Novels | Rural Life Series | Historical Books | Other Country Life Books

Rural Life Series
 

Purchase on Amazon	On Farms and Rural Communities: An Agricultural Ethic for the Future - 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.   (March, 2024) -  Buy Local with Bookshop.org.
Purchase on Amazon	Planting an Idea: A Guidebook to Critical and Creative Thinking About Environmental Problems (Fulcrum Press, April, 2023) - This book is designed to help you figure out what your position is on a particular environmental problem, and ultimately not only know what your position is but helps provide evidence to back up your position. And not just any evidence, but accurate, verifiable evidence from a reputable, reliable source. So, in a way, this is a guidebook for examining and thinking critically and creatively about the important environmental problems that face our planet today. Buy Local with Bookshop.org.
Purchase on Amazon	More than Words: A Memoir of a Writing Life (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, November, 2022) - In this combination memoir and craft book, award-winning author Jerry Apps shares the next phase in his life story begun in Limping through Life and Once a Professor. Beginning with a boyhood surrounded by storytellers, Jerry takes readers along on his path to becoming one of the Midwest’s best-known and most revered writers. In characteristic no-nonsense style, he shares the joys, disappointments, and frustrations of the writing life and describes the genesis and creation of many of his best-known books. In recounting his nearly six-decade writing career, Jerry provides an insider’s view into the creative process, delving into sources for ideas, research strategies, and guidelines and essential tools for writing. Along the way he recalls his relationships with publishers, editors, TV producers, librarians, booksellers, and others and shares a scrapbook’s worth of stories—some funny, some heartwarming, a few of them harrowing—from the road. A book for book lovers! Buy Local with Bookshop.org.
Purchase on Amazon	The Old Timer Says: A Writing Journal (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, October, 2020) - Everyone has a story to tell. In The Old Timer Says, author and longtime writing teacher Jerry Apps provides writers and non-writers alike space and inspiration to capture their own stories. Jerry introduces The Old Timer Says by emphasizing the benefits of journaling and sharing his lifelong habit of keeping a journal. He advises that a journal or diary is a personal thing and there is no “right way” to keep one. You might dash off only a few words or write long, flowing pages of text. Your entries could consist of notes on the weather, recipes you’d like to cook, career or travel goals, favorite song lyrics, notes from your dreams, or short stories starring your own made-up characters. You might include sketches or photographs or other visual tidbits. “It doesn’t matter how much you write or what you write, only that you write,” Jerry says. On the journal’s lined pages, Jerry includes a collection of his favorite “Old Timer” sayings—some funny, some thought-provoking, and all inspired by the one-liners, bits of philosophy, and advice he heard from farmers he knew growing up. They serve as gentle writing prompts while reminding folks that our personal histories are worth recording. Buy Local with IndieBound.
Purchase on Amazon	The Land Still Lives (50th Anniversary Edition) (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, September, 2019) Purchase on Amazon “Apps is a man of ideas who is sensitive to the touch, the smells, and the feel of doing things by hand, today and a hundred years ago.”—from the foreword by Senator Gaylord Nelson Originally published in 1970, The Land Still Lives is the first book by Wisconsin’s greatest rural philosopher, Jerry Apps. Written when he was still a young agriculture professor at the University of Wisconsin, The Land Still Lives was readers’ first introduction to Jerry’s farm in central Wisconsin, called Roshara, and the surrounding community of Skunk’s Hollow. This special 50th-anniversary edition features a new epilogue, in which Jerry revisits his philosophy of caring for the land so it in turn will care for us. This is vintage Apps, essential reading for Jerry’s legions of fans—and for all who, like Jerry, wish “to develop a relationship with nature and all its mystery and wonder.” Buy Local with IndieBound.
Purchase on Amazon	Simple Things: Lessons from the Family Farm (September, 2018) - 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. Buy Local with IndieBound.
Purchase on Amazon	Old Farm Country Cookbook: Recipes, Menus, and Memories (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, July, 2017) Purchase on Amazon When Jerry Apps was growing up on a Wisconsin farm in the 1930s and 1940s, times were tough. Yet most folks living on farms had plenty to eat. Preparing food from scratch was just the way things were done, and people knew what was in their food and where it came from. Delicious meals were at the center of every family and social affair, whether it be a threshing-day dinner with all the neighbors, the end-of-school-year picnic, or just a hearty supper after chores were done. As Jerry writes, "For me food will always be associated with times of good eating, storytelling, laughter, and good-hearted fun."   Inspired by the dishes made by his mother, Eleanor, and featuring recipes found in her well-worn recipe box, Jerry and his daughter, Susan, take us on a culinary tour of life on the farm during the Depression and World War II. Seasoned with personal stories, menus, and family photos, Old Farm Country Cookbook recalls a time when electricity had not yet found its way to the farm, when making sauerkraut was a family endeavor, and when homemade ice cream tasted better than anything you could buy at the store. Buy Local with IndieBound.
