9UNP0428SD_Jerry_Apps_WordPress

- Kevin Check: Good afternoon and welcome to today's final lecture of our Day on Campus Food Summit. My name is Kevin Check, I'm senior director of school and college relations at the Wisconsin Alumni Association. I hope you've found today's lectures informational and enjoyable. And today we're very pleased to welcome Jerry Apps from the College of Ag and Life Sciences as our speaker. Professor Apps was born and raised on a Wisconsin farm and is the author of more than 25 books, many of them on rural history and country life. His nonfiction books include "Living a Country Year," "Every Farm Tells a Story," "Cheese: The Making of a Wisconsin Tradition," and "Breweries of Wisconsin." He has also published three historical novels about rural life in the Midwest and is a former publications editor for UW Extension and editor of a national professional journal. Professor Apps has won awards for his writing from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Library Association, American Library Association, Forward magazine, Midwest Independent Publishers Association, Robert E Gard Foundation, the Wisconsin Council for Writers, and Upper Midwest Booksellers, among others. Please join me in welcoming Professor Jerry Apps. 
(applause)

- Jerry Apps: Thank you so very much, and I am pleased to be here this afternoon and to share a few ideas about Wisconsin's farming history. How many of you were born on a farm? Quite a bunch of you. Well, many of you, especially those of you that have hair the color of mine, have lived a lot of Wisconsin farming history. And some of what I'll be sharing will be a reminiscence for you, I'm sure. But what I want to do is to go back in looking at our farming history, in a way perhaps that is a little unusual. Because as I write about our state's ag history, and as I write about farm life, to me it all has to start by looking at the origins of the land. And sometimes we overlook that because we're in such a hurry to talk about the new technology and all that's happening with computers and all the rest of it, that we fail to understand the most fundamental place to start and the most fundamental place to consider our history, and indeed our future, in agriculture is to focus on the land. 

We need to go back in this state some 10,000 years to focus on the history of the land, because that's when the last great glacier began to recede, and it left behind a most unusual set of circumstances, because that last great glacier formed our lakes and our rivers. It covered all of the state save for southwestern Wisconsin. Dodgeville, Mineral Point, Lancaster, that area. The Driftless area, as it's called. Some parts of the state were left with wonderfully rich soil. Here in southern Wisconsin we find some of that. Some of the soils were not so rich. I grew up on such a farm in Waushara County in central Wisconsin. Our home farm was on the terminal moraine. I didn't know what that meant when I was a kid, but I did know that the terminal moraine, where the glacier stopped, left behind stones. 
(laughter)

 Big stones and little stones, red stones, black stones, yellow stones, stones as big as Volkswagens, stones as small as pebbles. How many of you have picked stones? 
(laughter)

 Aha. How many of you know what a stone boat is? I was talking to a Milwaukee group one time about stone boats and somebody held up a hand, "What's a stone boat?" I'm like, "Well, first you have to start with an Evinrude engine." And they looked at me. No motors with stone boats. 

That last glacier left not only rich land and stony land and poor land in some parts of our state, poor in terms of agricultural production, not poor in terms of a lot of other things. But just to the west of that terminal moraine in central Wisconsin where I grew up, was a vast glacial lake. Old Glacial Lake Wisconsin, it's called. And that lake, when it receded, left behind thousands of acres of flat, sandy soil with groundwater, sometimes only a few feet below the surface. When I was a kid on the home farm in Waushara County, on our hilly, stony farm, my dad often said about that land that glacial lake, sandy land, west of highway 51 and 39, west of Plainfield and Paloma and Hancock, he said, "That land is so poor that if you buy 40 acres they make you take another 40." 
(laughter)

 And of course, that land now, it's the vegetable-growing center of this state. How little did we know then what would happen as agriculture progressed in the state. Climate has a lot to do with the history of our farming in this state. We are special in some ways, being a part of the Upper Midwest. 

