Farm Story with Jerry Apps

A Farm Story with Jerry Apps is a portrait of farm life seen through the eyes of a boy growing up in rural America in the 1930s and 1940s. Using archival photos and film, teacher, author and historian Jerry Apps tells the story of growing up in Wild Rose, Wisconsin – America’s archetype rural farming community. A Farm Story is the personal and family story of millions of American’s who grew up on farms. Like a family photo album for millions of Americans, the documentary takes the viewer through memories of “things that aren’t there anymore” and of experiences that created their values of hard work, determination and community — values that drive a generation of Americans who grew up on the farm. The documentary carries the viewer from childhood on the farm in the ’30s to the rural electrification that changed American farms and rural life forever. Jerry shares stories about the party line telephone, the one-room schoolhouse, the routine of work and chores and community of those family farms that built America into the agricultural center of the world. A Farm Story with Jerry Apps deeply resonates with viewers with rural roots, many who left the farm but who recognize that the experience made them who they are and can feel a kinship with Jerry when he says, “Today I’m as proud as proud can be of having experienced what I experienced, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. ” Jerry Apps Bio: Jerry Apps, born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of more than 30 books, many of them on rural history and country life. His nonfiction books include: Living a Country Year, Every Farm Tells a Story, When Chores Were Done, Humor from the Country, Country Ways and Country Days, One-Room Schools, Cheese, Breweries of Wisconsin, Ringlingville USA (History of Ringling Brothers circus), Old Farm: A History, Barns of Wisconsin, Horse Drawn Days: A Century of Farming With Horses, and Campfires and Loon Calls. Jerry is a former publications editor for UW-Extension, an acquisitions editor for the McGraw-Hill Book Company, and editor of a national professional journal. Jerry has won awards for his writing from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Library Association (the 2007 Notable Authors Award), American Library Association, Foreword Magazine, Midwest Independent Publishers Association, Robert E. Gard Foundation, The Wisconsin Council for Writers (the 2007 Major Achievement Award), Upper Midwest Booksellers, and Barnes and Noble Bookstores, among others. In 2010 he received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.