Purchase on Amazon	Never Curse the Rain: A Farm Boy's Reflections on Water (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, January, 2017) Purchase on Amazon Growing up on the family farm, Jerry Apps learned from a young age that water was precious. The farm had no running water, a windmill pumped drinking water for the small herd of cattle, and Jerry and his brothers hauled bucket after bucket of water for the family’s use. A weekly bath was considered sufficient. And when it rained, it was cause for celebration. Indeed, if ever the Apps boys complained about a rainy day spoiling their plans, their father admonished, "Never curse the rain," for the family’s very livelihood depended upon it. In Never Curse the Rain, Jerry shares his memories of water, from its importance to his family’s crops and cattle to its many recreational uses—fishing trips, canoe journeys, and the simple pleasures of an afternoon spent dreaming in the haymow as rain patters on the barn roof. Water is still a touchstone in Jerry’s life, and he explores the ways he’s found it helpful in soothing a troubled mind or releasing creativity. He also discusses his concerns about the future of water and ensuring we always have enough. For, as Jerry writes, "Water is one of the most precious things on this planet, necessary for all life, and we must do everything we can to protect it." Check here for a review of the book
Purchase on Amazon	Whispers and Shadows: A Naturalist’s Memoir (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, May, 2015) Purchase on Amazon In these times of technological innovation and fast-paced electronic communication, we often take nature for granted—or even consider it a hindrance to our human endeavors. In Whispers and Shadows: A Naturalist’s Memoir, Jerry Apps explores such topics as the human need for wilderness, rediscovering a sense of wonder, and his father’s advice to “listen for the whispers” and “look in the shadows” to learn nature’s deepest lessons. Combining his signature lively storytelling and careful observations of nature, Apps draws on a lifetime of experiences, from his earliest years growing up on a central Wisconsin farm to his current ventures as gardener, tree farmer, and steward of wetlands, prairies, and endangered Karner blue butterflies. He also takes inspiration from the writings of Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Sigurd Olson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Barbara Kingsolver, Wendell Berry, Richard Louv, and Rachel Carson. With these eloquent essays, Jerry Apps reminds us to slow down, turn off technology, and allow our senses to reconnect us to the natural world. For it is there, he writes, that “I am able to return to a feeling I had when I was a child, a feeling of having room to stretch my arms without interfering with another person, a feeling of being a small part of something much larger than I was, and I marvel at the idea.” Bill Lueders, Wisconsin State Journal: ...his memoirs are what for me rise to, if not greatness, then at least exceptional goodness, putting Apps in the company of our region's finest nature writers: Sigurd Olson, August Derleth, Ben Logan, John Hildebrand and, dare I say, Aldo Leopold...These essays...radiate simplicity, one of the most complicated things for a writer to do. You can pretty much open the book at random and read something beautiful...Apps is what his father taught him to be: a thorough and thoughtful observer of the natural world. He describes not just Wisconsin, where he grew up and still lives, dividing his time between Madison and his farm in Waushara County, but other favorite haunts, including the Boundary Waters and Yukon Island in Alaska. He [Apps] describes the wildflowers he loves, the animals he watches, the nature writers who inspire him, the family excursions he cherishes. He makes the natural world palpable, as when he tells of how “dew hung heavy on the grass, the little beads of moisture reflecting the first rays of the sun as it climbed above the eastern horizon,” or his evocation of wood smoke as “a primitive smell rich with history and memory.” Check here for another review of the book
	The Quiet Season: Remembering Country Winters (August, 2013) Purchase this book “As I think back to the days of my childhood, the frost-covered windows in my bedroom, the frigid walks to the country school, the excitement of a blizzard, and a hundred other memories, I realize that these experiences left an indelible mark on me and made me who I am today.”—From the Introduction Jerry Apps recalls winters growing up on a farm in central Wisconsin during the latter years of the Depression and through World War II. Before electricity came to this part of Waushara County, farmers milked cows by hand with the light of a kerosene lantern, woodstoves heated the drafty farm homes, and “making wood” was a major part of every winter’s work. The children in Jerry’s rural community walked to a country school that was heated with a woodstove and had no indoor plumbing. Wisconsin winters then were a time of reflection, of planning for next year, and of families drawing together. Jerry describes how winter influenced farm families and suggests that those of us who grow up with harsh northern winters are profoundly affected in ways we often are not aware.
	Limping Through Life: A Farm Boy's Polio Memoir (April, 2013) Purchase this book Families throughout the United States lived in fear of polio throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, and now the disease had come to our farm. I can still remember that short winter day and the chilly night when I first showed symptoms. My life would never be the same. - from the introduction Polio was epidemic in the United States in 1916. By the 1930s, quarantines and school closings were becoming common, as isolation was one of the only ways to fight the disease. The Salk vaccine was not available until 1955; in that year, Wisconsin's Fox River valley had more polio cases per capita than anywhere in the United States. In his most personable book, Jerry Apps, who contracted polio at age twelve, reveals how the disease affected him physically and emotionally, profoundly influencing his education, military service, and family life and setting him on the path to becoming a professional writer. A hardworking farm kid who loved to play softball, young Jerry Apps would have to make many adjustments and meet many challenges after that winter night he was stricken with a debilitating, sometimes fatal illness. In Limping Through Life he explores the ways his world changed after polio and pays tribute to those family members, teachers, and friends who helped along the way. Jerry Apps has been a rural historian and environmental writer for more than forty years. He has published fiction and nonfiction books on many rural topics, including Ringlingville USA, , Horse-Drawn Days, Old Farm, and Garden Wisdom for the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. He is a former county extension agent and professor at the University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Jerry and his wife, Ruth, divide their time between their home in Madison and their farm, Roshara, west of Wild Rose.
