Every Farm Tells a Story: A Tale of Family Farm Values

Book Description:

"Chores started on the home farm when you were around four years old, depending on, as Pa would say, ‘how much meat you have on your bones.’. . . "

So begins Jerry Apps’s "Every Farm Tells a Story," a collection of true tales inspired by entries in his mother’s farm account books. The values recorded in the account books prompt recollections of Jerry’s childhood and the traditional family farm values and ethics instilled in him by Ma and Pa.

Running a Wisconsin dairy farm in the days before electricity or indoor plumbing, Jerry’s family used kerosene lanterns, gasoline engines, a team of draft horses, and a homemade tractor converted from a truck. During Jerry’s growing-up years, 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.

Illustrated with 50 vintage advertisements from catalogs and farm journals, "Every Farm Tells a Story" traces that revolution by way of costs for everything from the family’s first Sears, Roebuck and Co. milking machine to the used telephone pole that supported their first electric yard light.