is that hump?"
Well, in the 1930s,
this entire area was plowed and planted to crops.
And during the time of the
Dust Bowl
in states like Oklahoma and Kansas,
people don't realize that we also had
a very severe Dust Bowl here in Central Wisconsin.
I remember as a kid
the clouds of dust just boiling up out of the west,
and our home farm was only a couple miles from here,
and the dust was so thick that
when the sun went down in the afternoon, the whole sky was
a purple-reddish color
because of the dust.
It literally tore the plants
right out of the ground and buried them.
Not only did you lose the crop,
but you lost probably
as much as three, four, five inches of topsoil.
It moved it from west to east.
The farms all moved from west to east on the wind.
(chuckles)
This particular farm, the dust
accumulated right where we're standing, on this big hump.
And why did it stop here?
Because at the very beginning of that dry period,
John Combs, who owned this farm,
planted this row of big white pine,
and that stopped the wind,
and thus, the blowing dirt
all accumulated in this big hump.
That big row that you see down there,
we planted those in '66 -'67.
Your mother helped plant those. - Oh, really?
- As a matter of fact.
But they don't compare to that white pine
that we see right there, for example.
It's 85 years old,
and look how big it is.
I mean, it's a huge tree. Geez.
Beautiful tree.
- It's interesting to know the history of your land
and if you didn't really know that,
then you'd just think that
there's just random trees that are all in a row.
It's not just nature that's shaping itself,
but humans that are helping it.
It makes you seem a lot more little
compared to everything else.
I mean, your life, I guess, we're basically 20,
and these trees are 40, 50 years old,
so something that's 2-1/2 times your age, I mean...
- I think it makes me look forward to the future
and how this is gonna look in another 20 years, or so.
- Passing on
what the land was about
to the next generation and the generation after that
without doing any harm to it,
I'm trying to do that.
But I'm trying to improve on what had previously happened
because this land
had been almost destroyed
through wind and water erosion.
Huge gullies.
And so now, slowly, it's healing.
And it's taking many years,
but it's healing.
It's getting better.
And there are no gullies, and there's no wind erosion.
Here, you guys, where you see the plowing,
that furrow, I plowed that this spring,
and we've planted, so you can see
the little trees growing in there.
You might ask, "Why did you plow a furrow
before you planted the trees?"
Do you know why? - I don't know why.
- Do you know why, Ben? - I have no clue.
- Oh, come on now.
- A furrow.
Look at all the grass around here.
For a tree to grow,
for any plant to grow, it needs light,
and by plowing a furrow,
I have given the tree a chance.
We start planting usually by the middle of April,
and I don't think
we've missed a year
that I didn't plant some trees here.
Sometimes only a hundred, sometimes...
Four years ago we planted 7,000. (Josh and Jerry laugh)
And in the early days,
we planted a thousand every year,
four rows all the way around.
And then,
we planted little patches,
a hundred trees here and a hundred trees there.
- How come you put 'em in patches?
- This farm
is very subject to water erosion,
meaning gullies form when it rains hard.
And so, the steep side hills,
I planted the trees to stop water erosion.
That was the main reason.
- So, how come you left all this open then?
- Well, this whole area
I left open because
underneath red pine that are planted this thick,
there's absolutely nothing, almost nothing,
that grows underneath them... a tree desert.
And besides that, I get a big kick
out of prairie restoration.
This land was first plowed,
can you believe this now?
It was plowed in 1867 with oxen.
And it was all big, tall grass at the time.
And from 1867 to 1966,
it had been farmed.
Plowed, planted to corn,
planted to oats, planted to hay.
This is a poor farm. It's sandy.
And so one of the reasons I've done this
is that I wanted to see what would happen
if you just left it alone.
And then I allowed
the wild grasses
and the wildflowers to emerge by themselves.
And people said to me,
"What are you gonna do with all the weeds?"
This is interesting.
You don't have to worry about the weeds.
In two or three years, the weeds will disappear,
and the native grasses and the wildflowers will start coming
all by themselves.