	Rural Wit and Wisdom: Time-Honored Values from the Heartland (May, 2012) Purchase this book In an updated and expanded edition of a timeless classic, best-selling author Jerry Apps has written and collected oft-spoken phrases, observations, comments, and conundrums celebrating country life and rural living. Black-and-white photographs by Steve Apps, an award-winning photojournalist, complement the text, which offers humorous, touching, and unique glimpses into the lighter side of life in the Midwest. Jerry Apps writes novels and nonfiction about the outdoors, country life, and rural living. He received the 2008 First Place Nature Writing Award from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association and the 2007 Major Achievement Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. He and his wife live in Madison, Wisconsin. Steve Apps is an award-winning photojournalist with twenty-five years in the newspaper industry. As a Wisconsin State Journal staff photographer, he has covered a wide range of assignments, including the Green Bay Packers and the University of Wisconsin–Madison sports.
	Living a Country Year: Wit and Wisdom from the Good Old Days (June, 2007, February 2018) Purchase this book In his signature warm-hearted style, Jerry Apps traces the wisdom gained in living a country year, chronicling each month with a tale about growing up on a Midwestern dairy farm in the 1940s. Wearing his hard-earned wisdom lightly, Apps accompanies each month’s tale with farm country aphorisms and the occasional recipe for good measure. By turns witty and profound, Living a Country Year reaffirms our nation’s rural heritage.
	Every Farm Tells a Story (March, 2005, February 2018) Purchase this book Fork handle—$.65 Mash for chickens—$7.15 One milk pail—$1.15 Horse collar and pad—$8.15 Gloves for Herm—$.52 "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. <more on this title>
	Country Ways and Country Days: From Weathervanes and Tractors to Auctions and Outhouses . . . Remembering Rural Life (July 2005) Purchase this book Outhouses. Weather vanes. Draft horses. Threshing machines. Barbed wire fences. Rural mail carriers. Gristmills. Barbershops. One-room country schools. Such objects of our vanishing rural past are today’s reminders of our country ways and country days: early home life in the country, work on the farm, how rural people kept in touch, the importance of community, and how farm folks relaxed and had fun. In “Country Ways and Country Days”, you’ll go back in time and learn a bit about each item’s special role and its importance in country life. Noted storyteller Jerry Apps presents short essays on farming life and memories, drawn from his own experiences growing up on a small farm. These charming anecdotes are followed by brief histories of each item’s development and background. Apps’s reminiscences about the things that kept life humming on the farm and enriched the rural experience will leave you nostalgic for a time when working the land was its own reward.
	Country Wisdom: Timeless Values and Virtues from the American Heartland (July, 2005) Purchase this book The wisdom of the upper Midwest is found in the minds and hearts of the people who live there. Wisdom is expressed in the stories that people tell of earlier days and earlier times. Stories of happiness and hard work. Stories of hardship and joy. As rural people tell their stories, remember these tales, for in these stories are the values and beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation, and make the upper Midwest what it is today. Some bits of country wisdom: -The two most important things we can give our children are roots as deep as a giant oak’s, and wings as strong as an eagle’s. -Work is never done, so take time to play. -Living to accumulate money is not living. -When you hear the flocks of migrating Canada geese each spring and fall, look upward. See the grace and beauty, cooperation and respect. Noted author Jerry Apps collected these oft spoken phrases, observations, comments, and conundrums. Together with photographs by his son, Steve Apps, staff photographer for the “Wisconsin State Journal”, the statements lend humorous, touching, unique glimpses into country life in the upper Midwest.
	Humor from the Country (Amherst Press, 2001. Voyageur Press, 2006) Reviews | Purchase this book Life during the early to mid part of the 20th century is often viewed as a time of backbreaking work for meager returns. Often, the strength and resiliency of family and neighbors are overlooked. In Humor From The Country, master story teller Jerry Apps gives us insights into the lighter side of country life. Through stories based on childhood memories. Apps shows us that country folk knew how to have fun too. <more on this title>
	When Chores Were Done (Amherst Press, 1999. Voyageur Press, 2006, Fulcrum Press, 2017) Book Sample | Purchase this book The Midwest in the 1930s, '40s and '50s was a place where parents and children worked side by side to eke a living from the land, and neighbors stuck by each other through good times and disaster. In this affectionate, insightful memoir, Jerry Apps takes us to that world. Here we meet Frank, Pinky, and Harry, three farmers whose love of music could transform an entire community; Morty, the odd loner whom only a few wild animals could understand; and Fanny, the extraordinary collie whose role on the farm was as important as that of any human.  <more on this title>
Rural Life Series | Historical Books | Other Country Life Books