Boundless Together:
Rural Voice
"I always tell my writing students that when we forget our histories, we forget who we are," says
Jerry Apps BS'55, MS'57, a man considered by many to be the preeminent voice of rural Wisconsin.
Apps was born and raised near Wild Rose in Waushara County on a 160-acre farm, where his parents began farming in 1924. They had no electricity or indoor plumbing. Heat came from the wood stove. As a boy, Apps milked cows by hand, made hay using horses and a pitchfork, and cut grain with a horse-drawn binder.
Driven to preserve and memorialize country life before it's gone, Apps has written more than 35 books on rural history. His writing has covered some of Wisconsin's most iconic topics, from breweries, cheese, and the Ringling Brothers to barns and the restoration and conservation of his own farm, Roshara.
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