- How does that happen?
- I don't know how it happens.
That's the mystery of it.
And that's the fun of it
because almost every year,
I discover a wildflower I have not known,
a wild grass
I've not seen before.
It's called "Big Bluestem" because...
you see that bluish
tinge to it?
- Yeah, this is a nice little patch,
right here.
By late August, early September,
this will be... it will be like this.
It'll be about this tall.
And not only will it grow six feet tall,
it's got a root system that goes six feet down.
One of the interesting questions is,
how old do you think it is?
You know, it could be 500 years old.
- Wow. - Older than that.
I've known a lot of people who know all kinds of facts.
They can identify all of these plants
and they know the Latin names and they know it all,
and that's wonderful, but that's just the beginning.
Accumulating facts does not mean that you know.
And knowing means oh-so-much more.
It's so much deeper.
It's a connection to history.
It's a spiritual thing,
to be honest about it.
Knowing is the deepest kind of way
of relating to something.
It's a connection between the human person
and this thing called the land .
Knowing is something that some of us strive for,
I've been striving for and never quite get there,
but striving for it is so much fun,
and it's so important,
and to stop with the identification of a plant
and saying, "Well, now I know that plant."
You don't know that plant at all!
You just know its name.
(engine roaring)
Just down the trail a little bit
is the most unattractive tree you ever could imagine.
(laughing) That's true.
And if you're interested in aesthetics and beauty
and a wonderful symmetrical tree
that is appealing to all,
this ain't it.
This scraggly-looking specimen is a jack pine.
I have no idea how old it is.
It could be 75 years old.
It grows in every direction.
It is certainly nothing to look at.
- How'd it get its name?
- I have no idea.(laughs) - Who is Jack?
- I have no idea who Jack was in relation to this pine tree.
I make fun of it, but it, in its own way,
it's an absolutely beautiful specimen
of what it's like to live on
poor, droughty soil and survive.
It's a symbol of survival in the sand country.
They're something like the old curmudgeons
that lived on this land.
They don't want a lot of company. (Josh laughs)
You notice it really stands alone.
It doesn't wanna be with other trees.
It doesn't care that there's not another jack pine nearby.
It's just happy standing there all by itself.
(Josh laughs)
That old jack pine wants to be respected, too.
It wants you to know that,
"Look, I'm still here.
"People come and go, but I'm gonna be here a while."
(slow piano music)
- I don't see this as an economic,
somewhere to have this land and make money off it.
I don't look at it that way.
I look at it as an aesthetic value.
Growing up in the city,
I haven't grown plants or crops long enough
to be able to know how to do that stuff,
but I mean for the future,
I'd love to be able to come up here
and work in our garden more
and have that knowledge
to be sustainable or self-sufficient.
I think that's a very cool idea.
- Every plant has several of those that are plump,
and it has several of them that aren't.
And you have to treat the plant quite gently because
you'll pull out the root.
When I was growing up, the various activities
on the farm were divided up.
My dad was responsible for the cattle and the fieldwork.
And my mother, she was responsible
for the chicken flock and the garden.
She would enlist my dad and my brothers and me on occasion,
only were we invited.
We could not offer. We should not offer.
Stay out of the garden. It is her garden.
But when she said, "Now, I need your help hoeing,"
then we showed up to hoe.
And my dad, somehow, he just listened to that.
He did not argue.
There were two events where I sometimes got involved.
When we picked the green beans,
which we will be doing here in a week or two,
and one was shucking peas,
you pick the peas and you have to shuck 'em.
With my mother, I sat at the kitchen table,
and we would each have a pan on our laps,
and then she begins
asking questions.
"What do you think you want to do
"when you get through with grade school?"
I said, "Geez, I don't know.
"Maybe I'd
be a farmer like Pa."
- And so, that's how the afternoon went,
she asking me questions,
and then I learned a lot about her, too.
She said to me, she said,
"You know, I always wanted to be a teacher."
I did not know that.
