Bøger af Jerry Apps

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

"In a twenty-first-century landscape marked by unprecedented challenges, the relevance of agriculture and farms has never been more apparent. From the unsettling shortages experienced during the pandemic to recent fluctuations in the cost and availability of basic grocery items due to historic droughts and climate impacts, Americans are being reminded daily of the importance of rural communities. And yet, the reality of these farm communities and farm policy is foreign to many Americans. Written from the unique perspective of best-selling author Jerry Apps, a farmer and noted historian, On Farms and Rural Communities: An Agricultural Ethic for the Future is a poignant testament to the enduring importance of this vital part of our nation and a call to shape agricultural policy for the present and future"--

"In Planting an Idea, authors Jerry Apps and Natasha Kassulke explore how critical and creative thinking can be applied to today's most pressing environmental concerns. Beginning with an overview of the environmental movement, the authors then explore both critical and creative thinking and systematically apply these methods to a wide variety of critical environmental problems. Starting with a background for each, the authors explore current critical environmental issues including those associated with climate change, agriculture, forests, water, energy, air quality, natural resources, land use, endangered species, and biodiversity. Each chapter offers an overview and analysis of the problems linked to these issues, providing action steps that can be applied, and offering readers powerful tools with which they can combat environmental problems"--

"Jerry Apps explores the history of county and state fairs in Wisconsin, from their earliest incarnations as livestock exhibitions to their later multitudes of exhibits and demonstrations, grandstand entertainment, games and rides, and competitions of all sorts. Drawing on his extensive research, interviews, and personal experience as a 4-H leader, county extension agent, county fair judge, and lifelong fairgoer, Apps takes readers back through 178 years of Wisconsin fair history, covering everything from horse-pulling and calf-showing contests to flower arrangement judging to the roar of gasoline engines powering the midway rides. He evokes the sights and sounds of fairs through the ages while digging in to the political and social forces that shaped the fair into an icon of our rural heritage"--

In this collection of thoughtful essays, Jerry Apps reflects on the "simple things" that made up everyday life on the farm--an old cedar fencepost, Fanny the farm dog, the trusty tools used for farmwork, the kerosene lantern the family gathered around each morning and evening. As he holds each item up to the light for a closer look, he plumbs his memories for the deeper meanings of these objects, sharing the values instilled in him during his rural boyhood in the 1940s and 1950s. He concludes that people who had the opportunity to grow up on family farms gained useful skills, important knowledge, and lifelong values that serve them well throughout their lives. Apps captures and shares those things for people who remember them and those who never had the benefit of living on a small farm.

Updated and expanded version of: Rural wisdom: time-honored values of the Midwest. Amherst, Wis.: Amherst Press, c1997.

"During Jerry Apps's childhood on the farm, he witnessed the second great revolution in farming--the arrival of electric lines to rural areas, running water in barns, and new farm machines like tractors, balers, and combines. In Every Farm Tells a Story he traces that revolution by way of costs found in his mother's account books for everything from the family's first milking machine to the used telephone pole that supported their first electric yard light. He recalls his childhood and the traditional family farm values and ethics instilled in him by Ma and Pa. "This book is more than charming nostalgia, for Apps, a former professor of agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is interested in the sociology of farm life as it changed from his childhood to the day he graduated from high school. Milking machines replaced fist power at the milk stool, tractors replaced horses and before anyone knew it the old fashioned farm was a thing of the past. One of the most touching scenes finds Apps describing his Pa's reaction to his earning a scholarship to college and to the sale of his milk cows when he got too old to put on the milkers. It's a fine book for oldtimers like me . . . and also for young farmers who, despite their $100,000 tractors face new and more sophisticated challenges." --Dave Wood, past vice president of the National Book Critics Circle and former book review editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune"--

Bill Steiner, a farm boy, has just completed his first year of studies at the University of Wisconsin. To return to college in the fall, he knows he needs extra money. He takes a job at a pea cannery where he manages a small group of men. One of them, an alcoholic, threatens Bill with a gun when Bill empties the worker's bottle. Later in the summer, Bill manages a small pickle factory. He is learning that being the boss is more than a little challenging. Working with men processing peas and pickles offers learning experiences for Bill well beyond what he expected.

Jerry App's farm stories open the barn door to understanding life in the country. "Even with the all the hard work, we had more time (perhaps we took more time) to enjoy what was all around us: nights filled with starlight, days with clear blue skies and puffy clouds. Wonderful smells everywhere--fresh mown hay, wildflowers, and apple blossoms. Interesting sounds--the rumble of distant thunder, an owl calling in the woods, a flock of Canada geese winging over in the fall." In this paperback edition of a beloved Jerry Apps classic, the rural historian tells stories from his childhood days on a small central Wisconsin dairy farm in the 1930s and 1950s. From a January morning memory of pancakes piled high after chores, to a June day spent learning to ride a pony named Ginger, Jerry moves through the turn of the seasons and teaches gentle lessons about life on the farm. With recipes associated with each month and a new introduction exclusive to this 2nd edition, Living a Country Year celebrates the rhythms of rural life with warmth and humor.

Between 1933 and 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps, a popular New Deal relief program, was at work across America. During the Great Depression, young men lived in rustic CCC camps planting trees, cutting trails, and reversing the effects of soil erosion. In his latest book, acclaimed environmental writer Jerry Apps presents the first comprehensive history of the CCC in Wisconsin. Apps guides readers around the state, from the Northwoods to the Driftless Area, creating a map of where and how more than 125 CCC camps left indelible marks on the landscape. Captured in rich detail as well are the voices of the CCC boys who by preserving Wisconsin's natural beauty not only discovered purpose in their labor, but founded an enduring legacy of environmental stewardship.

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.

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.

Will a big corporate hog farm entering a small Wisconsin community change its values and upset its resident ghost? 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.

Inspired by actual events that took place in upstate New York and Wisconsin in the mid-nineteenth century, The Travels of Increase Joseph is the first in Jerry Apps's series set in fictional Ames County, Wisconsin. The four novels in the series all take place around Link Lake at different points in history. They convey Apps's deep knowledge of rural life and his own concern for land stewardship.

The year is 1955. Andy Meyer manages the pickle factory in Link Lake, a rural town where the farms are small, the conversation is meandering, and the feeling is Midwestern. 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.

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 is hired as a research application specialist for Osborne University, a for-profit institution that has developed "Cranberry Red", a new chemical.