What our specialness is defined by is one word. Winter. It's true. Winter has such an influence on us, those of us who live here, have grown up here, have lived here our lives, we do not realize that winter has affected us, our attitudes, our way of working, our caring for animals and all the rest of it. Climate is a very important part of our agricultural history. And of course, if you were to draw a line from about Green Bay just south of Eau Claire, south of that line, more productive agriculture, north of that line, very short growing season, forestry, a different kind of agriculture. So climate, geology, and then let's not forget, if we look at our history, our settlement patterns. Our settlement patterns in this state are fairly unique compared to other states because by 1900, we had some 50 different ethnic groups that had settled in the state. By 1900, some 50 different ethnic groups. But let me go back a bit further. 

Because the first farmers in this state were not immigrant people. They were Native Americans, they were Indian tribes. We often overlook the fact that the Native American peoples, many of them, were farmers. One of the things that I did recently is to write a book about the history of the farm I own now in Waushara County, which was in the midst of Menominee country. And so I did some research on the Menominees. The Menominees in 1847 frequented the land from Lake Winnebago to the Fox River to the south, the Wisconsin River to the west, and north nearly to Michigan, the Upper Peninsula. In 1847, the Menominee tribe numbered 2500. Not very many, 2500 people. But here's the important thing. We think of them as trappers and fishermen and all the rest of it. 

300 of them were full-time farmers, living on permanent farms near Lake Poygan. That's an interesting little piece of information, because we sometimes overlook that our first farmers indeed were Native Americans. Jean Nicolet came to this state, first white person, in 1634. Lots of people don't realize that the first white people were here that early. And we had, for 200 years, not very much agriculture, save for that which the Native Americans were doing. It was a time for trapping and fur trading. It was a fascinating time in our history, but it had very little to do with the development of farming and agriculture. And by the 1830s, we began to see coming into southwestern Wisconsin, into that area that's defined, as I mentioned earlier, as the Driftless area, lead miners. Because that became a very major lead mining area. And these peoples, they were Scotch-Irish, English, Welsh, many of them were not intent on farming. 

Their ancestors became farmers. So the lead miners in the 1830s, the French who were not very much farmers at all. We became a territory in 1836 as many of you are well aware, and now, even before the immigrants that I mentioned, even before they begin arriving, something else in our history occurred, which had a profound influence on what was going to happen to our farming. And that was an influx of, as we called them, as the folks then called them, Yankees. Many of them from upstate New York. They had, it's true, essentially worn out the land. People from Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as upstate New York were all moving west. Because the idea in those days was, when the land was worn out, you moved west. And they ended here in Wisconsin. Many of these, especially the New Yorkers. 

And what did they do when they got here? They immediately started growing wheat. Now, the interesting key to all this is, these New Yorkers, while they were farming in New York, were dairy farmers. But once they got here to the Midwest and they discovered that Illinois and Ohio, those states were growing wheat and they could grow wheat in southern Wisconsin, and they did, and that region again, from Green Bay, south of Eau Claire, became a tremendously important wheat growing area, thousands of acres of wheat. And think about what farming was like in those days. Farming was breaking the land with oxen and a breaking plow. And I'm old enough to have worked with a breaking plow, not with oxen, and I know how difficult it was to hang on to a breaking plow. And imagine what this southern Wisconsin area looked like. There was blue-stemmed grass, big blue stems, as high as this ceiling. And when the pioneers talked about going West and seeing a sea of grass, indeed it was that. 

When the wind caught this big blue stem, and I have a hillside of that on my farm now, because it was too steep to ever be plowed, and I'm doing some pasture renovation, a prairie development, and using that side hill of big blue stem as a natural supply of grasses. They turned under that rich soil, in central Wisconsin, not so rich, but still it all grew wheat. And so these Yankees were growing wheat, and now, now we began to see the immigrant groups coming. The Germans. The Norwegians. And I've mentioned now the two predominant ethnic groups that settled in the state, first Germans, then Norwegians. And prior to 1900, the Irish. And after 1900, the Polish. And then the Belgians and the Scots, and as I've mentioned, some 50 different groups, all growing wheat. And all making money, because by 1862 in the midst of the Civil War, Wisconsin was the number two wheat growing state in the nation. 