- I think I decided I wanted to be a teacher in second grade,
but when both your parents are teachers
and your aunt was a teacher and your cousins are teachers,
it's sort of...
- Those days
that I had a chance to sit with my mother
across the kitchen table
on a hot day in July
turned into something kind of interesting
because she learned something about me that she didn't know,
I learned something about her that she hadn't shared before.
I have never not had a garden,
save for the time I was in the Army.
I've had gardens for years,
years and years.
(roaring engine)
(slow piano music)
What do you think is gonna happen out of this one?
- The big ones. - Each time's a surprise.
Look at that! - Mm.
A couple good ones there.
- As we go down this way, they're gonna get bigger.
- What have we got? Oh, wow!
This one, that's a good size.
- What do you think?
- I think Bugs Bunny would eat this one.
- This would be a very busy time of the year for us
because mid-September was cutting corn for silage time.
And we would load it on a wagon
and haul it up to the silo filler.
When the silo was filled,
that usually was two or three weeks
after the threshing was done.
My dad clearly, he wouldn't say it,
but you could tell there was a feeling of,
"We've made it through another season."
One of the things that
we did do this time of the year,
which we did all the time, but especially in September
when the nights were a little cooler
and the mornings were a little cooler,
we would continue our walking, our exploring.
My dad would be checking the corn that was remaining,
and he was always looking at the neighbors, too.
There was a lot of comparing going on,
but nobody talked about that, but everybody did it.
They always wanna see how
the neighbor was doing.
All of that was going on in September.
And the garden,
we were still harvesting things from the garden,
digging carrots and doing all of that.
You guys notice the zinnias?
- Oh, yeah. - The flowers?
- Yeah, those are zinnias.
My dad always, when he planted the garden,
he always said, "You got to
"put something in the garden that's pretty
"that's not necessarily there for eating."
And he always had dahlias, beautiful dahlias.
I usually plant some kind of a flower.
This year, zinnia.
So that's why they're there.
They're kind of pretty.
(slow guitar music)
- It's a different type of learning.
It's not straightforward.
But once you start getting into it, it's hard to stop.
When I was younger and my mom brought me up here,
I was mostly excited for, like, Gator rides
and just, like, the thrill of driving around up here.
I thought we were going so fast and it was amazing.
But now, as I grow older,
Gator rides are still fun, obviously,
but it's more the idea that you can just be in nature.
It's just the relaxation compared to downtown cities.
And it's the crazy contrast between those two
that's exhilarating almost.
- See that little ant?
That little trail's where they go out
and forage and they come back.
They're able to carry something that's several times their size.
- See them moving the sticks around.
- See the size of those sticks on there?
They carry those around.
They're slowly building the anthill taller
by bringing those little sticks in.
And how they talk to each other,
I don't know if anybody knows, (Josh laughs)
but they ...
- I really appreciate coming out here
because you don't get to see this type of nature
in the city, or not well anyway,
and I think that's my favorite part about being out here.
I just kind of get out here and wander around
and kind of get lost.
You just get to see new things every time.
It's a lot quieter,
a little mini-escape, I guess you could say,
getting away from all of your,
in my case, being a college student.
So I don't have to worry about my homework
or anything when I'm out here.
I just come out here and get to be away from it all.
- Like the land itself and the animals and the trees,
they all have a story to tell.
Well, the plants have a story to tell.
And, this one has just a really interesting story to tell.
This is a lead plant.
It grows in clumps, as you can see.
When the pioneers ran onto this stuff,
the breaking plow
got all tangled up with the roots,
so they called it the devil's shoelace...
(laughing) ...because they didn't like it.
And why is it called a lead plant?
Well, there are a couple of answers to that question.
If you look at the leaves, somebody said,
"Well, it looks like the leaves "are dusted with white lead."
And it does look a little like that, doesn't it?
It's green. - Metallic.
- Yeah, it looks kind of metallic.
Also, prior to the pioneers coming here,
the Native Americans used this particular plant
by drying the leaves and making a tea.
So it had medicinal properties.
So it's just an all-around interesting plant.
