Every Farm Tells a Story

"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"--