There was almost no dairying whatever. And I'm going to talk about that transition that occurred in just a moment. Dairying was thought to be something that women did. They took care of the cows, they made a little cheese, and some butter in their kitchens. But the most cattle that anyone had, and milk cows, maybe one, one or two. And wheat growing was it. Well, now after the Civil War, 1865, and then working toward early 1870s, several things happened. The wheat growing began to falter because farmers, they were doing just what they were doing in New England. They didn't know about fertilization. They didn't know about crop rotation. 

They planted wheat over and over and over again on the same land. And something called a cinch bug came in, an insect, that literally sucked the juices out of the wheat, and rust came in and destroyed a lot of it. But the soil was starting to wear out and the yields declined. And all of a sudden, the wheat farmers were in trouble, not knowing what in the world they were going to do next. 1862 was a very important year for this state and for all of the states because it was in 1862 that the Homestead Act was passed, signed by Abraham Lincoln. 1862 was the year that the land grant university system began, this place where you're sitting right now is a land grant institution. And there are those institutions in all of the states. Part of the impetus for the land grant institution is that there must a College of Agriculture and there must be a School of Engineering. And that is when some extra monies became available to do that. And that's an important part of the story of Wisconsin's agricultural history. 

Also in 1862 the United States Department of Agriculture was formed. So three things happened in 1862. And as an aside, 1862 in the midst of the Civil War, the southern states had seceded and the southern states were very much opposed to most of this legislation because of states' rights. They didn't want the idea that the federal government should be involved in making lands available. In 1865 after the Civil War, Wisconsin still had a lot of federal land available. The farm that I own now was settled by a homesteader, by a Civil War veteran, who got the land free and clear in 1867 as long as he would live there for five years, put up a cabin, and plant some crops. Well now with wheat growing in decline, farmers began to look around to see what they might do to make a living. And some of them moved west and opened up Kansas and Nebraska and into the Dakotas to grow more wheat. Some of our Wisconsin farmers started growing hops. And that proved to be very profitable, especially in Sauk County, south of Baraboo. 

Some took up sheep raising. In central Wisconsin, potatoes, interestingly enough, became a crop to begin replacing wheat. I, again, am old enough to see the end of all of that. We were still growing, when I was a kid, 20 acres of potatoes on our home farm that we planted by hand, we dug by hand and picked by hand. And the country school that I attended had two weeks of potato vacation every fall so all the kids could pick potatoes. That all happened because of the decline in wheat. Tobacco became another crop popular in counties like Dane and Rock and Vernon over in the southwest. Let us not forget another, I'm working toward the dairy story, but I want to do a bit of an aside and tell you about a story that most of us are not aware of. Because it was, again, in the 1860s that we had the first commercial cranberry marsh begin operation. And you know where that was? 

How many of you know where the first commercial cranberry marsh was? Where was it? 

- It was either the -- area or somewhere else. 

- Apps: Oh, to the back of the room with you! 
(laughter)

 You should know. It was in Waushara County. He's a Waushara County man. It was near Berlin in Waushara County. Now, cranberries happen to be native to Wisconsin, but that was the first commercial operation. 

And you were right, that's where it was developed a bit later. 

- Oh yeah, I think that has disappeared, hasn't it, from Berlin? 

- Apps: Oh yeah. So we saw now wheat in decline, cranberries just getting started, and these wheat farmers with all these other kinds of projects going on, wondering what in the world they were going to do to make a living. And part of the problem was this notion that, if you've got cattle, dairy cows, that's women's work. It was a gender issue. When I wrote this book, "Cheese: The Making of a Wisconsin Tradition," which is the history of cheesemaking in this state, I dug into this gender issue. I haven't seen anybody write much about it, and it's a very important part of our history. Because wheat growing was seen as a macho activity. You could sit on a... 

whatever you're sitting on, as a farmer, driving your oxen and horses, and feel all powerful. And to sit under a smelly cow, I mean, that's women's work. And it took the better part of 20 years for the shift to occur. What I did discover in writing this book, and I want to read you just a little bit, about one of the very earliest attempts at commercial cheese production. This was written by a chap by the name of Pickett, who was describing something that his father had experienced. 
(reading)

 In the year 1840, my father, Mr. A. Pickett, removed from the state of Ohio and settled near Rock Lake in the town of Lake Mills in this county. But a few pioneers had preceded him, and civilization in this part of the then-territory of Wisconsin was in its infancy. 