(slow music) (engine roaring)
In a way, I do look at this as similar to
the kind of harvest that we were doing on the home farm
because just as we watched the crops,
the oat crop go from just coming up to being harvested,
the corn crop from
planting time,
here it's happening naturally.
And it's so fun.
Each year, I don't know what crop is planted.
It's a mystery.
For those who say,
"Well, you've seen a prairie, you've seen them all,"
you haven't.
There'll be something different, something new.
When have you guys seen as much yellow in one place?
(Josh and Ben laugh) Huh?
- Packer games. (laughs)
I don't know.
No, I've never seen this many yellow flowers before.
- Well, it's really quite amazing.
And this year, because we've had
some good recent rains,
it's a little more vivid than usual.
There are at least three different kinds of goldenrod.
That's what we're seeing mostly.
If you look closely, look at this one right here,
notice how that one is vivid yellow right now,
and the one to the left of it is in decline.
So, that means that it's likely a different kind.
And blazing star, that's that other little flower
that you see in there that punctuates the picture
with some purple going along with all of the yellow.
And people look at this and they say,
"Why in the world do you stand up there
"and say how beautiful all of that is
"because don't you know that goldenrods
"are seen as a weed by some people?"
And that's true.
And also, for those who have an allergy,
goldenrod can be a bit of a problem.
For me, my dad would say this, too,
"There are things
that we just need to look at."
And the big question is,
what does worth mean?
Does worth always have to be economic?
No, in my opinion.
Sometimes, that which is most worthy
has no economic dimension to it at all.
I'm talking about that which is most difficult to define.
Some would say it's the spiritual dimension
of what I'm looking at,
that which affects us emotionally,
sometimes in ways that we don't even realize.
And I often come out here to this prairie
and I'll just sit here,
just when the sun's going down.
I may see a deer,
but mostly it's just quiet.
It's just the environment and me.
And why do I do that?
And how does that affect me?
I can't tell you.
It's just something that I need to do.
It's a chance to relate to something
that is beyond...
...definition.
(slow piano music)
And then off here to the left,
that's called "butter and eggs."
Doesn't grow very tall.
It grows in patches.
There's a patch of it there.
And when you look straight ahead,
down in that hallow.
See that hallow down there?
- Mm-hmm. - Oh, yeah.
- That's just filled with butter and eggs.
The monarch butterflies like goldenrod.
If you look around, you see monarchs
flying all over the place.
And there's a whole array of other insects
that live off-- There goes a monarch right now.
- See it? - Mm-hmm.
- They're just all over the place.
They love the goldenrods.
- What other kind of butterflies do you see out here?
- All kinds.
One of the interesting things
is that we use no insecticides here
because we're not growing corn or other grains
or anything like that.
And thus, we have all kinds of butterflies
and other insects, as well.
The insecticides that kill harmful insects
on commercial crops, of course,
kill butterflies, too, and other insects.
And here, they are free to roam.
I think my dad had a relationship to the land
that was reciprocal.
It was sort of like,
this sounds strange
and he would never have said it this way,
but it goes something like this:
I'll take care of you,
meaning the land,
and I know that you're gonna take care of me.
That's a profound idea because so often today,
the land is seen as commodity,
let's make some money off of it.
I understand that.
He understood that in a different way.
He understood that he was going to receive,
but he had to give back.
And so you didn't put corn on the same patch of ground
year after year.
You moved the crops around.
Crop rotation it was called.
And it invigorated the land
just as we, as human beings,
are invigorated with variety.
The same thing over and over and over again
does not do us any great benefit,
just as the land does not wanna be,
and I'm speaking against the common
thread of thought these days,
it does not want the same crop
year after year after year after year.
Ten years ago, I probably wouldn't have talked this way,
but there comes a time when the truth
needs to be told.
(meadow insects and birds chirping)
(slow music)
In the fall of the year, that transition time,
that time to celebrate,
the time to change,
to do something different,
again, it sounds hokey,
but the land talks to me.
It wants to tell me these stories
that I remember as a kid.
The reminders are everywhere.
The smells of fall,
all of those leaves on the ground,
the smells bring me back to that time.
Smell is a powerful memory trigger.
And then the sounds of fall.
The wind going through the trees.
And, of course, all of the colors of fall.
And the geese, the geese flying now north to south
in long Vs, honking their way along.
(geese honking)
My memories, and maybe I'm blessed or cursed,
but my memories mostly are in stories.
They're not just events that happened.
There are people involved.
There are emotions involved.
They are all the elements of what a story is,
and maybe that's from my relatives,
especially my dad, who was a storyteller.
Right next to us is an old 80-acre farm
that was once owned by a fellow, Morton Oliphant.
As kids, we called him
"Morty Elephant" because
we didn't know about Oliphant.
Very poor, old bachelor.
Most of the neighbors and the community
sort of ignored him because he had
a speech impediment.
He stuttered.
He stuttered so badly you could hardly understand
a word that he said.
And so people just ignored him.
Well, my dad didn't.
We lived a couple of miles from here, then.
And he would stutter a welcome
and we would sit down by the wood stove.
My dad said to him,
"Morty, I think Jerry
"would like to see what's in that little box
"over there by the wood stove."
And I kind of perked up.
I see a little box over there.
And Morty would make this... (clicks mouth)
noise like that with his mouth. (clicks mouth)
Out of that box came a full-grown raccoon!
(laughs) I mean I'd never seen a raccoon that close.
And the raccoon walked right up to him
and he sat there.
And Morty would go... (clicks mouth)
and the raccoon would make kind of a clicking noise.
And, he would hand the raccoon a peanut.
(Josh and Ben laugh)
Yeah, he had peanuts in his pocket,
unshucked peanut.
And the raccoon, they almost have like...
Their little front paws are like hands.
And the raccoon would open up the peanut,
put the shell on the floor,
and put the peanut in his mouth.
I'm just sitting there like, "This is really something!"
Which it was. (Josh laughs)
But then,
he lifts up a floorboard in the kitchen,
and guess what comes out of that hole?
A full-grown badger.
- No way. - A badger?
- Big bugger. I mean, they're big.
This big old badger waddles across the floor,
stops right in front of him,
and starts to purr like a kitten.
I mean, geez, I think it's gonna bite off my leg.
It's not. No.
The badger and Morty are carrying on a conversation.
I swear they're talking to each other.
I don't know what they're talking about.
I can't understand either one of 'em.
(Ben laughs) What's that all about?
Well, here, this guy who's living all by himself,
he had a way of communing with nature that's unbelievable.
These were his friends.
First off, I think we have to get the past the notion--
We're animals, too.
Even though we may think we're so far above a raccoon,
we're still animals.
And maybe deep within our DNA,
there's a communication link that crosses the species.
Now, I'm stretching it now when I say that,
but that may be so.
- You think you have that connection?
- I don't know. I've never talked to a badger.
(laughs)
- He's had us out here
since' I was a little kid,
and maybe I didn't realize what he was doing,
but, subconsciously maybe, I'm picking up on it now.
I finally am old enough to realize how important it is
to care about these things.
So valuable.
I can go up to him, ask him whatever,
and even if he doesn't know the answer,
he's going to tell me something anyway. (laughs)
"There's a good story in everything,"
that's what he tells me.
So I think that's his valuable lesson that he's taught me.
- Way back in 1947, when I was 12 years old,
I was in eighth grade and came home from school one day,
and I was feeling awful.
I had a headache, sore throat.
And the following morning when I woke up,
my right leg didn't work.
I did not...
I should have, I guess, because the neighbor boy
just a half mile away died of polio,
but I did not think of polio.
I thought it was something that would go away
in a day or two,
something like when you get kicked by a cow
and your leg doesn't work too well,
and then when it gets better, you can go again.
But this didn't go away.
Like three days later,
the folks finally decided
they should take me to a doctor
because my leg wasn't getting better.
The idea of going immediately to the doctor was unheard of.