My father saw the opportunity, and so in the spring of 1841 set about supplying the demand for dairy. He had driven from Ohio ten cows. He was satisfied that with that number, he could supply the demand of the territory. 
(laughter)

 And I'm very confident that he had no competition in the business as there were no cows bought at any price and there had not been any for sale at that time. But the idea suggested itself to my mother, why not cooperate with our neighbors in cheesemaking? It was a capital and original idea and was at once adopted by the head of the family. We had four neighbors by this time, and the four families owned ten cows. 
(end of reading)

 And that was the beginning of the cheese industry in this state. 

It didn't do anything, of course, for many years because of wheat growing. There were, in this group of New Yorkers that arrived here, some very important people. William Dempster Hoard was one of them. Hiram Smith was another one who came from New York. Those of you who are familiar with this campus, you know about Hiram Smith Hall, which was named after this New Yorker who was influential in helping everyone in Wisconsin to shift, the farmers in Wisconsin to shift from wheat growing to dairy farming. But the person who probably deserves the most credit of all was William Dempster Hoard, who started Hoard's Dairyman magazine, which is still in existence. And he said things like, "King Wheat is now dead. Long live Queen Cow." Corny as it sounded, people listened to that. And slowly we began to see a shift, slowly we began to see a shift into dairy farming. 

It was not easy. Because people did not see Wisconsin as a place where cheese could be produced. And here's a little story about Hiram Smith's brother up in Sheboygan County, who had a small cheese factory. Let me read. 
(reading)

 In the autumn of 1858, Mr. Smith barreled 58 cheeses, boxes not obtainable, and took them to Chicago for sale. Leaving his cheese at the warehouse, he called on the dealers and endeavored to affect a sale. On asking if they would like to purchase, he met with the inquiry, "Where was your cheese made?" "In Sheboygan." 

"Where's that?" 
(laughter)

 "In Wisconsin." "We don't want any Wisconsin cheese, we can't sell anything but New York cheese and we don't want anything else in our store." Finally, in desperation, Smith asked another cheese dealer to look at his cheese. He paid the dealer $1 for the half hour spent examining the 58 barrels. The dealer offered him 8 cents a pound, emphasizing that he really wanted New York cheese, not Western cheese. 
(end of reading)

 So the early cheesemaking in this state had its challenges, there was no question about it. I need to mention the University of Wisconsin's role in all of this, because in 1890, the University of Wisconsin College of Ag, the College of Ag wasn't here yet, but there were ag courses. 

In 1890, there was a cheesemaker short course that was organized, which was a very important part of our history. And Hiram Smith Hall was built in 1891, and it was a cheese plant, a cheese factory. The old chimney is still there, you can about envision what it was like. And let me not forget another very important Wisconsin researcher, Stephen Moulton Babcock. Very important. Why? Because he invented the Babcock Test. And the Babcock Test was a way by which the butterfat content of milk could be measured and thus farmers could be paid for their milk on something more than just volume and weight. One of the problems, and I have several stories in this book, one of the problems along the way was that too many farmers watered their milk. And what do I mean? 

Well, if you're selling it on volume and nobody's checking for butterfat, just add a little water and you've got a little more weight. One farmer, as the story goes, arrived at the cheese factory. In those days, cheese factories were, every crossroads had one. And he took the milk every day, the farmer did, with his team and a wagon. And he'd always stop at a little stream to give his horses a drink on his way to the cheese factory. And he arrived at the cheese factory and the cheesemaker came out after he'd dumped a can of milk, not very happy with the farmer. He said, "You have watered your milk again, sir." And the farmer said, "Well, I did not. I simply stopped to give my horses a drink." He says, "Well, I've got the proof. 