Country people didn't do that.
You're supposed to tough it out.
Well, you don't tough out polio.
And my doctor reminded me,
"You really are lucky."
I said, "What do you mean I'm lucky?
"I can't stand up."
He said, "You're still alive."
Which sort of puts it in perspective, doesn't it?
- Yeah. Did you have other classmates
with polio?
- Sure, in the years right after the war,
'45, '6, '7, '8, '9,
those were polio years all through the Midwest.
I was a little concerned
because the hospital
was full of polio victims,
and there was a kid or two dying
almost every day.
So they didn't admit me
to the hospital because there wasn't any room.
When the doctor told me
that I was lucky I was still alive,
I wasn't so sure I was gonna continue to be alive.
Because when my mother said,
"What should we do with him?"
and the doctor said, "Take him home,
"give him a lot of liquids, and keep him warm,"
and that sounded like maybe in a week or so,
I wouldn't be around anymore.
Terrible feeling when you're 12 years old.
- Yeah, I can't imagine. - Yeah.
- Did you know of any way to, like, get better?
Like was there any rehab that you could do?
- I had no idea, and I couldn't walk even.
I couldn't stand up hardly for the better part
of several months.
And so, one of the first things that happened in April
when the snow was gone and I was able
to get around a little bit,
I still was feeling just absolutely worthless
at that time,
and nobody would have anything much to do with me
because I was ornery.
My brothers were down on me because they had to do my chores
and all that sort of thing.
So, I would go out into the woods.
We had a 20-acre woods back of our farmhouse,
and it looked something like where we are right now.
It was a very quiet place,
and one of the interesting things,
this sounds maybe a little quirky,
but sitting in the woods,
the trees,
well, they would listen to you,
and they wouldn't talk back.
And it feels-- That sounds really weird.
- What do you mean?
- That sounds weird, but it's true.
So I would sit out in the woods and just sit there.
Well, when I came back home,
I wasn't feeling quite so sorry for myself.
That idea of
going out into a place that is quiet,
where there are a lot of trees around.
There's mystery to that, there's mystique to that.
It was my therapy.
It's a terrible disease.
You feel absolutely devastated and worthless,
and people asked me about it.
I say to them once you've had polio,
you always have it because it's not only a physical problem
but it's a psychological one because you go through life
feeling somewhat less than everybody else.
Another dimension to that which is,
unfortunately,
was very common in those days,
if you had, as a country kid especially,
if you had some kind of a physical disability,
you also were immediately judged to be mentally incompetent.
So you go through life trying to cover up for it.
Well, my dad would have none of that.
Each night what he did...
My dad thought that
horse liniment was good for everything.
(Josh and Ben laugh)
If you had an upset stomach, he gave you horse liniment.
If you had a sore muscle,
you got horse liniment.
That's both for people and for horses...
(laughs) and cows.
And so what he did,
he rubbed my knee with horse liniment
and pulled on it to try and make it work,
and by two or three weeks, I could bend it again.
And I was so mad at him, I mean...
(Ben laughs) - It hurt probably.
- It hurt like a bugger.
And this horse liniment must have red pepper in it.
Oh, man, I had a hot knee.
Oh, geez.
Every night, just hot knee.
And by the end of April into May,
I was able to go to school again.
I talked to nobody about it.
I always limped a little bit,
but I never talked about it
because that nagging feeling of worthlessness
just hangs in there.
- So when you were out here by yourself in the woods,
what would you think about to get you cheered up?
- I tried to think about nothing.
There are times when it's important
to try and wipe your mind clear.
Just to turn off the cell phone or leave it home.
Just be quiet, sit down.
You'd be surprised what happens.
- Since people are just on their phones constantly,
I don't think they can actually just think to themselves
because they're just taking in information.
I must admit,
I'm probably on my cell phone
more than I probably should be,
or want to be, I guess,
but it's the feeling that
if you aren't connected to everybody around you,
then you're just gonna get left behind.
And that idea just seems so meaningless
when you're out here.
- I learned this from my dad when I was two years old
when we went out to the woods: "Be quiet, sit down."
I don't know what he was thinking about.
And I never said to him, "What should I think about?"
I mean that would have been a dumb thing to ask him.
He would look at you like you're nuts.
As I think about it,
I think my dad was thinking just as I'm thinking now.
He was thinking about when he was a kid.
He was just looking off in the distance, like I do here.
And I'm certain what he was thinking about
what it was like when he was kid
when my aunts and uncles were all there
and what it was like,
he was born in 1899,
what it would be like in 1910, 1912.
What kind of animals were here, what kind of trees were here.
I'm sure he was thinking about that.
And that's what I'm doing,
and that's what I hope my grandboys,
I hope they will do that.
I'm looking forward to them saying,
"You know, I remember when we helped plant trees,
"and I remember when we helped cut wood."
And I hope that they see those as valuable memories.
We're at that time of the year,
it's a kind of celebration for nature,
and it wants to show off in its own way,
quietly, but vividly, with all of the color.
It's always, well, sometimes we're in too big of a hurry
doing everything that we're doing
to take time to respect, appreciate,
and enjoy
that nature is trying to show us something
that is really quite spectacular.
It's sort of like going to a fireworks display.
And at the end of the fireworks,
there's this big explosion of color.
That's what nature is doing with autumn.
There's this huge explosion of color,
and then everything goes drab and quiet,
and we become browns and grays, tans,
before everything turns to white.
- [Josh] So how many deer did you see?
- [Jerry] Quite a lot of 'em.
- [Josh] No bucks?
- [Jerry] Six or eight. No.
It was kind of fun just to watch them.
- Yeah. Where were you?
- Right here. - Oh, really?
- That's my favorite little spot.
That's where grandpa was sitting many long years ago.
I have hunted now
69 consecutive years
without missing a deer season.
I started hunting in 1946 at age 12.
And for the family, deer hunting
was much, much more than shooting a deer.
Why do you get up at 5:30 in the morning,
it's 20 degrees, freeze your tail off,
stumble through the dark
to try and find where you're supposed to sit?
Why in God's creation would anybody do that?
Stupid! Not really.
It's a tradition.
It's a family gathering.
It's a storytelling event.
It's something that's much, much more
than just getting some meat for the table.
Oh, we had the stories to tell.
Every deer season has a story to tell.
In 1992, my dad was not feeling well,
and I noticed that he had trouble catching his breath.
I said, "Pa, are you planning
"on going deer hunting this year?"
And he didn't say anything for a minute.
He said, "Yeah, I gotta go down
"to Wautoma and get my license.
"I haven't gotten my license, yet."
And so on the opening day of deer season,
I stopped by his house in Wild Rose to pick him up.
5:30 in the morning, pitch dark,
I come in the house,
and there he sits on the chair.
He has a 30/30 Savage lever action deer rifle
that he bought in the '40s.
He's got it across his lap.
He's got his orange coat ready to go.
He's ready to go deer hunting.
And so, we get in the truck, and I say,
"Where do you wanna stand?"
He says, "Well, I really don't wanna stand.
"I've got a chair here.
"You've got to bring this chair along."
He said, "I want to sit down by the pond."
And so he sits down right where we are right now.
I go off to my stand.
Well, this is what happened.
He got cold.
And so he started walking around a little bit.
And he walked up on top of the hill,
and there he ran into Steve,
my son, his grandson.
And Steve had with him his friend.
His friend, Rick, was a deputy sheriff.
He knew firearms.
They both had, I think, at the time
30/30 Winchesters with scopes,
the whole schmear.
And they're up on the hill.
And my dad comes up and stands with him
and they talk a little bit.
And then they see-- They see three deer,
way off, 200 and some yards away.
We measured it later.
And they're running, and one of them is a buck.
And Rick and Steve,
they commence shooting at these deer.
I mean each one of them shot three or four times.
They never touched them.
And my dad said,
"Which one is the buck?"
He had open sights.