There was a fish in the can!" And the farmer denied any knowledge of how a fish could have gotten into the can of milk. Now, as the cheese and dairy industry was moving along, let's not forget now that the cranberry industry is moving along as well. And why do I keep mentioning cranberries? We are, Wisconsin has been the premier producer of cranberries for a number of years now and we continue to be. And there are new cranberry marshes going in all the while. It's amazing. I was in Wisconsin Rapids this past weekend, and there are a whole bunch of marshes going in. Yeah. 

- I just wanted to comment on that. 

I guess Wisconsin produces more cranberries than all the other states in this country combined. 

- Apps: We're getting pretty close to that, it's probably true. It used to be Massachusetts, they're number two. But also, let us not forget, in addition to cranberries, we are a producer of vegetable crops, big time. Peas and sweet corn and green beans and cabbage and cucumbers. A lot of that produce coming out of those irrigated lands in central Wisconsin, that so-called worthless land that I'd mentioned earlier. Now, along with all of this, we began to see the influence of changes in technology on agriculture. We're talking about the importance of geology, the importance of the climate, the importance of the immigrants. But now let's not forget that technology has had and continues to have a tremendous influence on our farming. When all of this wheat production was taking place, farmers were cutting this grain with a cradle, a scythe-like device, entirely by hand. 

There were no combines, there were no grain binders. All of this was done by hand. And lo and behold, there was a chap by the name of Cyrus McCormick who lived at the time in Virginia, and he was a blacksmith and an inventor, as was his father. And in 1834, Cyrus McCormick came up with the idea of a reaper, meaning a horse drawn device that would cut the grain and replace the man with the cradle. That did not catch on well. You could buy a cradle for two or three bucks, and McCormick wanted $125 for his reaper. So they didn't sell well. Civil War came along and that boosted his sales dramatically because all the men were off fighting the war and now the women were left to cradle the grain and he began selling his reaper. He moved to Chicago, by the way, in 1847 and eventually combined with Deering, to become McCormick-Deering and then later International Harvester. As an aside, those of you that are interested in the history of machinery, the historical society just across the street, they have all of the McCormick papers. 

And I've just recently done, I finished a new book called "Horse Drawn Days," which is the history of farming with horses and the history of farm machinery. If you're interested in this, the historical society has all of those materials, including Cyrus McCormick's patent on this first reaper, which was a very important part. So now we're at a time after the Civil War, and as we get to the turn of the century, where we're moving from a lot of handwork to now having machines and horses begin to do the work. We did not have draft horses in this state, in the United States, until the 1830s. We had carriage horses to be sure, light horses, but not the big draft horses. We didn't start importing them until the 1830s, the Belgians and the Percherons, the Clydesdales and the breeds of horses that we know and appreciate today. JI Case came to Racine, and JI Case, he was a developer and an inventor of threshing machines, along with steam engines. And now we began to see the grain industry becoming revolutionized, because not only do we have a way of cutting it with a reaper, but we have a way of threshing it with a new threshing machine. 1842, JI Case began making threshing machines, and one interesting thing that he did, was that he made the first steel threshing machine. The early ones were wooden, and any spark, they would catch fire, and what an embarrassment that must be, if you were threshing and all of a sudden your threshing machine burned. 

It was also very dangerous. World War II came along and now we saw dramatic, absolutely dramatic changes in farming. I was in the middle of all of that. I grew up on a farm without electricity. We never had indoor plumbing as long as I lived there. I attended a country school. I milked cows by hand. We had 14 or 15 cows, that's it, in our little dairy farm, and a couple of dozen hogs, and a couple of acres of cucumbers. That's what farm life was like. And then World War II came along, and after the war, electricity came along. 