No fancy anything,
just this open sight
30/30 lever action Savage.
And Steve says, "The second one."
And my dad pulls up, bang!
Lever action, bang!
The buck deer falls.
We walk over to the deer.
He shot it twice in the neck
at 200-plus yards.
He's 92 years old.
We're all standing there like, "What is going on?"
He's got a big smirk on his face.
He doesn't say anything.
"Why'd you shoot him in the neck?"
"I didn't wanna waste any meat."
I don't know if he was just plain lucky
or if somebody, something knew
that this was his last hunt
and it would give him a chance.
I don't know what was going on.
But it's a story that will remain in the family forever.
It's a powerful story.
And this year,
at the beginning of deer season,
which was yesterday, I sat in a chair
at the very spot where he sat.
I could almost hear him in the wind.
You could feel his presence.
(slow music)
I don't know if I was even so much aware of it
as I am today, but in 1966,
when we started coming here, acquired the place,
I had, in the back of my head, the idea
that I would like this place,
insofar as possible,
to look like it did before it was first settled.
In other words,
what did Tom Stewart see
when he came here in 1867,
which is when he homesteaded the place,
Civil War veteran.
Now,
is that some kind of a payback
for the values that I've experienced
in spending time here?
I suspect it is.
And it's very hard for me to even say
what it is that my family and I
have gained from this place.
I'm still in search of that kind of mysterious,
almost mystical dimension to a piece of land,
and how it affects the people who are on it.
How this piece of land has ultimately influenced me
my wife, my kids, and my grandkids?
I don't think I'll...
I don't know that now completely.
I'll keep looking for it.
(slow music)
- [Ben] Dear Grandpa,
I don't think I've ever told you
how much the farm has meant to me.
So often you have been open about how you feel about it,
and because of this,
I feel bad that I have not reciprocated my feelings.
The farm is a treasure,
one that is highly complex,
and one from which I have so much more to discover.
I cherish the moments when you teach me things
that otherwise I would never have cared to know.
The farm offers a place
that brings our family together.
- [Josh] Dear Grandpa, I remember when I was younger
the excited feeling of seeing deer.
You once pointed out a buck,
and by the time I caught a glimpse,
it was running away from our noise
and I was sprinting after it to get a better look.
When I got back, you had a big smile on your face
and asked sarcastically if I caught up to it.
I'll also never forget
how nervous my mom was
when you let me drive the Gator for the first time.
The excitement of that moment...
- [Jerry] Still sticks with me.
These are memories that I don't think
I'll ever forget.
You've taught me how to garden.
You've taught me about
the different kinds of wildlife
and the flowers
and the trees.
You've taught me how to be patient and quiet
and just listen and watch.
And most importantly, you've taught me how to appreciate
the farm...
and everything it has to offer.
(slow piano music)
Thank you, Grandpa.
- [Josh and Ben in background] Okay. (Jerry laughing)
Cross our fingers.
(Jerry laughing)
(slow music)
- Early December, I walked the boys down to the pond.
There wasn't any snow on the ground.
It was just flat surface ice.
And we're walking across the pond,
and two things happened.
You could see through the ice,
and we see a muskrat beneath the surface.
And they were just unbelievably astounded.
"What's that?"
I said, "It's a muskrat."
Well, there was a muskrat den just on the bank.
So we watched this thing
swim under the water and into the bank.
I mean, they just could not believe that.
Second thing that happens,
as you well know,
ice expands and contracts,
and when it does that,
it sounds like a cannon going off.
We're out in the middle of this pond,
and we get this big "Karaah, kaboom!"
And these little guys,
they just ran like everything.
(Jerry laughing)
They were sure they were gonna fall in.
I said, "Listen, guys, the ice is talking to--"
- "It is not!"
(Jerry laughing heartily)
(rhythmic guitar music)
- The Land with Jerry Apps
was funded in part by
Holiday Vacations,
Ron and Colleen Weyers,
Stanley J. Cottrill Fund,
Carol Gainer,
and National Endowment for the Humanities,