The electricity had come just ahead of the war when Roosevelt signed the legislation creating the REA, the Railroad Effication Administration, so that the electric co-ops could organize and compete with the power companies, many of whom refused to go into the countryside. Now we saw electricity coming and that made just a tremendous difference in agriculture in the state. But now we saw milking machines and hybrid seed corn, and tractors, for heavens sakes. I grew up driving horses. One of the reasons I wrote this book, I wanted to dig out the history of what life was like driving horses beyond what I knew from my own experience. Things begin to change beyond the technology, however, because what we fail often to realize in looking at the history of farming is not only did farming change, but rural communities changed and changed dramatically. Country schools closed. By the middle '50s, most of them were closed, consolidated, and the kids were bussed to town. We saw country churches in decline. We saw hardware stores and grist mills and lumber yards in the small towns across this state and throughout the Midwest in decline. 

We saw farm kids like yours truly leave to go to work in Oshkosh and in Milwaukee and La Crosse and Eau Claire. Or those that were fortunate to go on to school, and I was one of those fortunate ones. Dramatic changes after World War II that have never eased, as farms got larger and fewer in number, as crop yields increased dramatically. I was a county agent for five years in my early career with the university, and we had what we called in the late '50s and early '60s a "100-bushel corn club." Any farmer who could grow 100 bushels of corn got a big plaque. If you don't grow 100 bushels of corn now, you're a slacker. It's how things have changed. And computers have come along and they have influenced everything, and the size of the farm machinery has grown unbelievably fast. I was talking to a friend the other day, and I have a John Deere tractor on my farm, a small one, and he, a big John Deere guy, said that he had just heard from his dealer that John Deere has reached the ultimate sized tractor. They're not going to make them any larger, and why is that? 

Because they can't find the truck big enough to haul the thing around. And it takes up too much room on the highway. That's kind of an interesting something that has happened. We are seeing the emergence of confined animal operations in this state and throughout the country. Whether it's poultry, hogs, dairy cattle or beef, the idea of confined animal operations is a part of our present and it's very likely going to be a very important part of our future. It has, like the closing of the country school, divided communities unbelievably so. You're either for having 8000 cows at Rosendale, more than that, or you think it's wonderful. And where's the middle ground? Well, we're all going to have to be talking about that and discussing it as we move forward. I want to wrap up by reading a little something that I wrote. 

A document that the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters produced a couple years ago, called "The Future of Farming and Rural Life in Wisconsin." And I want to read just a couple paragraphs, I wrote a little essay as a part of it. And then we'll see if you have some questions. 
(reading)

 As farming faces its future, it is important that policymakers spend some time recalling and understanding farm history. The old saw, "We can't know where we're going until we know where we've been" has more truth than merely a bumper sticker. It's essential when making plans for tomorrow that we consider what of yesterday we should keep and what of the new should be embraced. Not everything new is worthy of adaptation. Not everything old is worth keeping. These questions have multiple layers. 

The answers are more important than just economic ones. Although economics are certainly important, what historic values about the land are worthy of consideration today? Reverence for the land as land, passing on land as a heritage to future generations, caring for the land versus covering it with asphalt and building yet another mall, and one more condo. What about neighbors and communities, people sharing and caring for each other, working and playing together? What about values such as doing more than a job requires, enjoying work for the pleasure of doing it well? What about the power of sharing stories with neighbors at community events, and pride in community as a special place to make a life as well as earn a living? Are these values worth keeping? If we agree these values of the past are important, what must we do to keep them as new farming approaches appear and as new land-use practices emerge? In my writing, I try to capture details of the past, describing barns and granaries, threshing machines and walking plows. Perhaps more importantly, I try to capture the beliefs and values of rural and small-town people, what they did for fun, how they related to their neighbors, and what was important to them. 

Our challenge is not to passively accept the changes that swirl around farming today. We must examine these changes and question them, then line up the implications of accepting what is new with what we deem important from our rural histories. We owe it to those who follow us to be intelligent decision makers, to be deliberate and careful as we move forward, remembering always that caring for the land is where we start, and caring for each other must quickly follow. Thank you so very much. 
(applause)